The Board would like to set up a "town hall" style meeting for our first meeting in March, if possible. (The timeline is not strict, but I'd like to be able to start telling the community our actual timeline very soon.) We'd like to support call-ins so people can hear the Board's meeting publicly. I have no idea how many people would actually show up to listen, but let's assume it's in the 50-100 range, and maybe we're nearly right.
Can we support this with our current Asterisk setup in Fedora?
On 2/11/08, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
The Board would like to set up a "town hall" style meeting for our first meeting in March, if possible. (The timeline is not strict, but I'd like to be able to start telling the community our actual timeline very soon.) We'd like to support call-ins so people can hear the Board's meeting publicly. I have no idea how many people would actually show up to listen, but let's assume it's in the 50-100 range, and maybe we're nearly right.
Can we support this with our current Asterisk setup in Fedora?
I've been thinking about this a bit and I'm not sure if "pure" Asterisk is the right tool for this. The Asterisk conferencing just isn't very efficient for handling a few talkers and many listeners, plus Asterisk doesn't always scale well. What I see is something like this:
1) Board members use a SIP client to dial into an Asterisk conference call. We'll need to make sure that board members have a properly configured SIP client as well as a decent microphone/headset (built-in mics on laptops need not apply).
2) Audio from the conference call is fed to a Flumotion (GPL and already in Fedora) streaming server where the general public can listen in. Totem (and plenty of other F/OSS apps in Fedora) should be able to stream the audio from the Flumotion server directly. For those who need to use another OS to listen in we could use Fluendo's Cortado Java applet (GPL but not yet in Fedora AFAICS).
The key is figuring out how to get the audio from the Asterisk conference to the Flumotion server, but I'm sure that the Fluendo folks would be willing to lend a hand on the details.
Jeff
On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 23:53 -0600, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
On 2/11/08, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
The Board would like to set up a "town hall" style meeting for our first meeting in March, if possible. (The timeline is not strict, but I'd like to be able to start telling the community our actual timeline very soon.) We'd like to support call-ins so people can hear the Board's meeting publicly. I have no idea how many people would actually show up to listen, but let's assume it's in the 50-100 range, and maybe we're nearly right.
Can we support this with our current Asterisk setup in Fedora?
I've been thinking about this a bit and I'm not sure if "pure" Asterisk is the right tool for this. The Asterisk conferencing just isn't very efficient for handling a few talkers and many listeners, plus Asterisk doesn't always scale well. What I see is something like this:
- Board members use a SIP client to dial into an Asterisk conference
call. We'll need to make sure that board members have a properly configured SIP client as well as a decent microphone/headset (built-in mics on laptops need not apply).
- Audio from the conference call is fed to a Flumotion (GPL and
already in Fedora) streaming server where the general public can listen in. Totem (and plenty of other F/OSS apps in Fedora) should be able to stream the audio from the Flumotion server directly. For those who need to use another OS to listen in we could use Fluendo's Cortado Java applet (GPL but not yet in Fedora AFAICS).
The key is figuring out how to get the audio from the Asterisk conference to the Flumotion server, but I'm sure that the Fluendo folks would be willing to lend a hand on the details.
If we could stream to Ogg Vorbis, that would be superb. I'm not hung up on Asterisk as an app, just want to make audio available real-time to listeners so they can see what happens in a typical Board meeting.
On 2/12/08, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
If we could stream to Ogg Vorbis, that would be superb. I'm not hung up on Asterisk as an app, just want to make audio available real-time to listeners so they can see what happens in a typical Board meeting.
After writing the message last night I dug a bit more into the details of hooking up Asterisk and Flumotion and I definitely think that it'll be possible. I think that combining Asterisk and Flumotion give us the best of both worlds - use Asterisk to bring together the board members and to mix the audio, and use Flumotion to create a scalable audio streaming solution to get the audio out to the general public. Having a Flumotion server set up would be good for streaming things like FUDCon too.
Jeff
On Feb 12, 2008 9:42 AM, Jeffrey Ollie jeff@ocjtech.us wrote:
After writing the message last night I dug a bit more into the details of hooking up Asterisk and Flumotion and I definitely think that it'll be possible. I think that combining Asterisk and Flumotion give us the best of both worlds - use Asterisk to bring together the board members
This sort of eliminates the possibility of a "town hall" type meeting though (which I thought was the whole point), where there's interaction between the Board and the community
Unless questions are accepted via IRC, for instance....but you still lose the verbal interaction. May or may not be a big deal.
