Asterisk

Skype for Asterisk Yields Unparalled Innovation

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:11:44 -0400

Just last week, Digium announced a partnership with Skype yielding the new "Skype for Asterisk" beta. This exciting announcement came from the annual Digium Asterisk conference, Astricon 2008, in Phoenix Arizona.

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Skype / Digium Partnership Announced

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:03:13 -0400

Just this morning at the AstriCon 2008 event, Skype and Digium announced a collaboration partnership and the beta version of Skype For Asterisk. This partnership will allow "the integration of Skype functionality into Digium's Asterisk software and enable customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within their Asterisk phone systems." This very exciting feature development will significantly benefit both platforms, allowing business users to "make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within Asterisk phone systems, using existing hardware." In addition, this collaboration will allow users to "save money on inbound calling solutions such as free click-to-call from a website, as well as receive inbound calling from the PSTN through Skype's online numbers." For more on this exciting late-breaking story, please visit the Digium press release, "Digium and Skype Collaborate to Bring Skype to Business Phone Systems." In the next few weeks, I hope to discuss this new functionality and partnership with Digium and Skype. Stay tuned!

First Look: Nortel Ramps Up SCS500 Platform

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:09:21 -0400

Within the last few weeks, the dust is still settling from the announcement of the Nortel-Pingtel deal which generated much attention from end users and analysts alike. As announced in the acquisition deal, the technologies from Pingtel's SIPFoundry suite would evolve into Nortel's Software Communications System 500 (SCS500). Dell has apparently jumped on the Nortel bandwagon, as they have become a hardware platform provider for the SCS500. In the past, Fonality partnered with Dell to provide server hardware for its appliance-like systems. What's a notable difference between the two? Simple hardware comparisons. Dell's hardware implementation of the Nortel SCS500 runs on OptiPlex "desktop-grade" systems, whereas "other" systems utilize server class hardware.

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Securing the Line Part 5 - Media Encryption

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:12:31 -0400

As discussed earlier, VLANs, ACLs, and firewall policies are extremely important components to any converged network security architecture. However, what these methods do not secure is the content within each call or conversation. The industry is moving towards securing each media path used for voice, video, and data communication. Even internally, there are many threats that may potentially compromise the content within the packets transmitted over an IP network.

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Simple Power! Reviewing the Digium | Switchvox SMB AA300 IP-PBX

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:03:05 -0400

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few weeks with the newly-released Switchvox SMB AA300 appliance. In my opinion, if there’s an appliance or SMB IP-PBX to beat, this is the one. For SMBs, there are three incredibly important functions of such an appliance: 1) Ease of installation, Ease of management, Ease of use 2) Flexibility (Phones, Trunking Options, External Connectivity) 3) Advanced Feature Set It’s rare that any system can adequately match all three dimensions, and users typically compromise for a “2 of 3” scenario. Sure, large systems can adapt to an organization’s needs with lots of advanced programming, but most SMBs don’t have a huge telephony budget to allow for such scenarios.

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Why SIP Standardization is Critical

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:51:03 -0400

If you're even remotely interested in the convergence / VoIP / unified communications field and haven't read Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler's article on SIP interoperability, you should. I would like to expand a bit on why SIP is so incredibly important, and why the future of IP communications depends on it. In my honest opinion, we have a quiet, yet major problem developing in the industry. There are simply too many systems and environments that are utilizing proprietary or "modified" protocols for signaling. So, development in this area has been vendor-centric and closed, and not towards a common and unified technology.

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The Future of the Key System

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:35:19 -0400

Ah yes, the "key system". Doesn't that just conjure up images of old AT&T Merlin sets, where you could holler to your co-worker: "Your wife is on Line 3?" The sad part is that these PBX-wanna-bes are still being sold across the world to SMBs everywhere. But don't assume that a lack of scalability leads to a significantly lower price tag. Where I live, I still see a huge following of Avaya Partner, Nortel CICS, and Toshiba Strata systems and users. When one dies, well, they're replaced quickly by yet another key system. So why do SMBs continue to invest thousands of dollars in old technology? Simply, I believe it's because they don't know much better.

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Asterisk Call Manager

Alex Argov — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:20:47 -0400

Tikal Networks also released her CrystalManager. CrystalManager is a call manager and a personal monitoring tool for Asterisk PBX. www.tikalnetworks.com/voip/index.php?cid=40

Rebirth of the Branch Office Dialtone

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:29:05 -0400

When you're managing convergence-based networks across multiple locations, say 50 branch offices linked to two headquarters, you most likely have an ongoing migraine headache. There are always different ways to design such a network, but it's likely that management will want a centralized dialplan, easy office-to-office transfers, etc. People who design and deploy complex, multi-site environments are always looking to unify and simplify their environments while keeping an advanced feature-set available to the users. Sure, you could contract a large vendor to architect a solution, but when you're working on a limited budget, it's hard to justify all of the 'fluff' that's built into such quotes (licensing, design services, huge maintenance contracts, etc).

