Re: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
Seems to me that it's more logical for the phones to know what their SRV records are than the server. You shouldn't rely on the dns to ensure that your system is redundant. Aaron On Mar 16, 2006, at 1:03 PM, Douglas Garstang wrote: I know someone who's at VON this week. Apparently Mark Spencer was up there talking about how Asterisk supports SRV. Sounds like vaporware to me. -Original Message- From: David Thomas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:54 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!! In regards to HA... SER is definitely a good option, but it does require the extra hardware to have at least 2 boxes that can failover on each other. I would user OpenSER however (better documentation and mor features). I couldn't agree more that Asterisk should FULLY support DNS-SRV. The solution seems to work great for phones and ATA's. This would be a good item to create a bounty for. I have only two boxes right now, so it seems like my only HA options are the dreaded DUNDi setup or a active/passive failover with linux-HA. David ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
Gabe. Who was the call-center program from? Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gabriel Afana Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 2:38 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!! Hey group, I just got back from the VON expo. It was insanethere were so many companies there. The #1 thing ***EVERY*** company focused on was convergance - getting all your communication devices to intergrate with eachother. There were some nifty products out there that did some cool stuff :-) Of course Digium/Asterisk was there and I had a list of questions for them. I went by several times asking more and more questions...by the last visit, these guys were running from me because I was driving them nuts :-) Here are all the questions I asked them (this is not word for word...just a summary): Q: What are the plans for HA? A: With a configuration using DNS-SRV and DUNDi, you can create a pretty resiliant setup now. Q: What about failover without losing a call A: IBM has been able to make asterisk do this. However, at this time we are not working on any solution to offer this as part of the program. Q: Do you plan on offering support for other distros for Asterisk Business Edition? A: [uncertain answer] Not really sure...maybe SuSE...not sure Q: When is asterisk going to fully support video? A: Asterisk can complety support video using H.261, H.263 and we recently added support for H.264 Q: What do you recommend as the best solution for HA? I got two different answers for this from two different people there. Both made good sense and are basically what everyone is doing now. Here both approaces are in a nut-shell: Approach 1 (seemed to be the preferred method): Use DNS-SRV lookups for all registrations. This will distribute the calls among the * servers. Next, you configure your servers using regexten and DUNDi. You use regexten to dynamically create the exten = 1234,1,NoOp when a phone registers with that server. Then when a call comes in, you use DUNDi to try to complete the call locally. If the phone is not registered to that server, then do a DUNDi lookup to find the server that the phone is registered to and then pass the call over IAX to that server to take it to the phone. Of course the phones will need to have a short registration expiration so they update frequently because if the server they are registered to crashes, until it re-registered, no server can access it. But by doing this, the phone will re-register to another server and then the next DUNDi lookup will then go to this new server. I asked about the load of having many phones registering frequently and he said it is no big deal at all. He also said it was very important to make sure cache is disabled in DUNDi!!! Each call that is made should result in a new query. This will ensure the calls are not getting old cached info which may no longer be accurate. Approach 2: Use a SER box to handle all registrations. The SER box will take care of distributing the load between the * boxes. You do not use DUNDi or regexten in this case. Just let each * box function on its own. If one of the servers fails, SER will not use it to terminate calls. Sinces the phones are registering to SER, and all incoming calls will be routed to SER, you do not need to worry much about the * boxes. You just need to make sure you have your SER boxes in a cluster to fail-over in the event of failure. Overall theme of the Asterisk stand: selling third-party products. In the there section, Digium had 10 seperate vendors that have teamed with them to sell special programs/products/services that intergrate with Asterisk. One was a call-center program, another was a resellers package, another delt with firewalls and NAT, another for voice recognition, another was Intel (that has partnered with Digium to offer drivers in the ABE for the intel cards), another was some email, fax, chat, presence, etc. kind of box that sits in front of * to combine all these servicesand some others I dont remember. It felt like I was walking into an infomercial! I also spoke with Polycom guys a great deal and asked many questions: Q: Do you plan on offering 10/100/1000 ports on the phones? A: Yes, in the near future Q: Do you plan on offering a standard phone jack for failover purposes? A: No, we have no talks of this. However, I will take this idea to the production development team. Q: What is the services button ever used for? A: This is only operable in the 601 and is used to launch the XML browser. We have partned with many companies to offer you sports, weather, stock, movie ticket info...etc that can be fed directly to the phones screen. Q:
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
I know someone who's at VON this week. Apparently Mark Spencer was up there talking about how Asterisk supports SRV. Sounds like vaporware to me. -Original Message- From: David Thomas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:54 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!! In regards to HA... SER is definitely a good option, but it does require the extra hardware to have at least 2 boxes that can failover on each other. I would user OpenSER however (better documentation and mor features). I couldn't agree more that Asterisk should FULLY support DNS-SRV. The solution seems to work great for phones and ATA's. This would be a good item to create a bounty for. I have only two boxes right now, so it seems like my only HA options are the dreaded DUNDi setup or a active/passive failover with linux-HA. David ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
