The rants and raves of a technogeek
Posts tagged freeswitch
Call Analytics – Closed Alpha testing group
Mar 14th
Well, it’s been almost a month since I’ve started writing about the humbug project. Now, it’s time to actually get you people involved, at least in the initial levels. We are looking to add 10 additional members into the humbug call analytics suite. Currently available analytics during the alpha testing is inbound call analytics.
Our aim is to gather as much information as we can and as much user requests as we can, humbug is a community oriented project, thus it relies on community oriented input and feature requests. Participating members will be granted access to the humbug analytics portal, allowing them to gather statistical information regarding their inbound call hits and their top ten DID numbers – we are working on additional statistics. As new stats will become available, we’ll role those out into the service as soon as possible.
In order to participate in the closed alpha testing, please send an email to alphatest at humbuglabs.org, and we’ll send you a short piece of dialplan code to insert into your Asterisk server. Technically speaking, we’ll send you a short AGI command that looks like this:
exten => _X.,n,AGI(agi://somehost/DataReceiver,some_unique_ident)
The above line needs to be inserted into any place you would like to generate call analytics from. We’ll also enclose configuration steps for FreePBX (and other FreePBX compatible distributions). We are hard at work for creating a FreePBX integrated module, so you can do a one-click install.
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Beyond the dialtone – PBX user experience revisited
Feb 12th
When most of us think about PBX systems, we usually associate these with cumbersome usage, confusing dialing codes and in most cases – a PBX system is automatically associated with the annoying task of transferring a call from one handset to another. Lately, I’ve been thinking deeply about how people use PBX systems, is this really the only way to use a PBX system? is there something else to the mix? can we really enrich one of the oldest operational paradigms in the world? – and for that matter, can the public be re-educated to assimilate a new breed of PBX systems or services?
- Image via Wikipedia
As to answering the question of re-educating the public, I guess I’ll have to leave that question to the head shrinks. As to answering the latter, enriching the PBX experience is both achievable and advisable. When I say enriching, I mainly talk about your ability to bring to the IP phone functionality usually not associated with it. Imagine to have the ability to receive a stock exchange RSS feed to your phones idle screen, notice that you stock is either rising or falling, and by the flick of a button – either sell or buy. We’ve all come accustomed to IP phones that look like the one of the right. A whole bunch of buttons, that in most cases have no direct use when our phone is utilized using a single account. However, these buttons can be externally re-assigned and re-programmed to achieve greater functionality – surpassing the normal behavior of just making phone calls.
The technology involved exists on almost every high-end IP phone on the market (well, at least those made by SNOM, Aastra, Cisco and Polycom – most of the Chinese makers don’t have this) – it’s called a Mini Browsers. Mini Browsers are exactly what they are called, these are simplified versions of your typical Internet browser. Some vendors had produced their own XML based Mini browser markup language (SNOM, Cisco, Aastra) while others had decided to provide a sub-set of XHTML (Polycom). The variations between the vendors are at the neck deep of the problems of using Mini Browsers, and that is that the formats are considerably different. Sure, SNOM had more or less adopted Cisco’s general structure, however, it still varies.
Through the utilization of this technology, it is possible to create phone based browser applications, that seem native to the phone user, as the general interface resembles the native phone interface. It is now the developers job to make the web interface displayed to the user as seamless and as native as possible, keeping in mind that the developer must remain agnostic to the information retrieval layer. Most companies leave their phone systems and these tasks to their system administrators and infrastructure team, however, this task is far beyond their capabilities and skill set. Creating an agnostic IP phone minibrowser dislplay layer, capable of utilizing multiple vendors and models, is a question of content management and content rendering, very must similar to the content transcoding problem that is common to the mobile content world – in other words, a sys-admin will create an ad-hoc solution, a programmer will create a proper, well structured, well designed solution that carry the enterprise beyond its initial needs and requirements.
A short example of how these interfaces work can be found here – on my company blog.
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Hijacked by RTFM to la-la land
Oct 28th
I keep a vigilant eye on Google Alerts. To be more exact, I’ve got a few alerts defined, in accordance to subjects that interest me. Two of these subjects are Asterisk and FreeSwitch. Recently, the following had been posted on a personal blog:
Our PBX/IVR web-based generator Telfa has been moved from Asterisk to Freeswitch. Why?
Asterisk just seems to come from a different world than what I am used to. Inflexible and problematic. Very long configuration files with ancient syntax. Now I’m far from pretending I’ve used Asterisk enough to understand it pros and cons well, but I have a decent software development experience and I can tell when something “smells.” I didn’t want to build our system (that I want to be flexible and scale well) on some old technology that is only living from its past.
And (most importantly) there are many people experienced with both Asterisk and Freeswitch favoring the latter: Anders Brownworth, Jonathan Palley (creator of Telegraph, a Rails plug-in that lets you talk to Freeswitch), or of course the creator of Freeswitch (and former Asterisk developer!) Anthony Minessale himself.
[Extract from: http://onruby.flempo.com/2008/10/28/chose-freeswitch-over-asterisk/#comment-58]
Reading the above simply flames me UP – WHAT A LOAD OF BULL!
The writer admits that: “Now I’m far from pretending I’ve used Asterisk enough to understand it pros and cons well, but I have a decent software development experience and I can tell when something “smells.”” – If he’s such a worthy developer, the above simply proves that he’s simply an RTFM!
