Case Study: Resort Hotel & Cabins Company Hybrid VoIP / Traditional Telephony Upgrade & Expansion

Introduction

A French Mediterranean beach resort hotel and cabins company¹ (hereafter, “The Customer”) was expanding and modernizing their total unit and existing units at their location over the Winter of 2007. A shift in their clientele showed increased business-related traffic, such as retreats, weekend meetings and tiger-team think-tank sessions. As a result, they were planning on a significant Internet connection to support these customers, as well as an expansion of phone system services. They concluded that Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology was a logical possibility to reduce cable-plant management issues as well as long-term total cost of ownership (TOC).

The original configuration and buildings were:

• Two primary buildings of 40 and 30 units respectively. These were already wired for analog telephone service, which the customer did not wish to “rip and replace”.
• Eleven cabin-styled buildings of three units each. The cabins were also wired for analog, however, environment issues were forcing a complete rebuild of the units.

The planned additions as part of the project were:

• Nine more cabin-style buildings
• A third primary building of 30 units
• Approximately 16 more administration phones scattered across the facilities.
• Replace the trio of aging FAX machines with a less paper-intensive service.

The new construction would be wired with CAT6 cable to support future gigabit application. The total unit count would then be 160 units, with one phone per unit.

Customer requirements for the PBX and services included:

• 100% control of the system needed to be from the front desk as well as the duty manager’s office.
• Due to its geographic location, there needed to be as much remote service capability as possible to avoid customer problems associated with non-functional phones.

This was presented to the team as a “Request For Proposal” from the client, who was not fully certain this list of needs was achievable without an unjustifiably large capital expenditure. We proceeded to assess the technologies available and provide the customer with a full proposal and costing. We were selected from a group of three final contenders to deliver the solution.

The old, un-scaleable existing PBX was removed and sold to a technology refurbisher. It was replaced with a trio of Intel-based PC servers running 2 Xeon 1Ghz processors each, with 4Gb of RAM and RAID mirrored 80Gb SAS disks, and three network cards per system. A 5KVa “smart” UPS was installed to protect the PBX systems and related gear.

Each server was installed with Linux CentOSⁱ and a current version of Digium’s Asterisk Free Open Source Software (FOSS) PBXⁱⁱ. The first two servers were configured with Linux high-availability “heartbeat” servicesⁱⁱⁱ to allow sub-six-second fail-over times. One machine was the “live” PBX, and the other was the “hot standby”. The third machine was loaded with a FOSS virtual FAX modem stack called IAXModem^iv and a FOSS FAX server software package called HylaFAX^v.

The Customer converted all incoming copper pairs from France Telecom to a pair of 32-channel voice E1s from Orange Business Systems^vi. A third data-only E1 was also brought in and terminated on a fourth server identical to the PBXs, only sporting four network cards and running a Linux IPTables^vii firewall.

The voice E1s were terminated on a Redfone^viii foneBRIDGE ™ Time Division Multiplexing Over Ethernet (TDMoE) device. This device was dynamically reprogrammed to direct the TDMoE stream to which every PBX was the “Live”. Since it is a solid-state unit with no moving parts and its software load is externally managed by the “Live” PBX, it is extraordinarily reliable.

The Customer sourced an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) with pan-European termination and origination, called WideVOIP^ix. This allowed them to add new phone numbers in four other countries as part of the project without substantial cost. These numbers terminated directly via SIP VoIP onto the Asterisk PBX stack. In addition, any long distance calls placed were sent via this connection whenever possible to avoid international long-distance calling charges.

One network interface card (NIC) was on the data LAN, the second was on the VoIP LAN, and the third was on the TDMoE LAN. This ensured the best possible bandwidth and NIC processor availability for the VoIP environment.

This “Hybrid” configuration of digital E1 and VOIP allowed the greatest flexibility, cost control and reliability.

Each screen had a “call for help” link which triggered an alarm on our system. We could then either call, instant message (IM) or email to contact the user who triggered the alarm, depending on their indicated urgency of issue.

The project, as delivered in 2007, was valued at roughly $100,000 CAD. At the time, The Customer indicated to us this was ½ the next highest quote and neither other competitor could deliver the feature-set we were promising. They realized a Return on Investment (ROI) of 49 months, simply by the dramatic reduction in long-distance fees they were paying to France Telecom; their bill was nearly cut in half. In addition, as noted above in “3.” on page 2, they were able to substantially increase their marketing reach by offering local contact numbers in four other countries with no increase in cost. This would have been unthinkable with a traditional solution.

