[Serusers] Redundant forwarding

[Jiri Kuthan]

At 12:30 AM 2/24/2003, Jamin W. Collins wrote:
>It's something of a catch-22.  If I use a stateless forward, the server
>that it's forwarded to sees the connection as originating from the
>actual phone's IP.  

There is some disconnect here -- be a request forwarded by a proxy
statefuly or statelessly, it arrives always in the same shape to
the destination. In particular, proxy server's address is in IP
packet's source address and in Via.

>If I use a stateful forward, the connection is seen
>as coming from the SER server itself, and as a result the audio path
>fails.  

Audio is sent to the address advertised in SDP, which is not
manipulated by SER.

>For the stateful forward to work, I believe I would need the
>phones to register their presence with the SER server, right?

Unless you wish to write scripts like 
  "if (uri=~"sip:joe at .." { forward("1.2.3.4") ....
you will want to keep track of users in automated manner. That's
what registration is good for. Once a user registers, messages
can be sent to him in either mode: stateless or stateful. The latter
gives some more abilities, like forking. See
http://www.iptel.org/ser/doc/seruser.html#AEN839


>Is there a way to configure it so the phones are not required to
>register with the SER proxy?

You don't need to configure your server so that phones do not
regsiter with it -- that's a phone configuration issue. however, 
it will not be easy to route requests to your phones if they do
not register.

-Jiri