Hi all,
I've been experimenting a bit with Asterisk/GnuGK interconnect for
several months, but without significant success.
Here are just a few observations (to know where you stand):
1. Both h323 driver (Asterisk native) and oh-323 only compile
against Janus-Patch4 versions of Pwlib and OpenH323Lib. I've been
running both GnuGK 2.0.8 and 2.2.0 with Pandora release, no problem,
but the Asterisk channel drivers are stubborn enough (platforms
tested: Fedora core2 and core3, i.e. gcc 3.3 and 3.4).
2. I'm not aware that oh-323 is better; whenever I tried to use the
"stable" version, when the channel tried to "dial" to GnuGK, I got
SIGSEGV. With the CVS this does not happen, however, you should be
prepared to face another serious problem: codecs. In fact, Asterisk
receives the SIP call through the SIP channel and then "dials" the
H323 channel to the gatekeeper. Apparently, Asterisk tries to
negotiate an appropriate codec with both the SIP phone and with the endpoint
that the H323 GK has routed the call to ("direct" endpoint-to-endpoint
connection through Asterisk via the "reinvite" mechanism can only be
done when making a SIP-to-SIP call). If all your endpoints speak G.711
and you are happy with the bandwidth usage, it works fine.
Unfortunately to me, most commercial endpoints prefer G.729, which is
available from Digium, but not for free and through a weird
registration procedure (their registration code is bound to the MAC
addresses of all NICs on the machine and if you replace a NIC, you
have to re-register, which can only be done once). Other problems with
the Asterisk/GnuGK interconnect are that calls do not hang up
properly (I suspect Asterisk's fault here), which results in billing
issues (Asterisk has almost no billing capabilities; it doesn't even
speak RADIUS except through a highly-specialized patch for
prepaid-card-type only services; this patch is nsuitable for SIP/H323 billing).
3. I haven't played much with Vovida VOCAL - just know that it
compiles cleanly, but be warned - it is a _huge_ projects consisting
of several interconnected services and a normal setup requires a set
of several *nix boxes to run on.
Just my 2c.
WWell,
Assen Totin
Development Manager
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