Freeswitch Feed agregator

Hello!

The FreeSWITCH team is busy on several fronts but the most exciting news at the moment is that Packt Publishing has told us the new book is officially off to production! If all goes well it should be available in the next few weeks. (It looks like they changed the cover art - once we know for sure what's on the cover we'll give it a nickname like we did with the "bridge" book.)

Last week we had an impromptu discussion on various FreeSWITCH topics. We have rescheduled the VoIPMonitor.org conference call presentation for May 29th. Also, we have tentatively scheduled the HOMER presentation for June 5. That means we will have another open discussion for this Wednesday's conference call.
 
As a tip, if you would like to browse around and see what has been committed in FreeSWITCH lately you can use the Fisheye site. Here you can browse the source code and look at recent commits to see what has changed. If you prefer to look at the commits without the source code browser then try out the HTML front-end for our FreeSWITCH git repository. We also have repositories for contributions and sample configuration sets.

Have a great week!
 
-Michael

A belated happy new week to you all!

As Ken mentioned in his email yesterday, the big news from last week is, of course, the release of FreeSWITCH 1.2.9 stable. This is now the "latest stable" version of FreeSWITCH and the one most recommended for production use. The tarball is available from theusual location. The CentOS and Debian packages have also been updated to use the latest stable. 

On last week's conference call we welcomed Dan from the CGRateS project. CGRateS is a relatively new project that handles call rating for carrier-grade operations. We are happy to have CGRateS (an open-source project itself) as part of the FreeSWITCH ecosystem.

On this week's call we look at another VoIP-related OSS project: VoIPMonitor.org. This software performs a number of monitoring functions for VoIP implementations. Please join us tomorrow at 1PM EDT, 10AM PDT for an interesting discussion. 

One ClueCon reminder: We are still accepting speaking proposals, however time is running out so please send them in as soon as possible. We hope to have the ClueCon 2013 schedule released in the next few weeks.

Take care and have a great week!

-Michael

Happy first May Monday to all.

We are please to let everyone know that the new FreeSWITCH book is nearing completion. Each day the Packt editors have been sending us revised and re-revised chapters to polish off. If we keep up our current pace then it is quite likely the book will be available in early June. We hope you enjoy it.

On last week's call we enjoyed a nice presentation from Omar over at OrecX who showed us some of the useful features of their call recording
solutions. They have an open source version as well as commercial versions. If you are looking for a call recording solution then we recommend that you review what OrecX has to offer.

This week we continue in our series of presentations on FreeSWITCH-compatible software applications. We look forward to having Dan Bogos from CGRateS join us to talk about their project. Click here to get a quick look at what CGRateS does, and then make plans to join our call on Wednesday.
 
Regarding ClueCon 2013 we would like to remind everyone that we are still accepting talk proposals. If you have a talk idea please let us know. In the meantime feel free to get registered and book your hotel room at the Hyatt.

Have a great week!
 
-Michael

Businesses Will Benefit From High-Quality, Low-Cost Telephony Solutions

Yealink, the global top 5 SIP Phone provider, is pleased to announce a new partnership with the FreeSWITCH project. In addition to giving financial support, Yealink will be offering engineering and other technical resources that will allow Yealink devices to take full advantage of the power of the FreeSWITCH open source IP communications platform. Enterprises employing a VoIP infrastructure based on the combination of FreeSWITCH-powered servers and Yealink phones will benefit from the value of high quality at a low cost.

"FreeSWITCH is designed to facilitate people communicating with one another," notes Anthony Minessale, architect and lead developer of FreeSWITCH. "By definition this means that FreeSWITCH must be able to inter-operate with many different devices. Being able to work directly with a corporate like Yealink allows us to improve the process of connecting devices - and people - to one another."

“Yealink have been working tirelessly to ensure our worth as a leading competitor in VoIP products and solutions on a global scale. We are very pleased to be able to work with world-renowned partners like FreeSWITCH. The combination of Yealink and FreeSWITCH will certainly open a new world for our global customers and allow them to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere,” added Stone Lu, Yealink Executive Vice President. Yealink is a Silver Sponsor of the ClueCon open source IP communications conference that will be held in Chicago, August 6-8, 2013. More information is available at www.ClueCon.com.

About Yealink

Founded in 2001, Yealink, the Global Top5 SIP Phone Provider and a leading provider of VoIP Phone and IP communication solutions, has been focusing on VoIP products characterized by reliable quality, easy deployment and affordable price for over a decade. Today, customers from over 140 countries rely on Yealink as the backbone of global collaboration to extend the value of network communications. For more information, please visit: www.yealink.com.

About FreeSWITCH

First released in January 2006, FreeSWITCH has grown to become the world's premier open source soft-switching platform. This versatile platform is used to power voice, video, and chat communications on devices ranging from single calls on the Rasbperry Pi to large server clusters handling thousands of calls. FreeSWITCH powers a number of commercial products, including Barracuda Networks' CudaTel Communications Server. Released under the business-friendly MPL 1.1 open source license, FreeSWITCH is continuing the open source telephony revolution that is occurring worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.freeswitch.org.

