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?
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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Tags: Aastra Technologies, Asterisk, Cisco, Cisco Systems, digium, Fonality, FreePBX, freeswitch, Markup language, Nortel, Polycom, sangoma, SIP, TrixBox, User interface, VoIP, XHTML, XML
Today I got the chance to speak at a Polycom half-day convention, mainly to speak about Asterisk and HDvoice. Now, putting aside the part about HDvoice (I’m getting a post about that on its own), I gotten to the point where I believe that I’m currently perceived as being an eccentric.
So, why am I eccentric? very simple, I’ve reached a point where I can say things that may be perceived as rude – and write it off an being an eccentric quirk.
I’ve talked about Asterisk ability to support Video, while the current Polycom VVX1500 video phone isn’t yet supported at its fullest. One of the people in the crowd mentioned some sleezy,al-cheapo, SIP Video phone (to be more exact, he’s the local distributor) – and I claimed that I don’t count that phone as a comparison to Polycom or other VoIP Video phones, simply because in my view it’s not a worth while comparison. Comm’on, let’s be realistic, can you compare a Polycom VVX1500 (an HDvoice Video phone) with some shitty sub-VGA SIP Video phone from China? the mere comparison is simply insulting for Polycom.
Shortly after negating that phone, the person stood up and left the room. At the break, a friend said to me that I shouldn’t have said that, in order to come out the bigger man. Common, the guy is surely making a joke of himself. I commented: “I’ve said what I said, I stand by my opinion – besides, you know I’m eccentric – eccentric people say eccentric things” – he agreed that I’m eccentric, after all, you can’t be an Open Source evangelist without being an eccentric – now can you?
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Tags: Aastra, Asterisk, Business, GPL, Grandstream, GreenfieldTech, Huwaei, open source, Polycom, Session Initiation Protocol, SIP, Skype, Telecommunications, Video, Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP
As I recently explained to a good friend of mine, the essence of Jewish holidays is, more or less, the ever growing consumption of food – due to our great fortune with people trying to kill us and not being able to do so. Putting that aside, now a days, the essence of Jewish holidays, at least in Israel, is to basically sit at home and do nothing.
Last week was Passover. For those not in the know, Passover is the weird Jewish holiday when we’re not allowed to consume any bread or bread like products. On one hand, it reminds us our ancestors who travelled the desert for 40 years, and had to leave Egypt in a rush, so their bread didn’t rise. So, we eat Matza Bread to remember that time. However, today, you can make bread from a multitude of other ingredients, not only White Flour. For example, you can make bread from Potato Flour, Soy Flour or even Rice Flour – in other words, anything else by White Flour. I’m confident the orthodox Jew will claim that I’m wrong – but hey, that’s my 2c on the matter. In any case, Passover started on the 7th of April, and lasts 7 days. The first 2 days and the last 2 days are national holidays. So, the only work days that remained were: 9th, 12th, 13th. The 9th was a Thursday, no use working for one day, 12th was a Sunday, most of my customers abroad are not working, 13th was a Monday – hence – a single day of actual work to do. For a workaholic, like myself, that is more or less a nightmare.
Recently, a post on voip-info.org had caught my eye:
I’ve decided to visit that website and take a look at the providers the “so-called” list offers. So, in general, the site is nothing more that a so-called “VoIP Link Farm”, promoting some services over others. In general, the site only contains some logos of service providers, a shit-load of Google banners, and some poor content relating to the actual pricing of the service providers – in other words, nothing new. So, if you’re looking for the real thing, stay away from this site, there is nothing special in there.
Per Digium’s website, the Digium Fax for Asterisk is:
Digium's Fax For Asterisk is a commercial facsimile (Fax) termination and origination solution designed to enhance the capabilities of Open Source and commercial Asterisk as well as Switchvox. Fax For Asterisk bundles a suite of user-friendly Asterisk applications and a licensed version of the industry's leading fax modem software from Commetrex. Fax For Asterisk provides low speed (14400bps) PSTN faxing via DAHDI- compatible telephony boards as well as VoIP faxing to T.38-compatible SIP endpoints and service providers. Licensed on a per-channel basis, Digium's Fax For Asterisk provides a complete, cost-effective, commercial fax solution for Asterisk users.
