Greetings,

As a developer and consultant who spends considerable time on projects involving the fusion of Asterisk and products derived from the SER ecosystem (OpenSER, Kamailio, OpenSIPS, the new SIP-Router), I have found that there is a great volume of interest in this topic on the mailing lists associated with all communities involved, but a comparative lack of focus that results in duplicated effort and lack of specialised response.

This is mainly due, I think, to the fact that detailed Asterisk experience - while common - is not a prerequisite for working with the SER products, while for Asterisk people SER can often be a next step in scalability and VoIP service delivery platform enhancement that they are just getting into. And so on. There's pollution in the respective discursive spaces; a lot of Asterisk people posting to the SER lists ask a lot of Asterisk-specific questions in addition to any they may have about SER which can be construed as potentially off-topic by some members, and the opposite is true on the Asterisk lists when detailed, involved discussion about SER occurs.

We need to capture that discussion that exists at the overlap and is specifically concerned with making these two systems work together, requiring somewhat detailed and esoteric understanding of both and a community of user support and knowledge that focuses on both of these conceptual and product universes.

Toward that end, I am hosting a new mailing list with this succinct purpose, if slightly unwieldy name, and encourage all interested to join. It is called 'SER-Asterisk-Interwork' and can be accessed for subscription here:

http://lists.evaristesys.com/mailman/listinfo/ser-asterisk-interwork

The archives are available here:

http://lists.evaristesys.com/pipermail/ser-asterisk-interwork/

You can post to the list at:

ser-asterisk-interwork@lists.evaristesys.com

It's the same GNU Mailman stuff you are already used to.

While it could be argued that this cross-product discussion is valuable to retain in both communities, I think there is considerable benefit to creating a specialised mailing list that focuses specifically on this integration path and the unique interoperation and configuration issues it creates. I think it would be good to get some of this discussion off of the SER and Asterisk-specific mailing lists where it has somewhat marginal relevance at times and refocus it. If you agree and are interested in this topic, you are invited to join the list.

One last note: The SER/OpenSER community has been in a state of flux recently, with OpenSER undergoing a name change to Kamailio and subsequently seeing a fork. The incumbent Kamailio project is now in the process of merging with the original SER project. The choice of nomenclature for list is not meant to imply an endorsement of or affinity for the IPTel SER project per se. It is just that right now it serves the aim of terseness to use a common denominator, to refer to this family of projects as the "SER ecosystem." Whether you are a SER, OpenSER, Kamailio, or OpenSIPS user, you are part of that "SER ecosystem." That is why the list is named what it is.

Thank you,

-- Alex