Asterisk MGCP channels

The MGCP channel in Asterisk

Apparently the MGCP channel supports the following CLASS service codes:

– blind transfer

FLASH – consultative transfer

67 – Calling Number Delivery Blocking
70 – Cancel Call Waiting
72 – Call Forwarding Activation
73 – Call Forwarding Deactivation
78 – Do Not Disturb Activation
79 – Do Not Disturb Deactivation
8 – Call pick-up

Example

; calling the MGCP device with the name “192.168.0.3” on line 1 (= aaln/1)
exten => 201,1,Dial(MGCP/aaln/[email protected])

Q & A

Can Asterisk register as a MGCP client on a remote MGCP service?:
No. At the present time, Asterisk can serve MGCP Clients using the mgcp.conf file, but it cannot register on a remote server using MGCP.

BOUNTY

Currently, asterisk will not register on a remote MGCP server, there are a number of users who would like to have this functionality. I am offering/collecting a bounty for the person who will write the code for asterisk so that asterisk can connect to a VoIP provider using MGCP. If you are interested in getting the bounty or you would like to add funds to the bounty please contact me at ciisafe @ gmail DOT com.

The bounty is currently 40 US Dollars.

Update March 2010 (future Asterisk 1.8?)

Quote Matthew Fredrickson: “A new channel driver, called chan_ccs, that allows, among other things, you to control MGCP media gateways for bearer trunks, instead of having to locally terminate them on the asterisk box that’s controlling the signaling links. There is also code in the same branch that has chan_ccs that modified chan_mgcp so that Asterisk can act as a media gateway (since I don’t have any good real media gateways to test on). This basically means you can have Asterisk TDM channel scalability up to (in the ideal state) the same level as you can do with SIP with no media, per box.”

Troubleshooting tools

CLI: “mgcp show endpoints”
CLI: “mgcp audit endpoint aaln/[email protected]”
“ngrep port 2727”