[Serusers] forward() and t_relay() differences

[Michael Shuler]

My intent is to do SIP load balancing using a layer 4 hardware switch (such
as a Foundry ServerIron XL) or a layer 4 software switch (such as
UltraMonkey).

Since SER *could* operate in a completely stateless mode it could serve as a
per packet proxy in front of a series of stateful feature servers such as
Asterisk.  A L4 device by itself would not be enough and a stateless MUST be
in front to do the actually balancing because of SIP's flaw/design of
containing routing information throughout the packets life.  It would have
been nicer if it only carried a source and destination and worked more like
TCP/IP but unfortunately it is what it is.

Anyway, I about have everything working and I only seem to have a small
issue when the second SER server comes online with some strange message
passing between them.  Most of it I believe is caused by my lack of
understanding of how SER makes some decisions on where to send things.  I
think what would help is if I setup a "work in progress" web site that would
show all my config files and the layout of the whole thing along with an
explanation of why I decided to do what I did.  I should have it up later
today or tomorrow.

----------------------------------------

Michael Shuler, C.E.O.
BitWise Communications, Inc. (CLEC) And BitWise Systems, Inc. (ISP)
682 High Point Lane
East Peoria, IL 61611
Office: (217) 585-0357
Cell: (309) 657-6365
Fax: (309) 213-3500
E-Mail: mike at bwsys.net
Customer Service: (877) 976-0711 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jiri Kuthan [mailto:jiri at iptel.org] 
> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 5:42 PM
> To: Michael Shuler; serusers at lists.iptel.org
> Cc: jan at iptel.org
> Subject: RE: [Serusers] forward() and t_relay() differences
> 
> 
> At 07:50 PM 10/4/2004, Michael Shuler wrote:
> >Sorry if that first line sounded snotty, I didn't mean it 
> that way.  I
> >didn't read it until after I sent it.  What I meant to say 
> was thank you for
> >the response.
> 
> you are very welcome.
> 
> >  I had already been through the docs though and found that too
> >but I was still seeing the following problem..
> 
> I am interestd in more feedback on load-balancers. To my 
> knowledge, it is
> a technology which has some conflicts with SIP protocol and 
> those LBs that
> try to fix the problems using built-in SIP awareness don't do 
> necessarily
> any better. We are working on a SER built-in load-balancing 
> architecture
> but that's still work in progress.
> 
> -jiri
>