On 2/12/08, Jon Stanley jonstanley@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 12, 2008 9:42 AM, Jeffrey Ollie jeff@ocjtech.us wrote:
After writing the message last night I dug a bit more into the details of hooking up Asterisk and Flumotion and I definitely think that it'll be possible. I think that combining Asterisk and Flumotion give us the best of both worlds - use Asterisk to bring together the board members
This sort of eliminates the possibility of a "town hall" type meeting though (which I thought was the whole point), where there's interaction between the Board and the community
Unless questions are accepted via IRC, for instance....but you still lose the verbal interaction. May or may not be a big deal.
Having tens or hundreds of people in an Asterisk conference call would not be feasible I think. The management interface for the conferencing isn't great so it'd be difficult to moderate who has the floor, etc. I'd have to look at the code to be sure, but I'm not sure if the mixing code optimizes out silent frames, and getting various SIP clients to stop transmitting frame is problematic because many NAT implementations need the two-way RTP flow to keep the ports open - Asterisk has RTP timeouts as well.
If some sort of verbal interaction was desired I think that you'd need to conduct the meeting more like I've seen various school board and city council meetings conducted. All members of the board would be connected via a SIP client and would have full-duplex audio. Members of the general public would be able to listen in on the audio streaming site. If someone had something to present or a question to ask would need to request the floor, probably though a IRC channel. Once granted permission by the chair of the meeting, you'd be sent a private SIP URL to connect to which would give you access to the conference call. Once your turn at the "microphone" was over the SIP URL would be disabled.
Yes, this does limit somewhat a more free-flowing discussion, but it also keeps chaos at bay.
Jeff
On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 09:33 -0600, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
On 2/12/08, Jon Stanley jonstanley@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 12, 2008 9:42 AM, Jeffrey Ollie jeff@ocjtech.us wrote:
After writing the message last night I dug a bit more into the details of hooking up Asterisk and Flumotion and I definitely think that it'll be possible. I think that combining Asterisk and Flumotion give us the best of both worlds - use Asterisk to bring together the board members
This sort of eliminates the possibility of a "town hall" type meeting though (which I thought was the whole point), where there's interaction between the Board and the community
Unless questions are accepted via IRC, for instance....but you still lose the verbal interaction. May or may not be a big deal.
Having tens or hundreds of people in an Asterisk conference call would not be feasible I think. The management interface for the conferencing isn't great so it'd be difficult to moderate who has the floor, etc. I'd have to look at the code to be sure, but I'm not sure if the mixing code optimizes out silent frames, and getting various SIP clients to stop transmitting frame is problematic because many NAT implementations need the two-way RTP flow to keep the ports open - Asterisk has RTP timeouts as well.
If some sort of verbal interaction was desired I think that you'd need to conduct the meeting more like I've seen various school board and city council meetings conducted. All members of the board would be connected via a SIP client and would have full-duplex audio. Members of the general public would be able to listen in on the audio streaming site. If someone had something to present or a question to ask would need to request the floor, probably though a IRC channel. Once granted permission by the chair of the meeting, you'd be sent a private SIP URL to connect to which would give you access to the conference call. Once your turn at the "microphone" was over the SIP URL would be disabled.
Yes, this does limit somewhat a more free-flowing discussion, but it also keeps chaos at bay.
CC:ing f-a-b since this relates to its readers as well.
This sounds like a workable solution if we want call-in questions -- do we have the technical bits to support it?
On 2/12/08, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 09:33 -0600, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
If some sort of verbal interaction was desired I think that you'd need to conduct the meeting more like I've seen various school board and city council meetings conducted. All members of the board would be connected via a SIP client and would have full-duplex audio. Members of the general public would be able to listen in on the audio streaming site. If someone had something to present or a question to ask would need to request the floor, probably though a IRC channel. Once granted permission by the chair of the meeting, you'd be sent a private SIP URL to connect to which would give you access to the conference call. Once your turn at the "microphone" was over the SIP URL would be disabled.
Yes, this does limit somewhat a more free-flowing discussion, but it also keeps chaos at bay.
CC:ing f-a-b since this relates to its readers as well.
This sounds like a workable solution if we want call-in questions -- do we have the technical bits to support it?
Well, we already have an Asterisk server up and running, and it's easy enough to control access to a conference room through authenticated SIP connections. I'm working on setting up Flumotion on the Asterisk box and getting the audio flowing (although having the Flumotion server on the Asterisk box may or may not be the best final location). There are a number of SIP clients in Fedora that seem to work well for people. The scripts for creating/deleting private SIP URLs to allow guests to speak to the board will need to be developed but shouldn't be too complex.
Jeff
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