By using VoIP to TDM converters in the project, The Customer was able to retain all the benefits of both types of telephony. This “Hybrid” system gave all the robustness and call quality normally associated with local TDM calling, but allowed the creation of a custom application for managing the Front Desk work-flow that integrated the telephony management and billing into the process with ease. In addition, more services and features were added, increasing the over-all business value of the phone system, yet keeping capital expenditures well within budget.

The project was considered a substantial success by The Customer. They stated repeatedly that they were both pleased and excited by both the achievement of the desired results, as well as the possibility for future features and services to their clients.

Have you heard of Asterisk? Mark Spencer? (Wish him happy birthday on April 8.)  Digium? They and the world of developers and entrepreneurs leveraging Asterisk are responsible for millions of small businesses and other organizations, students, families, friends and other types of consumers to be able to make and receive calls over the Internet. Asterisk is an open source telephony switching and private branch exchange service. In other words, it is a protocol that lets people and organizations to talk to each other over the Internet inexpensively and with feature-rich flexibility. It is the reason that many loved ones talk more on the “phone” today. More business is developed among companies. More parents stay in touch with their children (students, ex-pats, and more). Check out AsterConference, a conference where you can learn about this technology.

AsterConference is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia May 18-19, 2010 where the brightest  minds in the global Asterisk community    will  converge. The speaker line-up is sharp:   Dr. Daniel Ali Aman Kranhenbuhl of Intuit Innovations; Reza Mosaddeque of Toronto,   Canada; Mark Spencer, Greg Vance, and David Duffet of Digium; Anton Raharja, author   of VoIP Cookbook: Building Your Own Telecommunication Infrastructure,   and Doug Vilim of Sangoma Technologies. Sponsors and media partners are a world-  renowned collection: Digium, JCMEX VoIP Distribution, Sangoma,  Polycom, intuit,   OpenVox, Xorcom, Chinese Elastix Community, DIDXchange, and briker. Sign up your   company as sponsor, too, at AsterConference website.

Sign up at http://www.asterconference.com to sponsor or participate in any way. Be a part of the pre, during and post networking areas on Facebook and Linkedin, too.

The VAR Guy queries Digium CEO Danny Windham, “What is the Asterisk Exchange?”

Mr. Windham replies, “Asterisk Exchange is a website that Digium is launching on Thursday the 21st in conjunction with ITEXPO. It is a marketplace that is designed to be a one stop shop for products that are Asterisk-based, add-ons for Asterisk, and products that are interopable or compatible with Asterisk. It’s a website that Digium has built and will maintain in the future as part of our commitment to expand and grow the Asterisk ecosystem.”

Watch the video interview and read more transcription below.

The VAR Guy asks who will participate? Software companies? Hardware companies? All of the above?

Mr. Windham states, “Any partner of our ecosystem that is interested in providing a product to the Asterisk community or marketing a product to the Asterisk community will be served by the Asterisk Exchange. However, today what we are launching is phase one. It is dedicated to products. Those are products based on Asterisk, products that are interoporable with Asterisk, or products that are add-ons to Asterisk.”

“What about channel partners like VARs and solutions providers, service providers… do you see them going to the Asterisk Exchange to piece together solutions? ” continues the VAR Guy.

“Yes, future implementations of Asterisk Exchange will be expanded to include services. But even today a large portion of our channel are in business to provide a product or a service based on Asterisk. The existence of the Exchange, gives them a one stop to get access to all the add-ons, and it gives them a way to keep track of what the new innovations are that help Asterisk to be more usable. Whatever problem they are trying to solve.”

The VAR guy asks, “Let’s assume this is my first time to hear about the Asterisk Exchange. How do I get involved with it? What are the first steps to take?”

Mr. Windham replies, “The site will launch next Thursday. Go to http://www.asteriskexchange.com. Everything you need to know about how to get listed on the site is available on the site. If you have a product you would like to make available to the community for free, those can be place on the site for free. If you are selling a product that is based on Asterisk, then there is a fee for listing your product on the site. That fee is a standard $5000 listing for a year with a 50% off through first half of this year (2010) to get the site up and going.”

