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: