Fun with Asterisk – Part One

I’ve been hacking around with Asterisk configurations, DID and IAX in general. I’ve now got two Asterisk servers (one in the US, one in the UK) that have various ways of communicating with oneanother and handling my calls according to overly complex and pretentious configuration. Here’s a little more about how my configuration works. Let’s start by looking at what numbers I need to drive this:

  • +1-617-759-1337 (US cellphone)
  • +1-617-NNN-NNNN (US DID number)
  • +44-777-613-1337 (UK mobile phone)
  • +44-118-NNN-NNNN (UK DID number)

I generally give out two numbers – my US and UK mobile (cellphone) numbers – and let the network forward unanswered calls immediately to my (country specific) DID number (cheaper not to redirect internationally), which Asterisk has control over. This means incoming calls either get answered immediately or go to Asterisk – it then handles voicemail and call routing to my home/laptop SIP phones. The net result is that you can call either official published number and get routed through to me (or to my global voicemail service). It doesn’t matter where I really am when you call my number.

I’m not currently forwarding one cellphone to the other via Asterisk because I need some additional (and complex) scripting in order to avoid circular call redirects. In the worst case, Asterisk will timeout but I don’t want to have calls bounce around too long before they go somewhere – at the moment, it’s better they go to voicemail than spend a minute hunting to find where I’m at. I’ve had to add an artificial ring while Asterisk does its stuff as it is – but right now, it’s about 10 seconds for it to go figure.

Jon.

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