Ok, Fax is one of the most anticipated parts that Asterisk had been in need, since the creation of Asterisk. While back in the days of SpanDSP and Hylafax you were able to go about and send/receive faxes, in a somewhat reliable manner (who am I kidding, it was only 80% reliable), Digium’s Fax for Asterisk is surely a new step-up. This new add-on shows that Digium is maturing, becoming increasingly serious about their approach to the Enterprise market. I’ve been working with the FREE Fax-For-Asterisk license, which provides a single license and I have to admit – it works fairly well (what am I talking about, currently, 100% of faxes pass through without a hitch!).
Well, after working on my own, for a period of more or less 2 years time – I’ve finally expanded GreenfieldTech. GreenfieldTech now enjoys 2 distinct divisions: the telecom division and the web analytics division. To read more about it, you’re welcome to visit our new company blog at http://blog.greenfieldtech.net/
Tags: Asterisk, Fax, Free Calls, GreenfieldTech, Jewish Holidays, Passover, providers, Scams, SpanDSP, VoIP
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.
Tags: AdHearsion, Asterisk, DAHDI, digium, freeswitch, IVR, LCR, purist, pursits, Routing, Ruby, sangoma, VoIP
Well, it’s quite common to get a flame here and there on any Internet technical maling list, but the following really caught my eye. Here’s an extract from the TrixBox forum:
———————- CUT HERE ———————-
Subject: SS7 on Sangoma a101D
Why are you trying to do this? Is your goal to terminate SS-7 trunks to an Asterisk box at some point?
Your exercise sounds academic, ISDN User Part is essentially SS-7 and besides who trunks Asterisk with PRI’s
The last guy that asked these questions was working on a University project, if this is what you are doing then do your own homework. If not please explain your application so I can make a few suggestions.
aka “Skyking”
———————- CUT HERE ———————-
Ok, putting aside the discussion of Digium vs. Sangoma (It’s a well known fact I’m a Digium fan), I think I hadn’t seen any remark on any Asterisk forum which was rude as this one. The fact that TrixBox is not something you would naturally use for SS7, the fact that it’s Asterisk based simply makes it possible. Why does the responder care “Why the user wants SS7?” – it doesn’t matter one bit, he wants to do it, he has his reasons – just give the guy an answer and help him out.
Our responder says: “… and besides who trunks Asterisk with PRI’s …” – well, I can number multiple situations when Asterisk was required to be trunked with PRI circuits. For one, security measures sometime insist that you interconnect Asterisk with PRI circuits and not over IP. For example, one of my customers, a company in the defense industry required a secured VoIP connection to a provider, without exposing it’s internal network on the physical layer – the only way to do it was to interconnect Asterisk via a PRI circuit.
“… if this is what you are doing then do your own homework …” – That’s even worse than saying RTFM. In the Asterisk world, and especially in the SS7 world, nothing is straight forward and usually, things are slightly more complex than anticipated. Saying something like: “Do your homework” is like saying, “I know how to help you, it’s complex, but I won’t tell you”.
The good old saying says: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” – it applies well to mailing lists and forums.
I admit, I had been known to throw a flame or two here and there – however, it is always related to a specific issue, and is usually related to non-technical issues being published on a technical list.
Tags: Asterisk, digium, FreePBX, GPL, Kerry Garison, Sangome, TrixBox, VoIP
hello
i have a two running trixbox server with sangoma a101D cards in them. i want to connect these two servers with each other over a SS7 link. i have installed wanpipe utilities and using T1 cross over cable. both card are showing green light and also there is no alarm in the system. now i am trying to install some ss7 library in the system. i have tried both chan_ss7 and libss7. chan_ss7 didnt work in any way.
so i am trying to use libss7.
with new asterisk 1.6 and libss7, digium says it will supports mtp2 signalling. just need to add command
signalling=mtp2. but they also said that only digium card will support this feature. can i use direct mtp2 signalling on sangoma cards or is there is any other way around???????