Hello Friends,
We are looking forward to a busy but good week of activity. Last week was busy as well. On last week's conference call we had an engineer from JiraSoft join us to answer some questions about the newly released VCS 2.4.3. We are happy to have this new version as part of the FreeSWITCH ecosystem.

This week we welcome Omar from OrecX. OrecX creates commercial and open source telephony recording solutions. We look forward to learning more about how we can use OrecX with FreeSWITCH.

One other bit of good news: All of the content for the new FreeSWITCH book has been submitted to the publishers. We are doing a bit of editing on one of the chapters but otherwise we are basically done. We anticipate a
June release.

Take care and have another fantastic week!
 
-Michael

The FreeSWITCH team is pleased to announce that we have another product in our ecosystem: JeraSoft VCS version 3.4.2. The JeraSoft official announcement and official release notes can be found here.
 
For those who may not know, JeraSoft VCS is a routing and billing solution that works with a number of VoIP platforms. Since FreeSWITCH continues to grow as a carrier/provider solution it is good for those using it as such to have such an option. Some highlights of the new release are:

• RADIUS authentication of customers
• RADIUS authorization of calls (including balance limits)
• RADIUS start/stop accounting
• Dynamic routing via SIP redirect server

 
Feel free to visit JeraSoft to learn more about how to use this software with your FreeSWITCH implementation.
 
-Michael

Greetings!
Happy tax day to those in the USA - we hope all is well with your business. Speaking of business, I thought I would relay the interesting news about Dish Network making a bid for Sprint. Many here in North America will be keeping a close eye on this one. Whether or not this is just a big mess or an opportunity for Sprint to become a "real" competitor to AT&T and Verizon remains to be seen. Regardless of the outcome, most of us here are hoping for a healthier Sprint so that we can avoid another duopoly.

On last week's conference call we decided to have a preliminary discussion so that we can prepare for this week. Dave Kompel will be showing us how to build rapidly FreeSWITCH applications in MS Visual Studio 2012 and have those run under mod_managed. Be sure to consult this document so that you can get all the rerequisites installed in time for our call on Wednesday.

In other news I would like to let everyone know that I spoke with Kashif Kahn over at Vestec. We are gearing up for the automatic speech recognition application building contest. The winners will be announced at ClueCon 2013. The official contest page will be posted on the ClueCon website shortly. Stay tuned for more information and be ready to start building your ASR applications!

The ClueCon 2013 call for speakers recently went out and we've had a number of submissions already. We look forwarding to hearing more talk ideas, so please send those in right away. In the meantime ClueCon registration is now open so be sure to get signed up, and don't forget to book your room at the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile hotel for only $169 per night.

Have a great week!
 
 
-Michael

ClueCon - the open source IP communications conference by developers, for developers - would like to announce that we are having an open call for speaking proposals for this year's event. If you have an idea for a technical presentation for ClueCon 2013 then we would like to hear about it.

What makes a great ClueCon presentation? The tech savvy crowd that attends ClueCon loves technical presentations. In general, the more technical the presentation, the better. If you are thinking about a presentation then consider these points:

• ClueCon talks are 30 minutes in length, including Q&A time with the audience
• ClueCon has a special focus on open source VoIP and telephony projects like FreeSWITCH, Asterisk, OpenSIPS, and Kamailio
• Attendees enjoy hearing about projects built with open source tools, especially those in a production environment
• Highly technical discussions that show the nuts and bolts are especially well-liked
• The audience appreciates seeing and participating in live demonstrations
• We are especially interested in WebRTC-related talks and demonstrations

Please send your proposals to marketing@cluecon.com.
Be sure to include the following items:

• Working title
• Brief description of the talk (abstract)
• Name of the presenter

Don't delay! There are a limited number of openings. We will contact you as soon as your talk has been approved and will inform you of the scheduled time.

ClueCon 2013 registration is now open!. Visit the registration page for details. Be sure to book your room at the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile and qualify for the $300 discount. As always, feel free to call us at 877.742.CLUE (877.742.2583) if you have any questions about ClueCon 2013. Also, keep in mind that the FreeSWITCH community has a conference call each Wednesday at 1PM Eastern time. This is a great opportunity to talk about open source telephony and get to know a number folks who will be at ClueCon 2013. Stay tuned for more news about ClueCon speakers, sponsors, and related events!

Since its spring, we decided to mess up up our tree by adding a bunch of new code overnight.  We added all kinds of new standards and media processing code because, hey why not!  
 
We also addeed new lossless audio codec.  mod_b64.  It actually preserves 100% of the original audio signal by seamlessly transmiting the stream as rot-13-encrypted-base-64-encoded-audio in regular and high def!  Add that to the list of many FS firsts!  At this rate we probably even support webICEE or Big gulp  or whatever they call that fancy new stuff.  
 
What'll they think of next? !!!
 

Welcome to FeeSWITCH, the worlds first fee-driven open source project!
In order to use FeeSWITCH you simply download the code and build it and use paypal to send donations to paypal via the button on the right of the page.  The fee can be of any size though we prefer hefty fees over light fees.  We prefer that you pay the fee as often as possible.  The more often you pay the fee, the better your calls will sound especially if you purchase the new FeeSWITCH ultra gold plated VoIP-Ready voice-enabled ethernet cables from the same guys who brought you Monster TV cables and Beats headphones.
 