The VAR guy asks how the site is organized. The Digium CEO answers that visitors can browse by product category, by vendor name… something that has been historically an issue in open source is understanding what level of quality you are getting with add-ons. Customers of Asterisk Exchange will be able to rank and review the products listed. As a user, now you have feedback from other users about the quality and usability of the product. Will it do what you thought it would do?

From SIP Security Video Interview of Ingate by TMC

  Steven Johnson, a President of Ingate Systems, served prior to this as CEO of Abrena, Inc., a business development consulting firm focused on assisting European and N. A. firms expand in the USA. Ingate’s heart and soul is housed in its Technology Center, located in Linköping, Sweden. We interviewed Steven on Ingate history, the SIP Trunk Summit at ITEXPO and their partner program.

Suzanne Bowen: Welcome to DIDX podcast media channel where we bring you the expertise of IP communications leaders from around the world. I’m your host Suzanne Bowen. Today we have with us Steven Johnon of Ingate Systems. Hello Steven.

Steven Johnson: Nice to speak with you. It’s been a while.

Suzanne Bowen: We have a set of questions that people have submitted of which I will ask you three. Quite often a website, blogging, etc. do not really tell the history of a company. Would you share with us the history of Ingate Systems?

Steven Johnson: Ingate was formed in 2001. We’ve been around for about nine years, formed specifically to bring SIP to the enterprise, to solve some particular issues related to SIP that occur at the edge of any company network that is trying to bring SIP into that network. Specifically we solve the NAT and firewall traversal issue that gets in the way of bringing SIP into an enterprise.

So we resolve the NAT traversal issue as well as many others, such as interoperability between IP-PBXs and SIP Trunking service providers that enable people to bring SIP to the enterprise. Our company was actually formed about ten years ago  by two companies, one of which was  focused on security for data networks and the other which continues in business and is headed by Ingate’s chairman. It was called Intertex Data and had actually been operating since the early 80s. Karl Stahl, our chairman, focused on SIP starting in 1998, very early in the evolution of SIP, but he recognized the need for the kinds of products that Ingate now sells.

We began to bring our developments into the market in 2001 and have delivering product ever since. We’re a recognized leader, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Suzanne Bowen: Exactly, and you are definitely seen as SIP experts. Just to kind of go back, I remember meeting you for the first time during ITEXPO East 2009 in Miami Beach, Florida. It was funny that each morning around 5 AM, you and I were the only ones up and working in the lobby already. I was impressed by you on that.

Steven Johnson: It’s because my boss is in Sweden, so he’s about six hours ahead of us here in the East Coast. At 5:30 in the morning, it’s almost lunch time there.

Suzanne Bowen: That makes sense. Now we understand.

Steven Johnson: We all don’t know why you were up that early yet?

Suzanne Bowen: I actually get up at about 4 o’clock every morning to run. Then, I’m wide awake. I like to get some work done when I’m not going to be interrupted by instant messages and phone calls. I have to do a lot of thinking, researching and writing.

Steven Johnson: Good idea as well.

Suzanne Bowen: People are excited about ITEXPO East scheduled for Jan. 20-22, 2010 in Miami Beach, Florida, next week.

Ingate is sponsoring one of the most popular items on the agenda. It’s the SIP Trunking workshop. It’s complimentary and full of demos, lectures, discussions, interactions, and more from Avaya, Digium, Ingate itself, ShoreTel, VOIPSA, Bandwidth.com, Dialogic,  Cbeyond, Mitel NetSolutions, The SIP School, Intertex Data, DataAB, and the SIP Forum. There is even a SIP Trunking Bootcamp. A bit wordy there from me, but tell us more. What will be different? What else can everyone look forward to?

Steven Johnson: This is our seventh time doing this. We do it at each ITEXPO. Each time, it is different. We want the information fresh. We’ve added new participants like those you mention who bring a different perspectives to the event. Each is a co-sponsor. We have encouraged our partners to bring in various companies who have implemented SIP in some way. These are case studies.

Now that SIP trunking is becoming a reality for many enterprises. We think it is a good idea to bring people together who have actually done it to share their roadmap. They will share with those who have yet to implement SIP, the benefits they enjoy, best practices and even some things they wish they had done as great advice to the new people.

I think the big thing is that we are offering case studies. We will show three cases where we will show how a particular PBX can be connected through an Ingate device and onto a service provider and how that can be easily accomplished. 

