Re: Fwd: open-source IP-PBX

[Ben Teitelbaum <>]

Even if IP telephony evolves into a service with all the legacy
requirements you mention (and, btw, there is no reason why it must
evolve this way), there is no reason why core server and middleware
software can't be open source.  Note that there are innumerable
commercial web services built on Apache, Perl, PHP, FreeBSD, etc.
Since SIP service creation is quite similar to writing Web CGIs and
large numbers of institutions more or less need exactly the same
functionality, I could imagine open source succeeding quite nicely in
this space.

Also, you are dead wrong on serviceability.  One of the key advantages
of open source software is that it *is* serviceable by anyone
motivated to enough to fix the bugs.  Various empirical studies
confirm this (for example, see
ftp://grilled.cs.wisc.edu/technical_papers/fuzz-revisited.ps.Z).

However, I agree with you 100% about the importance of numbering,
naming, and peering.  It might be useful for this group to coordinate
with the Internet2 middleware groups that are looking at
inter-institutional directories and video middleware.

-- ben

Alistair Munro 
<>
 writes:

> 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) 
> +44-7974-922-442;
> Fax: +44-117-900-8151
> Web: http://www.degree2.com, http://www.u4eagroup.com
> 
> 
> 

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