Page 336 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

DUNDi performs lookups dynamically, either with a switch => your
extensions.conf file or with the use of the DUNDiLookup() application. DUNDi is available
only in Asterisk version 1.2 or higher.
You can use the DUNDi protocol in a private network as well. Say you’re the Asterisk
administrator of a very large enterprise installation, and you wish to simplify the ad-
ministration of extension numbers. You could use DUNDi in this situation, allowing
multiple Asterisk boxes (presumably located at each of the company’s locations and
peered with one another) to perform dynamic lookups for the VoIP addresses of ex-
tensions on the network.

Configuring Asterisk for Use with DUNDi

There are three files that need to be configured for DUNDi: dundi.conf,
‡
extensions.conf, and iax.conf. The dundi.conf file controls the authentication of peers
whom we allow to perform lookups through our system. This file also manages the list
of peers to whom we might submit our own lookup requests. Since it is possible to run
several different networks on the same box, it is necessary to define a different section
for each peer, and then configure the networks in which that peer is allowed to perform
lookups. Additionally, we need to define which peers we wish to use to perform
lookups.

The General Peering Agreement
The General Peering Agreement (GPA) is a legally binding license agreement that is
designed to prevent abuse of the DUNDi protocol. Before connecting to the
DUNDi-test group, you are required to sign a GPA. The GPA is used to protect the
members of the group and to create a “trust” between the members. It is a requirement
of the DUNDi-test group that your complete and accurate contact information be con-
figured in dundi.conf, so that members of your peer group can contact you. The GPA
can be found in the doc/ subdirectory of the Asterisk source.

General configuration
The [general] section of dundi.conf contains parameters relating to the overall opera-
tion of the DUNDi client and server:
; DUNDi configuration file
;
[general]
;
department=IT
organization= toronto.example.com

‡ The dundi.conf and extensions.conf files must be configured. We have chosen to configure iax.conf for our
address advertisement on the network, but DUNDi is protocol-agnostic—thus sip.conf, h323.conf, or
mgcp.conf could be used instead.

308 | Chapter 14: Potpourri