[OpenSIPS-Users] Is opensips a front end to asterisk?

[lists at grounded.net]

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 14:02:11 -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
> Specific and well-parameterised questions really are the key.

I'll certainly do that, once I start understanding the product but for now, I'm just trying to get a handle on basics, not deep in depth understandings, just enough to formulate a plan.

Ok, so we all started somewhere, I'm starting here and very much appreciate the input I'll be getting. I'm not going to suck the list dry and leave it, I do want to learn, first, if this is what I need to be working on, and second, learning to use it if it is.

I had two questions which I posted. 

One was asking about the viability of using opensips on ESXi. Because of how easy it is to use snapshots, backup and so on, this would be the best working environment. So my question was, does opensips have any hardware timing requirement issues such as asterisk does. If timing is not critical, as a voip server is, then opensips must run nicely in a virtual manner.

Second, (still at the top of this thread).

>I've come across this project a few times but have been having a bit of a time confirming just what
>the project does. I thought perhaps the best way would be to join the list and ask.

A 'general' question, to assess whether this is what I am looking for or not. Reading is one thing, getting a little input from it's users is the best. I'm not asking for detailed operations, I can get that on the opensips site, just looking for general input.

I don't have any numbers to work with, which is why I say scalable. I'm looking for something which can help me to scale a voip based application to many users. So let's say hundreds of users so that we have a number. I know many of you are running many thousands so this should be a good starting point.

>Right now, the plan calls for every box to have a second one for redundancy. I was planning on 
>manually redirecting connections (for now) but it sounds like opensips could take care of a number 
>of issues.

This is how I would have approached this, until I started looking for a sip gateway/load balancer.

>I have multiple providers (WANs) at one location but was thinking that for highest reliability, that 
>I might have three locations to be safe unless there are better ideas.

This should be pretty straight forward to those who have pro setups and want as much reliability as possible. I want to have two separate locations so that I can fail over, simple as that really.

One would be the location where the initial user connection is made, such as a proxy/load balancer.

>-From what I can tell, opensips could act as a pbx on it's own but it can act as a proxy/load >balancer/gateway to asterisk systems as well.

This is what I asked about in this thread a couple of times now. It's not fully clear to me, even after reading. It sometimes sounds like opensips can be a voip server though it does not provide other media services such as voice mail and so on. I get that it is a gateway but I'm trying to get a better understanding of FROM that point on.

 From the opensips gateway;

-are users registering for services such as in buying services or registering as in authenticating their voip devices, etc.

-are users forwarded to asterisk servers (or what ever someone wants to use it for, but in my case, asterisk services), where they can then get their media services such as voice mail, faxing, etc.
 From what someone posted earlier, I get that you can build what ever you want behind it, in what ever way you wish, such as individual asterisk servers or a distributed (again, your choice of how you do it) farm of them.

>-Does opensips handle only new incoming connections or could it actually move sessions from a
>down server to another which is still up?

In other words, does it forward the user to say an asterisk server, but, does it handle sessions for example, so that if that asterisk server goes down, opensips can send that user to another asterisk server.

>-Would I have some method of controlling how many people can register on any one box?

What this means is that the media services I'll have on the box bloats the box. It'll have voice mail, faxing, even silly video, but that's what it is, so be it. That means I can't have too many users on any one box at any time so need to be able to limit the number of connections to any one asterisk box.

I'm not sure how else to ask these properly formatted questions because I don't quite have all the pieces yet but with some input, I will be starting to.

Thanks.

Mike