Avaya, ShoreTel, and Digium Asterisk will each demonstrate getting their systems connected from the front end of our conference room and make calls back to somebody in the audience. This will demonstrate how easily this is done and the good quality available. We will be doing this with those three vendors as well as Bandwidth.com providing the SIP trunk.

We bring in new participants such as http://www.thesipschool.com this time. The SIP Forum will also participate. They will present their perspective of where SIP trunking is today. As a member of the board of directors of SIP Forum, we are doing a lot of work to make SIP trunking an easy thing to do.

You also mentioned the SIP trunking bootcamp. That is an all day event on Friday where we will show how to set up an Ingate unit. We will provide a free training to show how to use the unit as an interface to a SIP trunking provider.

All this is complimentary. Attend one day or all three days. 

Suzanne Bowen: This is excellent. You ought to have a packed audience. I know that conference participants crave real case studies and demos, not long, boring lectures and Point Point presentations. The variety on your panel is very good.

Will the SIP Trunking Bootcamp participants get a certificate when they finish? 

Steven Johnson: They get a certificate. If they go through all of the sessions on day one, they get a SIP Trunking Expert certificate from that. If they particate in the SIP Trunking Workshop Bootcamp on day three, they get a certificate.

Suzanne Bowen: The last question is how can companies and service providers become partners with Ingate? I see you offer choices such as strategic partners, resellers, distributors, confirmed SIP trunking interoperability partners.

Steven Johnson: Let’s take the confirmed SIP trunking interoperability partners first. These are service providers who have worked with us to insure that our SIP products such as SIParator and the Ingate firewall work well with their service. They can become listed on our website as a choice of service in our drop down box in our installation tool. We document how to interface between our product and their service.

The Strategic Partners are generally PBX vendors who have gone through a similar process to insure interoperability. We exchange logos, etc. so we can advertise to the world that we know we are compatible. When we have a PBX on one side and a service provider on the other that we can interoperate with either… then we can make the two of them operate successfully without having to involve either one with the other. We become the interoperability engine in the middle.

Resellers and distributors… we are interested in those involved in SIP and VOIP implementations. Generally, it is more advantageous to everyone if they are also representing another SIP product like a PBX or phones, or they are representing a service provider. We are very interested in talking with all of those kinds of people to resell Ingate product and provide complete solutions to their customers and the end-user.

Suzanne Bowen: People who qualify, should be able to trade business cards and possibly sign up sometime at the end of any session or at the Ingate booth.

Steven Johnson: We will be in room A 108-109 in the Miami Beach convention center. That is where all of our seminars will take place. I’ll be there all three days and look forward to hearing from anyone in attendance. We’re ready with the distributor agreements and sign ups for interopability partners. By all means, come by!

Suzanne Bowen: The listeners will be able to meet with Steven Johnson. Ingate’s website is http://www.ingate.com. We’ll both see you there. I’m Suzanne Bowen. I do appreciate this time with you, Steve.

Steven Johnson: Thank you very much. My email is steve@ingate.com. Call me at 1-603-883-6569. I look forward to seeing you at the show.

Suzanne Bowen: Sounds good. Thank you!

The Techistan staff asked for contributions through social media such as Twitter, fring, Skype, Linkedin, and Facebook for what to talk with Mark about. Fred Posner of TeamForrest in USA, Steven Cayona of DIDX in Florida, Max Glucksmann of Comtel-Networksin Florida, Brough Turner (respected blogger and previously CTO of NMS Communications) in Boston, Alessandro Morelli ofMorel.li in Italy, Allison Smith of IVRvoice.com in Alberta, Canada, Syed Osman of Hatc Corporation in Malaysia and Sean Fairchild of KokuaTraffic.com in Hawaii contributed the topics and questions to interview Mark Spencer. Mark is one of the most well-known open source developers in the world, the CTO ofDigium, an avid flyer, and a great dancer, too.

Question 1: Would you share one or two of the most innovative uses of Asterisk? (Suggested by Suzanne Bowen)

Question 2. A lot of the code asterisk uses was written a long time ago… and with the moving of PBX telephony to SIP, and the incredible movement there, such as new codecs … what is Asterisk doing to keep up with these new technologies? (Suggested by Fred Posner)

Question 3. When mobile extension? Right now, only landline device like voip phone or PC. (Suggested by Alessandro Morelli)

Question 4. Suggested by Allison Smith… voice of Asterisk asks: Did he have any inkling whatsoever that Asterisk be as huge and empowering as it is today? Word is that you developed it as a way of not paying a high price for a VoIP system.