 
 

From Slashdot comes this interesting read about the math of FOSS projects. Whether you agree or disagree I think you'll enjoy the story.
 
Let us know what you think: are so-called freeloaders ultimately good for a successful FOSS project?
 
-Michael

Via Slashdot comes this encouraging story about MPEG-LA giving a royalty-free license for all patents that may apply to the VP8 video codec. The official announcement can be found here.
 
This is an important step for the VP8 codec. MPEG-LA handles the licensing of patents for many patent holders. By acquiring the rights to these patents - and on a royalty-free basis, Google can be much more confident that VP8 can be put into production without concerns about patent litigation. Of course, there may be individual patent holders (or patent trolls) out there who may feel that their patents are infringed by VP8. Time will tell if those with other patents will come forward, but this is good news for Google none-the-less.
 
-Michael

We have a few interesting news items that have come along, both found on Slashdot:
 
* Jitsi 2.0 Released - Includes an overhauled interface, support for new codecs like VP8 and OPUS, and ZRTP encryption. Check it out and let us know how it goes.
 
* Do Kiosks and IVRs Threaten Human Interaction - This is an interesting article about how many of us prefer not to interact with a human under many circumstances.
 
Enjoy the articles and be sure to send along any VoIP/Telecom news items you'd like to share.
 
-Michael

Ken Rice has just announced on the weekly FreeSWITCH conference call that FreeSWITCH version 1.2.6 has officially been released!
 
This version has numerous bug fixes and lots of little memory leaks have been plugged. The v1.2 git branch has been tagged and is ready for you to update. Please use this version in production as soon as possible.
 
As always, give us your feedback and thanks for using FreeSWITCH!
 
-Michael

Greetings!
 
First item in the news today is a happy report from long-time FreeSWITCH user Henry Gavin. Henry runs a company in the U.K. called SureVoIP. He is pleased to report that "thanks to FreeSWITCH and FusionPBX" his company is once again a finalist for the annual ITSPA awards. Congrats to Henry for leveraging FreeSWITCH in a successful business endeavor.

Another annual event is the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). FreeSWITCH will once again apply as a mentoring organization. Please start thinking of project ideas that we can include in our
organization's application. Applications will be submitted starting March 18 and no later than March 29. Ken Rice and I will be coordinating this process. Stay tuned for more details.

On last week's conference call we did a nice tour of the CudaTel Communication Server. In the coming weeks we will have more presentations for GUI front-ends that community members have built. On this week's conference call we will have Ken Rice give us an update on his new project: SwitchPi. If you like DIY projects then you'll appreciate what Ken has done with integrating the Raspberry Pi with FreeSWITCH and some other items to create something new. We look forward to seeing it in action.

Don't forget about the FreeSWITCH HA discussion on Tuesday evening at 8PM EST. Last week's discussion was very fruitful. Eliot Gable gave us all a lot of information about the different approaches that he can take for building mod_ha_cluster. We look forward to his report on the potential of using OpenMPI. For those who can't make it to the HA discussion please join weekly conference call on Wednesday where we will have a brief recap of the HA call.
 
In ClueCon news we have uploaded two new videos:
 
* What's new in sipXecs 4.6 - Douglas Hubler
* Challenges and Opportunities in Open Source VoIP - Travis Cross
 

Stay tuned for more ClueCon 2012 videos and ClueCon 2013 announcements.
 
Have a great week and we look forward to talking to you on Wednesday.
 
-Michael

Greetings all!
Last week was rather interesting. Initially we had planned on doing a CudaTel demonstration on the weekly conference call. However, interest in Eliot Gable's mod_ha_cluster and the accompanying conversation was particularly intense. That being the case, on last week's conference call we spent most of the time talking about HA in general and how we could build a FreeSWITCH HA system. We also invited everyone who is interested in the subject to call in to the public FreeSWITCH conference at 8PM EST on Tuesday evening (Feb 19) for the first HA conference call. (Eliot won't join until about 8:15PM.) If you have a vested interest in HA for FreeSWITCH then please join the conference call.
For this week's conference call we will ask one of the participants on the Tuesday night call to give us a brief overview of the HA discussion. After that I will be doing a demonstration of the CudaTel to show off what the FreeSWITCH team has been working so hard to develop these past few years. We hope you enjoy it!

For the DIY crowd you may enjoy this site that Ken Rice set up. It's dedicated to doing cool things with FreeSWITCH and theRaspberry Pi. Check it out!
 
--Michael
 
 

Many of you are familiar with FreeSWITCH power user and all around good guy Kristian Kielhofner. He's a regular at Cluecon and has a great blog where he discusses all sorts of VoIP and networking topics.
 
Today he posted a very interesting article about some "packets of death" that cause the NIC to shut down. If you've done any amount of network troubleshooting then you will most definitely appreciate the research that Kristian has done, especially if you have NIC with the specific Intel chipset that he discusses.
 
Thanks Kristian for sharing the fruits of your labor with all of us!
 
-Michael