[OpenSER-Users] Re: [Serusers] why combine ser with asterisk

Fri Aug 24 09:52:31 CEST 2007

    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?

BR///

Fredrik

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Greger V. Teigre 
To: SIP 
Cc: Fredrik Lundmark ; serusers at lists.iptel.org 
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Serusers] why combine ser with asterisk

Hm, I don't agree with that comparison ;-)
Asterisk is a PBX, SEMS is a platform for specific applications. There are some common pre-developed applications that easily can be set up (like a conference bridge, play announcements etc). However, if you need a PBX with lots of features, you don't start with SEMS.

I would rather compare Asterisk to a pick-up truck and SEMS to the Porsche. Use the truck for pretty much any work, but the Porsche is made for speed... :-)

Using Asterisk as only a conference bridge and playing announcements is like using the pick-up truck to move your 12-piece china...
g-)

SIP wrote: 
Offers them? Yes. Offers them in a clean, friendly, usable package? Not 
so much yet.

SEMS has raw capability, but if you want it to do many of the things 
Asterisk can do, you need to know how to code that yourself, or you're 
going to be digging about the code for documentation on features (since 
the current docs are not the world's greatest).

Don't get me wrong, SEMS has its place, and is a constantly evolving 
work of art (we use SEMS for several things in our environment), but 
comparing SEMS to Asterisk is a bit like comparing a bunch of car parts 
to a Porsche.

N.

Fredrik Lundmark wrote:
  I'm still learning myself, but SEMS (iptel.org/sems) seems to offer 
many of the media- and/or b2bua-functions that Asterisk do.

///Fredrik

----- Original Message ----- From: "SIP" <sip at arcdiv.com>
To: "Nhadie" <nhadie at tbgi.net.ph>
Cc: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>; <serusers at lists.iptel.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Serusers] why combine ser with asterisk

    Asterisk is an excellent PBX system, and makes a very good endpoint in
the SIP chain for all sorts of things -- IVR systems, voicemail
applications, automated messages, etc.

It has an extremely well-written CDR engine, so many people mesh it with
billing applications to produce accurate accounting information. It also
is fully aware of the media stream, which means it's capable of cutting
off a call mid-stream, injecting audio into the call, etc, etc.

Programming for Asterisk addons can be easily done in just about any
language, and it meshes well with the overall structure. Programming for
SER is... not so simple.

As for running them both on the same box, the biggest problem would be
resources. Unlike SER, Asterisk is not designed to be a carrier-grade
SIP proxy. If you're actually proxying the media stream, you'd be
hard-pressed to squeeze more than 150 simultaneous calls out of Asterisk
on even the beefiest of hardware. Add SER to the same box, and you will
quickly run into resource problems in medium-sized environments. It also
doesn't have a lot of the SIP proxy functionality that SER has.

If you're careful, you can configure Asterisk NOT to handle the media
stream and still use it for prepaid solutions (using astcc or
asterisk-b2bua), and this will save you bandwidth (but you'll still
likely run into NAT issues that need to be dealt with somehow) and still
let you use Asterisk as an in-between point.

Together, Asterisk and SER make a very powerful combination for
providing a full suite of services to clientele, and each plays well off
the other's strengths.

N.

Nhadie wrote:
      Hi All,

What's the advantage of combining ser with asterisk? I always see
comments like using ser with asterisk is a very good solution etc. etc.
the thing i liked with ser is that it does not do codec translation,
which saves me cpu usage and also bandwidth. if i combine it with
asterisk, would it not use codec translation?

i also read that there is also a problem when ser and asterisk is 
run on
the same machine, why is it so?
if use prepaid billing solution for asterisk like astcc, would i 
then be
able to provide prepaid service?

soryy for asking too much, i'd just like to really understand it. Thank
You in advanced.

Regards,
Nhadie
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