Asterisk versus Sipura (or ATA's)

[chicha]

mberlant has written in an earlier thread that SPA's (or, ATA's in general) have no decision-making capabilities inherent in them. Presumably, this is why one could conceivably have an 1800-character dialplan. I know nothing of the device called "Asterisk", except that it is considered to be very "advanced". Is what makes the Asterisk superior technology have anything to do built-in decision-making capabilities? [I'm questioning the grammar in that last sentence!] Or are computers the only decision-making-capable machines? I like the idea of a simplified, "elegant" dialplan. 1800 characters, to me, is off the charts - in terms of simplicity!

[mberlant]

As you can learn by browsing through the Asterisk forum here on voxilla.com, Asterisk is a Linux application that resides on a PC and behaves as a full-featured VoIP PABX.

As far as being scared off by an 1800-character Dial Plan, I venture to say that you won't be quite ready yet to trade in that 1800 character Dial Plan for a 20,000 character extensions.conf configuration file. Unfortunately, there isn't a silver bullet solution that lets you do complex decisionmaking without human design of the decision tree.

My comment about decisionmaking capability (I have made the comment several times) generally refers to an ATA's inability to apply intelligence to if-then-else situations. For example, an ATA cannot be made to call out on Provider A, but to use Provider B if Provider A is temporarily unable to complete a call.

[chicha]

Originally Posted by mberlant

As you can learn by browsing through the Asterisk forum here on voxilla.com, Asterisk is a Linux application that resides on a PC and behaves as a full-featured VoIP PABX.

As far as being scared off by an 1800-character Dial Plan, I venture to say that you won't be quite ready yet to trade in that 1800 character Dial Plan for a 20,000 character extensions.conf configuration file. Unfortunately, there isn't a silver bullet solution that lets you do complex decisionmaking without human design of the decision tree.

My comment about decisionmaking capability (I have made the comment several times) generally refers to an ATA's inability to apply intelligence to if-then-else situations. For example, an ATA cannot be made to call out on Provider A, but to use Provider B if Provider A is temporarily unable to complete a call.

What would be required to transition an ATA to such an if-then-else decision-making capability? Assuming that capability existed, would it enable an abbreviation of your 1800 character dialplan?

[mberlant]

No, I don't believe it would abbreviate the 1800 character Dial Plan, nor do I believe that abbreviation is advisable. The Dial Plan basically works in three stages to determine if the call should progress or be blocked based upon which BroadVoice calling plan the client has subscribed to. Early Dial Plan elements block calls to Country Codes that are entirely missing from the calling plan. This is pretty straightforward, including elements like |0112!|, which blocks calls to all of Africa. From there, Permitted countries are organized by permitted City Codes and are consolidated with each other as much as possible. I believe that I have collapsed the Dial Plan as much as possible without exposing the client to any chargeable destinations.

BroadVoice actually has (or had; I haven't checked recently) one of my earlier Dial Plans on their web site that only parses Country Codes and does not block calls to mobile phones within included countries, so you can compare and balance compactness and efficacy and decide for yourself where you wish your balance to be.

[chicha]

Originally Posted by mberlant

No, I don't believe it would abbreviate the 1800 character Dial Plan, nor do I believe that abbreviation is advisable. The Dial Plan basically works in three stages to determine if the call should progress or be blocked based upon which BroadVoice calling plan the client has subscribed to. Early Dial Plan elements block calls to Country Codes that are entirely missing from the calling plan. This is pretty straightforward, including elements like |0112!|, which blocks calls to all of Africa. From there, Permitted countries are organized by permitted City Codes and are consolidated with each other as much as possible. I believe that I have collapsed the Dial Plan as much as possible without exposing the client to any chargeable destinations.

BroadVoice actually has (or had; I haven't checked recently) one of my earlier Dial Plans on their web site that only parses Country Codes and does not block calls to mobile phones within included countries, so you can compare and balance compactness and efficacy and decide for yourself where you wish your balance to be.

I don't own a website. But there are quite a few people that make a fair amount of money that do via the selling of ad space. I could imagine a website where the process of creating individualized dialplans was automated. You have the expertise to develop such a site. Wouldn't all you need is a list every country code on the planet, with all of each country's local codes and mobile codes. So the user would go to a webpage and click a country name they want in their dialplan. Then one would drill down within each country, including/excluding areas/prefixes they want in the dialplan. When finished, a dialplan would be displayed (1800 characters?) that the user could cut and paste. It would have the utility of being in the "English language" rather than 0's and 1's (and 2's) - like when we go to Voxilla.com, we don't enter an algorithm to get there. The hard work would be done behind the scenes creating the required algorithm to make the site work. I don't know what kind of userbase you could develop. Certainly Voxilla and DSL Reports subscribers would sign on. You wouldn't have any takers from the Vonage crowd, though.

[mberlant]

At least two Voxilla members have tried to automate the configuration of Dial Plans and both met with limited success.

I agree that it is possible to construct a web utility that asks a user to specify his/her:

- equipment (Sipura code is different from Leadtek is different from Polycom, etc.),
- home country,
- home City Code,
- length of local phone number,
- countries to be included,
- types of service with each of these countries to be included,
- for Country Code 1, whether Alaska, Hawaii and/or Puerto Rico are to be included,
- other details I can't think of off the top of my head,

and uses all of this input to generate and optimize the necessary Dial Plan elements.

If you are up to doing the actual coding I would be more than happy to provide you with the database to put behind it.