[Serusers] [Sems] why combine ser with asterisk

[Stefan Sayer]

Hello Fredrik,

Fredrik Lundmark wrote:
>     Hmm,
>  
> I find the dialog I initiated both amusing and (for me) very 
> informative. Being pretty new to these lists, I'm evaluating technology 
> to use for an ITSP setup and I'll welcome more comments and views as the 
> ones below - they help me understand "what to use for which purpose".
>  
> What my needs are:
> 
>    1. Prepaid support - maybe I don't need a b2bua, could the dialogue
>       module be "call-aware" and be used to terminate calls upon
>       "end-of-credits"?
>    2. Filtering of Refer & Replace (RFCs 3515, 3891, 3892), replacing
>       them with Re-Inivtes - to support most UAs, at the same being
>       compliant with SIP trunks supporting SIPConnect
>    3. IVR capability - i.e. "regular IVR" (customized stuff) as well as
>       standard applications (voicemail, conference)
>    4. Queuing of calls
>    5. 3pcc - capability for handling calls from a operator's application
> 
>  
> Anyone wanting to advise?

adding my general two cents to what already has been mentioned, I would 
want to note that it also depends quite a lot on how big the setup is 
you are doing, how deep you are in the technology, and how much you are 
willing/able to implement and customize yourself.

If you only want to use SEMS as *user* without going at times into the 
code, I can recommend it only for the basic applications (announcements, 
pre-call announcements, voicemail, simple conference bridge) that come 
with it. SEMS has been deployed as components serving these in large 
setups at carriers, ITSPs and other sites alike for years showing quite 
good stability and performance. For those applications I guess that you 
are in total better off with SEMS than with asterisk.

While you have the core capabilities, there are no PBX-like applications 
with SEMS to work as is out of the box. For those, and/or if you need 
other channel types than SIP, you have asterisk (or freeswitch, for that 
matter) with all its universe of applications and customizations.

As has been mentioned, if you want to use SEMS for more complex 
applications and call-flows involving media, you will need to be able to 
read the code and the examples along with the available docs, and I 
think doing this, reading the tutorial and the standard modules' and 
examples' source, gives you a quite good impression about the 
capabilities and the style of implementing applications in SEMS. And 
then, some people also reported that its not too hard or time-consuming 
to get to the point where you are able to implement your custom 
application (see e.g. 
http://lists.iptel.org/pipermail/semsdev/2007-May/001456.html).

Regards
Stefan

>  
> BR///
>  
> Fredrik
>  
>  
-- 
Stefan Sayer
VoIP Services

stefan.sayer at iptego.de
www.iptego.de

iptego GmbH
Am Borsigturm 40
13507 Berlin
Germany

Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 101010
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Alexander Hoffmann