Comments on: The Digium Conundrum: Will Asterisk Be Just Another Asterisk on the VoIP Radar

By: Arnaldo M Pereira

Arnaldo M Pereira — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:54:56 +0000

Thanks for this great article, which is accurate. My efforts on new products or deployments are all with FreeSWITCH and I must say it’s ready for serious usage.

Of course there’s a lack of a GUI and documentation, which I’m sure will soon be solved. As it is now, it’s better than any other solution I’ve seen.

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:42:23 +0000

Based on some of the comments I’ve read here it should be pointed out that FreeSwitch is NOT an Asterisk clone. Just as TDM types like to think inside the box about SIP, please don’t use Asterisk to measure FreeSwitch or OpenSER – they are fundamentally different. FreeSwitch et al does SIP and only SIP – RTP is on it’s own. All other applications bolt on (typically with "XML"). This puts FreeSwitch MILES ahead of the pack when doing collaboration and presence (FMC and all the rest).

VoIP is about to take off (for real this time).

By: ward

ward — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:12:24 +0000

Another nail in the coffin…

On Wednesday 13 August 2008 08:27:00 Kevin P. Fleming responded to Ralfe Poisson:

>> Ralfe Poisson wrote:
> > I’m busy developing an AGI application which was working well under 1.4.
> > I’ve just upgraded to Asterisk 1.6 and am having two issues which I can’t seem to sort out.
>
>
> Kevin Fleming’s response:
> Your problems are caused by using vertical bar (pipe) characters as
> argument separators; Asterisk 1.6 supports *only* commas as argument
> separators to applications, unlike 1.2 and 1.4 which supported both.
>
> This is documented in the UPGRADE.txt file, and that file even tells you
> about a configuration option to provide backward compatibility if you
> need it. Please read the upgrade documentation when upgrading to new
> major releases of Asterisk 🙂

By: Carlos Talbot

Carlos Talbot — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:16:35 +0000

Last week at Cluecon ’08 there was a presentation on another Gui for FreeSWITCH. It should be out soon. http://www.d-man.org/news/2008/07/26/66/

By: ronald laing

ronald laing — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:23:45 +0000

Good article, I had been hoping for some time that you might do a similar piece on Callweaver, a open source project that addresses many of the shortcomings of asterisk. The big advantage for all those using asterisk is that Callweaver is similar enough that the front end FreePbx would work with it with limited modification. However not having the technical depth in linux or programming have never tried to get it going.

By: Undrhil

Undrhil — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:35:14 +0000

So, does this mean that PBXiaF 1.4 (or 2.0) will be based on FreeSwitch? Can you post a link to any of the GUI projects in development for FreeSwitch? Also, how well does the Windows implementation of FreeSwitch work? I have been in love with Asterisk since the day I picked up the first edition O'Reilly book about it. I really wish the developers would wake up and smell the coffee. They need to take a look at another up-and-coming open source project which have multiple versions out: Linux. When a new major kernel version is released, does the Linux community change programming structure on the whim? No. They know it would break things and that would discourage people from using it. Do the good folks at Digium think that the Asterisk community is any different? [WM: No news yet on PBXiaF 1.4. As for a GUI, I've updated the article and added a link, but here it is again.]

By: ward

ward — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:02:25 +0000

For a terrific FreeSwitch tutorial with sample code that will get you up and running with trunks, extensions, voicemail, and an IVR in less than 5 minutes, go here.

By: Michael Collins

Michael Collins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:48:18 +0000

Ward,
A fine article you’ve written! FreeSWITCH is definitely on the rise. The shortcomings are, as usual, the things that programmers and developers like doing the least: GUIs and documentation. We are working diligently on both fronts. Hopefully things will continue to improve steadily as they have been doing for the past few years. We have quite a number of "Asterisk refugees" coming over and we are trying our best to get them up to speed. BTW, if you are familiar with both Asterisk and FreeSWITCH then we invite you to add your knowledge to the "Rosetta Stone" document:
http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Rosetta_stone

Thanks again for a great article. We look forward to seeing "Uncle Ward" cook up some more goodies based on FreeSWITCH!

-MC

By: James

James — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:00:25 +0000

I like the concept of freeswitch. Much like Asterisk it will need a GUI to gain mainstream apeal I and technical people such as myself could probably do well with a book called freeswitch the new face of telephony’s future ( I want a penny a book if you use that)… anyhow the only thing missing is good Hardware support. It works now but think the setup is over complicated or under documented. Over all solid hardware support + Gui for the mainstream it will deffinately compete.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:31:44 +0000

WARD – I LOVE YOU!!!!! Faxing is back!!!!!! I cannot wait!!!! Thanks!

By: paul

paul — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:54:27 +0000

Speaking of Open Source fax, I found all of the files for setting up SpanDSP and installing app_rxfax and app_txfax – except for the asterisk patch file. Every download link I came across was a dead end. Let me know if anyone finds it.

I really liked your contrasting of hardware backward compatibility to software backward compatibility. Great point.

By: Rafael Cortes

Rafael Cortes — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:53:16 +0000

Finally! I will be testing this, I am still using 1.4 and 1.2, I have clients I haven’t been able to upgrade to 1.4 because of some custom integratiosn that no longer work, and would cost too much to update. And I see the same thing is going to happen to my new clients once 1.4 becomes obsolete… It’s going to be another PITA.

I really hope FreeSwitch gets to the point Asterisk is right now, and we’ll see if Asterisk development will listen then!

Thanks for the info Uncle Ward!

By: JD Austin

JD Austin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:39:32 +0000

I look forward to Free Switch; I cringe every time I have to upgrade asterisk! I had to completely re-implement a system last year because of the 1.2->1.4 changes. I’m not sure I’ll ever go to 1.6 if I have an option not to. Thank you for giving us something stable to work from… it saves me a good chunk of time over building the system from scratch.