(I'm new to Asterisk, after having started VOIP with vat on the mbone in the 90s.)
I am setting up my first Asterisk system, and trying to read docs/guidance and follow best practices. I have read the 5th Edition of "Asterisk: The Definitive Guide" and like the 3rd Edition on the web it recommends that hardphones and softphones both have a unique name distinct from any concept of extension. http://asteriskdocs.org/en/3rd_Edition/asterisk-book-html-chunk/DeviceConfig_id283201.html Then the 5th edition goes on to give an example with a hardphone and a softphone associated with one individual, where the hardphone is named by MAC address and the softphone by JIM_VANM_SOFT (p. 61). Despite talking about separating extensions, phone names, and people, it seems clear that a softphone is usually personal to a person (unless it's a desk phone via a computer, but I'm talking about the personal type). THe book does not address the notion that a user might be given credentials and then configure them on a number of softphone-type devices simultaneously, e.g. a smartphone, a tablet, and two laptops. When getting service from an ITSP, it seems there are credentials and they don't want to know the details of how many softphones you are using. So which option is preferred? A) Have a softphone aor/auth_user/password for a particular human, and expect them to configure it on multiple devices. Do not worry that 1) multiple are registered at once (because that's normal in SIP) and 2) asterisk has no idea which is which (because the intent is to place a call to that person) B) issue credentials per device and keep them all separate. Use extensions.conf to ring them all Having written the question out carefully, it seems obvious that A is the way to do this, but it's sort of contrary to the advice in the book so I thought I would ask. Thanks, Greg -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- Check out the new Asterisk community forum at: https://community.asterisk.org/ New to Asterisk? Start here: https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Getting+Started asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
