Noob question about asterisk

[Anish Mangal]

Hi,

I have a very basic question about asterisk deployment in SECN.

The way I understand is, that there is supposed to be a root node on which asterisk is enabled. Is it the case that in a mesh network, all voip traffic will flow through that route node even if the optimal path between two users does not include that root node?

--

Anish

[Steve Song]

Hi Anish,

It depends.  Asterisk is installed on each MP2 node but it is typically not used as a server.  There are a number of ways you can make calls with the MP2.

1/  You can dial directly between MP2s on the network using the last octet of the IP address of the device.  This supports simple local calling for most networks.  You can also dial the full IP address but for most purposes, the last octet is fine. Most networks have far fewer than 254 nodes.

2/  The MP2 does have a softphone facility which does allow non-MP2s VoIP clients e.g. smartphones to register on the network and make local calls.  In this case, you would identify a single MP2 on the network to enable the softphone facility on and smartphones would then register on that device.  In this case Asterisk on the MP2 is behaving as a very small scale VoIP server.  More information on how to do this is available in the User Guide at http://download.villagetelco.org/user-docs/secn/secn-4/SECN-4_UserGuide.pdf

3/  You can register each MP2 to an external VoIP service provider which would give each MP a full DID that can be called from any phone in the world.  This is fine for small networks that want to be connected to the PSTN.

4/  You can set up a local Asterisk or Freeswitch service and register the MP2s to it and gateway calls from their to a VoIP service provider.  Under this scenario you might have a single number for the network and have each MP2 addressable via an extension.  This would work for a network with mostly outgoing calls.  You could also increase the number of incoming lines to your local asterisk server to accommodate more simultaneous incoming calls.

Cheers... Steve

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Village Telco Development Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to village-telco-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to village-telco-dev@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/CAFyM-tLH-RfCB%2Bv5jc5jO89cw%2B1qX82kLiTeR7e7ULAyQoL1TA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Steve Song

+1 902 529 0046

http://villagetelco.org

[Anish Mangal]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the prompt and detailed reply.

I think I am shooting for case #2, as I am playing with SECN on AR150 routers. So the use case is that the user has an app (eg: csipsimple) on their phone which they use to talk to other people. In that case, would packets need to be routed through the router running asterisk, or would they choose the optimal route?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/CAD_CWO1TgJ23jMXVQbojj-EagL1rGZigr7XNWx3kA2DmAmX1mw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Anish

[Keith Williamson]

Hi Anish,

Just to clarify a bit further, as Steve points out, one of the MP2's is configured as the Softphone "Master". This MP2 runs asterisk to handle calls originating from or destined to a softphone on the mesh (e.g. smartphone, tablet, laptop running softphone client software). All call setups between smartphones and other phones have to go through that MP2 but just the call setup. After the session is initially established, the actual call goes directly between the phones without the Master's involvement. This is achieved via the Asterisk configuration parameter "canreinvite=yes". 

Cheers,

Keith

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/CAD_CWO1TgJ23jMXVQbojj-EagL1rGZigr7XNWx3kA2DmAmX1mw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Anish Mangal]

Hi Keith,

Thanks. That clarifies it for me :-)

This means that calls should be optimally routed in most situations on a mesh.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/CAFweeiRn4iZUEqeLjmPctjxODjt%2BtLKfXSynaGOGLi2JVoSzGw%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Anish

[Keith Williamson]

Correct. It also allows for more simultaneous calls since the calls are not bottlenecked through a single asterisk instance on a single MP2. 

-Keith

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/CAFyM-tLFOXPZfGhq%3D0UjowXPq0SxNKPcfSYTmLZhZeLzNoPNfA%40mail.gmail.com.