Asterisk provides a multitude of methodologies for configuration management, dialplan logic programming, programmatic API structures – basically, all the tools you need to go about and create your application. While I admit that FreeSwitch is slightly better at the “Core Switching” environment, implementing a near true Soft Switching architecture – Asterisk is a totally different thing.
A while back I decided to develop a couple of my better systems on FreeSwitch, as a test of my abilities. To see if I can be as proficient with FreeSwitch as I am with Asterisk. I re-developed the applications on FreeSwitch from scratch, however, FreeSwitch’s somewhat annoying XML configuration structures made it a hell for me to develop something that I would ask my customers to put their money on.
I started working with Asterisk in 2002, and starting 2003 I tried to have people in Israel start using Asterisk. I can honestly say that the first ever true adaptation of Asterisk in Israel came about only late 2005, and even that wasn’t for mission critical applications. Asterisk had achieved a point in which it is now considered a valid replacement for classic IN and NGN applications and engines, such as SigValue. I suspect that FreeSwitch will become a more dominant contender in that part within a period of 18 to 24 months, as its developer community will grow – time will tell.
In my large installations, I like using Asterisk as my IVR/Application engine envrionment and using FreeSwitch as my routing and LCR environment, simply because it’s capable of handling slightly more SIP-to-SIP connections than Asterisk – but that is the only reason, all the rest is Asterisk.
Both projects are wonderful tools, each one with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Learn how to balance the use of the two, utilize the best of both world – and stop being a bloody purist, that’s exactly what leads to poor technologies such as Microsoft and poor life practices, like wars and terror.
Will Fonality fork Asterisk too?
Jul 24th
We’ve recently learned that Fonality had forked FreePBX into its own version, to better serve the TrixBox community. Judging from what we’ve learned about Fonality/TrixBox/KG over the past few months, it is my personal belief that this is just another from of spin on the “TrixBox calls home” feature, simply doing something to hide it better – most probably will be somewhere in the management code now.
However, it led me to an interesting discussion with a friend – “will Fonality fork Asterisk?”
It is fairly clear that Fonality is doing all in its power to go about and distinguish itself from the rest of the community and the Asterisk eco system, by simply creating a product that is completely seperated from Asterisk. The amount of patches and modifications going into the TrixBox distribution, makes the running Asterisk on TrixBox a completely different one than the one running on AsteriskNOW, Elastix or pbx-in-a-flash. Is it stable? that is a good question, I’d like to believe that it is. After all, if it wouldn’t have been stable, Fonality would have been out of business. Fonality also goes to great deal to make sure that their TrixBox resellers can’t replicate their appliance easily. For example, over the course of the past 12 months, Fonality had changed the insides of their TrixBox appliance a few times, each time with a different motherboard, a different set of distribution packages and so on.
In the same fashion, it is only common sense for Fonality to fork Asterisk to their own product. My assumption is that Fonality at some point will either fork Asterisk, migrate their code to FreeSwitch or more probably CallWeaver, take over one of these projects like they took over TrixBox/AAH and completely distinguish themselves from the Asterisk community and product line. Will it do good for them? time will tell – if it happens. Will it be good for Asterisk/Digium? – in general terms that answer will be yes, as it will make Fonality/TrixBox automatically distinguishable from Asterisk. Which when asked what is the different between TrixBox and Asterisk, the immediate answer would be: “These are two completely different products!”.
It is my belief that by Q4 2010 we are to see some major shifts in the Open Source Telecom arena. My projection is that by Q4 2010 Digium will be in a position for either an IPO or an M&A. While my personal belief is that Digium prefers an IPO, an M&A proposition from a major vendor (Cisco/Nortel/Avaya) will come before the IPO option. I also believe that by the Q4 2010 Fonality will either fork Asterisk, adopt FreeSwitch or CallWeaver and distinguish themselves.
It is also my belief that by Q4 2010 Sangoma will try to acquire an Open Source PBX/Switch project. Although they recently acquired a SIP PBX company, I believe that this acquiry is nothing more than a small publicity stunt to keep Sangoma in the investor’s mind, making sure that Sangoma progresses in some form. The recent news about Sangoma integrating their signalling stacks to FreeSwitch makes me believe that the most likely candidate will be FreeSwitch – the Asterisk nemesis.
In any case, stay tuned for 2009… here we come…
SAY NO TO TRIXBOX !!!
Jun 15th
A recent post on the FreePBX forum suggests that Fonality and Kerry Garrison are utilizing various unlawful techniques to discourage people from using FreePBX/Elastix/PBX-in-a-flash while promoting the TrixBox brand. These actions are currently under investigation by the FreePBX website maintainers, but they had published their initial findings of these actions.
While the possibility of NAT/PAT firewall from Fonality network is possible, it is clear that the tactics used are promoted by Fonality (Maybe by Kerry himself, but this has not been proved yet).
If you believe that the actions by Fonality are of negative origin and targeted at discouraging other Open Source projects, please put the following banner on your website:
The banner code follows below:
<!--/* OpenX Image Tag v2.4.5 */-->
<a href='http://ads.asterisk.org.il/delivery/ck.php?n=a299919b'
target='_blank'><img src='http://ads.asterisk.org.il/delivery/avw.php? zoneid=7&n=a299919b' border='0' alt='' />
</a>
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