Hello We are implementing an architecture with Kamailio and Asterisk with real time and are debating who should be the Registrar for the SIP clients. We are biased towards leaving that to Kamailio and use Asterisk to provide the media services: vmail, conference etc. It looks like this is the recommended way as per several tutorials on the net suggest that solution. As a down side we will have to use a combination of near-end [STUN, ALG] and far-end Nat solutions [rtp-proxy] to handle the media and also are kind of worried about how we should handle the Cass 5 features tipical of a residential line.
But a member of our team suggests to use Asterisk for that and have Kamailio forwarding the REGISTER request from the clients to the Asterisk. Asterisk can handle media and also users behind a NAT. We have never done it that way and we are not sure whether it is possible or not, whether it is acceptable SIP-wise or not. For example: if the proxy is load balancing the REGISTER messages then the clients should be given the IP of the proxy to send the REGISTERs and the NAT binding in the customer's NAT/Firewall will be associated to the IP of the proxy, not the IP of the Asterisk. On then other hand, Asterisk as a PBX supports a lot of Class 5 features natively.
We would like to hear your input, suggestions and comments about this, what other people are doing. If we had only a few user then 1 Asterisk box should be enough but we are planning on having way more that what an Asterisk machine alone can handle, that is why we want to load balance using kamailio.
regards
jp
Kamailio is a much more high-performance registrar than Asterisk and is better for high volume.
Juan Perez wrote:
Hello We are implementing an architecture with Kamailio and Asterisk with real time and are debating who should be the Registrar for the SIP clients. We are biased towards leaving that to Kamailio and use Asterisk to provide the media services: vmail, conference etc. It looks like this is the recommended way as per several tutorials on the net suggest that solution. As a down side we will have to use a combination of near-end [STUN, ALG] and far-end Nat solutions [rtp-proxy] to handle the media and also are kind of worried about how we should handle the Cass 5 features tipical of a residential line.
But a member of our team suggests to use Asterisk for that and have Kamailio forwarding the REGISTER request from the clients to the Asterisk. Asterisk can handle media and also users behind a NAT. We have never done it that way and we are not sure whether it is possible or not, whether it is acceptable SIP-wise or not. For example: if the proxy is load balancing the REGISTER messages then the clients should be given the IP of the proxy to send the REGISTERs and the NAT binding in the customer's NAT/Firewall will be associated to the IP of the proxy, not the IP of the Asterisk. On then other hand, Asterisk as a PBX supports a lot of Class 5 features natively. If possible, I would like to set up call at 3pm Eastern today to get things set up for a successful interop test with CityVoice. Let me know if you’re available at that time and I will make all necessary arrangements on this end.
Thanks,
We would like to hear your input, suggestions and comments about this, what other people are doing. If we had only a few user then 1 Asterisk box should be enough but we are planning on having way more that what an Asterisk machine alone can handle, that is why we want to load balance using kamailio.
regards
jp
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On Monday 16 March 2009, Juan Perez wrote:
We are implementing an architecture with Kamailio and Asterisk with real time and are debating who should be the Registrar for the SIP clients. [asterisk or kamailio for REGISTER]
Hi Juan,
i'd say that this tradeoff depends on several factors. If the majority of services you want to provide are such that the asterisk is not heavily involved, e.g. plain telephony, presence features and such i'd suggest that you use asterisk only for this stuff that kamailio can't handle or is not optimized for. If you would like to go for a bigger userbase i'd also suggest using kamailio instead of asterisk for this basic services. Media relaying can be done with rtpproxy, you don't need a asterisk for this. We've a setup like this, most of the stuff is done in the OpenSER/ Kamailio.
[using asterisk for REGISTER] We have never done it that way and we are not sure whether it is possible or not, whether it is acceptable SIP-wise or not
Relaying the REGISTER to asterisk will work probably, but i'd use the solution were i'm comfortable with and confident that it will work out in the end.
Cheers,
Henning
Henning Westerholt wrote:
[using asterisk for REGISTER] We have never done it that way and we are not sure whether it is possible or not, whether it is acceptable SIP-wise or not
Relaying the REGISTER to asterisk will work probably, but i'd use the solution were i'm comfortable with and confident that it will work out in the end.
A proxy can statefully relay anything, so this definitely works. I just don't think it's the right approach here.
Thank you guys for your valuable comments. We have heard that before, that Asterisk has problems in a large scale environment. In your experience what specifically are the problems: the registrations are lost, the records get corrupted etc. We ask because with small deployments we have not seen those issues yet and want to know form people that actually have implemented large scale deployments.
Also, with what they call Real Time Asterisk using DBs, does that help somehow?
I know this is not an Asterisk forum but I am expecting to get a more unbiased response here than on a asterisk specific forum.
thank you in advance
jp
----- Original Message ---- From: Alex Balashov abalashov@evaristesys.com To: Henning Westerholt henning.westerholt@1und1.de Cc: users@lists.kamailio.org Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 12:04:29 PM Subject: Re: [Kamailio-Users] Handling of REGISTER messages when Kamilio is in front of Asterisk
Henning Westerholt wrote:
[using asterisk for REGISTER] We have never done it that way and we are not sure whether it is possible or not, whether it is acceptable SIP-wise or not
Relaying the REGISTER to asterisk will work probably, but i'd use the solution were i'm comfortable with and confident that it will work out in the end.
A proxy can statefully relay anything, so this definitely works. I just don't think it's the right approach here.
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Alex Balashov -
Henning Westerholt -
Juan Perez