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Making Switch Management Easier

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:25:47 -0400

It's interesting how every organization manages their voice infrastructure a bit differently. Almost becoming a part of the "telecom culture" in a large organization, it's not surprising that we each have our own way of handling the organizational responsibilities of maintaining large voice switches.

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Reflections on Patching

Matthew Nickasch — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:24:45 -0400

Some people bawk at the mere discussion of the need to patch, especially those systems that run mission-critical applications. The Asterisk community recently released versions 1.2.27, 1.4.18.1, 1.4.19-rc3, and 1.6.0-beta6. This, in response to the newly discovered security vulnerabilities found, is what I would consider a 'timely' and important release. I've heard rumblings and "beneath the breath" comments about the latest discovery of security vulnerabilities in the Asterisk platform, but for me, it literally shows that the entire community that supports and develops Asterisk is wide-awake and ready to respond immediately to any security-related problems. Now, if we could get the more mainstream vendors to be as quick to respond, then we'd have something.

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Saturating the Market?

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:32:10 -0500

It appears that Microsoft's attempt to redefine the VoIP landscape is being followed closely by vendor-conglomerate Siemens. View Network World's news article by Tim Greene here: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030308-siemens-unified-communications-server.html?page=1 So, what does this mean to the future of IP-based PBXs? The question is becoming more and more clear: are these really PBXs anymore? The terms "converged platform" and "media server" are being thrown around more and more these days, and for good reason.

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Appliances Run Amok!

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:09:52 -0500

The market for Asterisk-based IP-PBX appliances has grown significantly in the last three years. We're seeing appliance-type systems from all sorts of large and small vendors alike. From Digium's Asterisk Appliance, to the Trixbox Appliance, Fonality's PBXtra, the Switchvox appliance... the list goes on and on. Each device has a custom-developed GUI that usually all ties back to the same Asterisk code on the backend. What these appliances do provide however, is usually a support contract or point-of-contact in case things go horribly wrong.

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Growing Up With Convergence

Matthew Nickasch — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:58:45 -0500

Convergence... isn't it beautiful? We've come a long way from the world of TDM telephony, and even farther from the days of pure analog. Now, we're connecting networks of networks of voice, video, and data together. First off, I'm happy to be blogging as part of the NetworkWorld community, especially on the topics of Convergence and Voice Over IP. Since this is my first post, I'll be happy to provide a little bit of information about myself and what I hope to accomplish in the blog.

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RE: Digium adds new warranties to Asterisk IP PBX gear

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:39:26 -0500

Funny, their finally meeting the standard Sangoma has had in place for years! Sangoma leads, Digium follows.

Asterisk plans higher-spec IP PBX, snaps at Cisco's heels

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:20:53 -0500

The open source Asterisk PBX platform has been around for nine years and is snapping at Cisco's heels in the VoIP space. Having enjoyed success as an attractive alternative to pricey IP PBX systems, there is now a spate of commercial vendors that charge for Asterisk professional services, peripherals and software extensions. (Dell reseller Fonality is one of them. See these recent Cisco Subnet blog posts about this vendor: Cisco vs.

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Cisco: Look Out Below (for Dell and Open Source)

Joe Panettieri — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:45:39 -0500

What is the single biggest threat to Cisco's networking empire? Before you answer, take a look at a business deal Dell just inked with a small voice-over-IP (VoIP) company. It could provide important clues about the future of unified communications in the small and midsize business market. First, let's rewind to May 2007. At the time, I stated that there were five key threats to Cisco's networking empire. In short, the threats included: 1. No real CEO succession plan. 2. Recruiting and retaining talent. 3. Microsoft and Google. 4. Open source hardware. 5. Asterisk.

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RE: VoIP of the people

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:15:00 -0400

Hello Can i have the documentation of Asterisk to Red-hat? Thnx Regards;

3Com Enables Linux in Switches

Greg Royal — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:46:46 -0400

From the "It's about time" book, 3Com Corp. today unveiled a new open-source approach to its networking products centered on a Linux-based module that fits into its Router 6000 family and will support multivendor applications for security, voice over IP and other functions. Linux is an ideal embedded OS that has a huge set of applications that can be leveraged off their platform. It even had me thinking how we could use this embedded Linux to distribute applications throughout the network to provide capability closer to where it is needed. What about an Asterisk or SIP blade ???

Loan Business Finds Asterisk

Greg Royal — Wed, 02 May 2007 08:26:20 -0400

As I have discussed on these pages before, there is an interesting dare I say trend, coincidence, evidence to support, the movement towards Application Driven Telephony, a term that us at Cistera coined to describe the phenomena where a customer purchases the communication system based on the application services rather than the IP PBX functionality itself. Proof in point is:

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