Re: Fwd: open-source IP-PBX

[Alistair Munro <>]

Hi All,

> I too have been craving an "Apache" of IP telephony! ... It would be great to 
> see this community extend
> this work (or something else) into a more full-featured open source
> IP-PBX.
Telephony is a service - it is mission critical, must work every time 
all the time, comply with a whole bunch of standards and regulations, 
and be complete (supplementary services, redundancy, interworking with 
legacy telephony networks, etc., etc.). That's probably why there is no 
open source IP PBX. Such an object is quite different from typical open 
source offerings, and I think what *is* available as open source (or for 
free) illustrates my point - incomplete and unserviceable by comparison 
with commercial offerings, e.g. the Radvision H-series and Cisco SIP 
products. Yes, you pay, but they work.

The problems faced by this group (IMO) are to establish the operational 
metrics that will determine the grade of service that we should target. 
This means the structure of the I2 VoIP services, naming and numbering 
schemes and mappings between them, security ([ , security ]*), peering 
agreements, voice quality, capacity planning and bandwidth allocation. 
As VoIP suppliers will tell us, this is mainly known art for a corporate 
IP telphony installation. What happens in a less structured and open 
*service* environment is less well known. Open source won't help us make 
progress towards understanding these issues.

I wouldn't discourage anyone from development, especially as SIP is 
still evolving into a full SS7 and many useful features are yet to be 
widely available, but let's keep our eye on the ball.

Regards,

Alistair

--
Dr. Alistair Munro,
Chief Systems Engineer, Degree2 Innovations Ltd.
Regus House, 1 Friary, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS1 6EA, U.K.
E-mail: 

Tel: (work) +44-117-900-8114, (home) +44-1275-462707, (mobile) 
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