I spent some time today working on HA option number 1. I don't know if I'd really call it HA, given that the phones need to have a high registration frequency to get around a server failing. How often do you have the phones re-register? Once a minute? Imagine that multiplied by thousands of phones, and even that's too high. A downtown of 60s isn't acceptable. You really need to have a) registrations replicated between all Asterisk servers, or b) a SIP Realtime working to a central db (replicated or clustered of course), although we can skip that because SIP realtime doesn't work in that configuration. We're using BLF too. With this model, no BLF. When the phone sends a SUBSCRIBE message, if it's using SRV, the SUBSCRIBE message could go to any Asterisk server. Another Asterisk system starts/ends a call, and that Asterisk box wouldn't have a copy of the SUBSCRIBE. Also.. the SIP MESSAGE message... for instant messaging Asterisk doesn't support it... won't even process it. Doug. -Original Message- From: Gabriel Afana [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu 3/16/2006 1:38 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Cc: Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!! Hey group, I just got back from the VON expo. It was insanethere were so many companies there. The #1 thing ***EVERY*** company focused on was convergance - getting all your communication devices to intergrate with eachother. There were some nifty products out there that did some cool stuff :-) Of course Digium/Asterisk was there and I had a list of questions for them. I went by several times asking more and more questions...by the last visit, these guys were running from me because I was driving them nuts :-) Here are all the questions I asked them (this is not word for word...just a summary): Q: What are the plans for HA? A: With a configuration using DNS-SRV and DUNDi, you can create a pretty resiliant setup now. Q: What about failover without losing a call A: IBM has been able to make asterisk do this. However, at this time we are not working on any solution to offer this as part of the program. Q: Do you plan on offering support for other distros for Asterisk Business Edition? A: [uncertain answer] Not really sure...maybe SuSE...not sure Q: When is asterisk going to fully support video? A: Asterisk can complety support video using H.261, H.263 and we recently added support for H.264 Q: What do you recommend as the best solution for HA? I got two different answers for this from two different people there. Both made good sense and are basically what everyone is doing now. Here both approaces are in a nut-shell: Approach 1 (seemed to be the preferred method): Use DNS-SRV lookups for all registrations. This will distribute the calls among the * servers. Next, you configure your servers using regexten and DUNDi. You use regexten to dynamically create the exten = 1234,1,NoOp when a phone registers with that server. Then when a call comes in, you use DUNDi to try to complete the call locally. If the phone is not registered to that server, then do a DUNDi lookup to find the server that the phone is registered to and then pass the call over IAX to that server to take it to the phone. Of course the phones will need to have a short registration expiration so they update frequently because if the server they are registered to crashes, until it re-registered, no server can access it. But by doing this, the phone will re-register to another server and then the next DUNDi lookup will then go to this new server. I asked about the load of having many phones registering frequently and he said it is no big deal at all. He also said it was very important to make sure cache is disabled in DUNDi!!! Each call that is made should result in a new query. This will ensure the calls are not getting old cached info which may no longer be accurate. Approach 2: Use a SER box to handle all registrations. The SER box will take care of distributing the load between the * boxes. You do not use DUNDi or regexten in this case. Just let each * box function on its own. If one of the servers fails, SER will not use it to terminate calls. Sinces the phones are registering to SER, and all incoming calls will be routed to SER, you do not need to
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
David, How's DUNDi make this redundant? The way I understand it, a phone is only ever registered to a single Asterisk box at a time. If that Asterisk box where to fail, callers lose the ability to contact users that where registered on that box. -Original Message- From: David Thomas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu 3/16/2006 11:53 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Cc: Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!! In regards to HA... SER is definitely a good option, but it does require the extra hardware to have at least 2 boxes that can failover on each other. I would user OpenSER however (better documentation and mor features). I couldn't agree more that Asterisk should FULLY support DNS-SRV. The solution seems to work great for phones and ATA's. This would be a good item to create a bounty for. I have only two boxes right now, so it seems like my only HA options are the dreaded DUNDi setup or a active/passive failover with linux-HA. David ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and Polycomphone!!
On 17/03/06, Douglas Garstang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, How's DUNDi make this redundant? The way I understand it, a phone is only ever registered to a single Asterisk box at a time. If that Asterisk box where to fail, callers lose the ability to contact users that where registered on that box. Assuming you're using regcontext/regexten, if a phone isn't found locally then a DUNDi switch will allow it to be found elsewhere - assuming it has re-registered. It will only be unavailable during the re-registration interval. You need to go and try this, not keep posting about how you think it won't work. Then we can help you get it going. -- Peter Bowyer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: +44 1296 768003 VoIP: sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] VoIP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] FWD: **275*5048707000 VoipTalk: **473*5048707000 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
