[Freeswitch-users] [newbie] questions

[Josh]

> If you're willing to get your hands dirty then that's great. I 
> recommend the following resources:
All noted, except irc - not really an option for me at the moment. Thanks!

> No matter which way you go, be prepared for aggravating problems and 
> pulling your hair out. VoIP and telephony are always frustrating for 
> the new user. Most of our community members remember their newbie pain 
> and are quite willing to offer their knowledge and experience to help 
> you keep at least some of your hair. ;)
Hope so - the main reason I joined this ML.

> Let us know what you decide!
I haven't made a decision yet one way or another - "the devil is in the 
detail" as they say.

I would like to identify potential "issues" or "stumbling blocks" as 
early as possible, so that I don't regret it later on (and start pulling 
my hair out :-) ) when I truly delve in - I do not wish to spend long 
hours researching, as well as part with my hard-earned, just to find out 
midway through that something I'd like to do won't be possible for one 
reason or another. That would be a complete waste, literally.

It would be nice if someone could address my questions, if possible 
(highlighted again below - with one or two additions ;-) ) - some of 
these issues I know are not as straight forward in Asterisk, so I'd like 
to find out how these are solved/implemented in FreeSWITCH?

>     > Yes, FreeSWITCH can bind to multiple interfaces. In FreeSWITCH lingo
>     > that would mean that you set up a separate SIP profile for each
>     > interface. (In fact, you can have more than one SIP profile on a
>     given
>     > interface since the profile is a unique combo of IP addr and
>     port number.)
>     I presume different profiles can "talk" to each other, right? In other
>     words calls/media can be routed/transferred from one interface to
>     another (eth1<->tun0 for example)?
>
Is this relatively straight-forward to configure?

>     > "Some assembly required." :D
>     > FreeSWITCH can do some stuff for you, but you definitely need to
>     make
>     > sure that your NAT is not behaving badly, like having a SIP ALG.
>     This is what I am trying to figure out - do I rely entirely on
>     FreeSWITCH (if not, what is expected of me to set up so that
>     FreeSWITCH
>     can do its job?), or do I have to do it all by myself with the kernel
>     module helpers (sip, h323 etc) and ip/iptables?
>
The reason I asked this, is simply because I need to know whether I am 
required to set it all up (nothing wrong with that, just that I don't 
want to be put in a position where I stumble across a problem and don't 
know who is to blame - my sip helper module, iptables, or FreeSWITCH 
itself) or do I leave it all to FreeSWITCH.

Another issue which I did not mention up until now - I *assume* 
FreeSWITCH operates in a similar way as Asterisk does with regards to 
separation of channels/streams - in other words, if someone calls via 
the "public" interface/my external VOIP provider, then FreeSWITCH goes 
through the configured dialplan and then opens up a separate channel (on 
the internal interface) to ring and connect the call and then "bridges" 
the two streams/channels together. Is that the case?

If so, would it be possible to have different levels of 
encryption/security set on the two channels - say TLS/SRTP on the public 
part and no encryption on the internal system? Would that be possible or 
do I have to have the same settings on all interfaces so that FreeSWITCH 
could handle it properly?

>     > I'll have to defer to Ken Rice on this one. I know he's working on
>     > RPMs for FreeSWITCH but I think it's all RedHat right now.
>     RedHat is good, all I need is a decent .spec file - I'll do the rest
>     myself, no problem.
>
That, really, is important to me as this is how I'd like to start and 
experiment. Once I have the .spec file I would be able to package it and 
distribute it across a couple of testing machine I have here so that I 
could experiment a bit. The distro this .spec file comes from doesn't 
matter too much - whether it is Fedora/RedHat, SUSE, etc I would be able 
to change the .spec file and adapt it to my system - I have done this 
many times before, so it won't be too much of a problem for me, I think, 
provided the .spec file is decent.

Many thanks yet again!