Question 5. Sean Fairchild suggested: Can he share about his airplane?

Questioin 6. Brough Turner’s first question: Let’s talk about market share. I believe all open source PBXs (of which Mark’s is the largest) now account for 20% of all PBX lines in North America. I assume open source PBXs cost less per line than Nortel, Avaya, etc. So, you’re hollowing out a once large business that others took for granted before Asterisk came along. Share some facts and figures please.

Question 7. Brough Turner’s second question for Mark: When will Asterisk support wideband audio between HD voice handsets like those from Polycom and Skype. Many want to understand your wideband audio plans. (Truth, Brough never said, “I’m not your ‘bro.’ He’s much nicer than that. My apologies for that statement. I do not know where it came from. His name is pronounced like “broth.”

Question 8. Syed Osman of Hatc Corporation in Malaysia asks: How can you make Asterisk to be a media station which can produce radio and video to phone as you dial extensions?

Question 9. Steve Cayona, network analyst of Super Technologies and DIDX asks: What was he thinking when he wroteCheops, that fine hacking, oops I mean network discovery tool?

Question 10. What are other ideas, plans, advice and more would you like to share with the listeners, Mark?

A full transcript completed by M.S. Bowen - http://www.if-i-were-your-coach.blogspot.com:

Part One:
Today we have Mark Spencer. He is known all over the world as the inventor of Asterisk, one of the most famous open source developers. He is always modest, friendly, fun and a good dancer.

Suzanne Bowen: Hello Mark.

Mark Spencer: You’ve kind of set the bar pretty high for me. I hope I can live up to all that.

Suzanne Bowen: We sent the word out through LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, and Twitter to Asterisk enthusiasts and developers to ask you questions, promising to give credit to them. Max and I wanted first crack, though.

Max Glucksmann (Comptel Networks, DIDX integrator, VOIP solution developer): Would you share one or two of the most innovative uses of Asterisk?

Mark Spencer: I am always impressed with projects done by NYU in their interactive telecommunications lab. They have so many different projects that are creative applications, like Big Games – you can play in the movie theater using mobile phones as controllers. Another is IPlateU – you can leave a meassage based on the license plate. Those are really creative. The most interesting thing to me about the NYU program is these were not originated from the engineering department but the art department. These are artists using asterisk as a medium to express themselves. I think that says a lot about how easy it is to develop applications for Asterisk even before you take into account all of the cool projects that even make it better.

Suzanne Bowen: I remember IPlateU winning one of the innovative awards that year. I wondered whether people had to log in to a site to enter their number and be part of the network.

Mark Spencer: You either call to check or leave a message based on the license plate number. It used Lumenvox to do spech recognition since you didn’t want people typing on their phones.

Fred Posner (teamforrest.com): A lot of the code Asterisk uses was written a long time ago… and with the moving of PBX telephony to SIP, and the incredible movement there, such as new codecs … what is Asterisk doing to keep up with these new technologies?

Mark Spencer: A lot of the code is still very reusable because a surprising amount of the telecommunications has stayed common and there is still a need to interact with a lot of the old PSTN system. A lot of the effort we are putting forth with Asterisk today is with the wideband codex, trying to do more with video, IPB6 and other things. The biggest thing is to have a project that allows people to incrementally contribute things in a way that is flexible. To a great degree that what we have been successful in doing with Asterisk.

When we make changes we try hard to not do small hacks to the code or make things that will be difficult to maintain forward. We have a team of people who take contributions and try to make things compatible with a long term architecture for the project. We definitely are working on things like new codex, new SIP features and occasionally new protocols, the same kind of general architecture that we have with improvements as necessary.

Alessandro Morelli (“MVNO passionista”): When will there be a mobile extension? Right now, only landline device like VOIP phone or PC.

Mark Spencer: Asterisk doesn’t differentiate that much between cell and landline phone. One of the things we have been waiting for is the smart phone, and particular like Android, an open source operating system for the phone. That really is opening up doors for people who want to make apps with a data connection in the back that connects Asterisk to the handset and an audio connection can exist on whatever protocol exists. So you can think about extending the PBX feature onto a hand held or a smart phone on your desk using Android in particular. I think you going to see activity from digium potentially in terms of working with existing handsets, enabling and controlling PBX and in the long term integrate more tightly with the PBX.

Allison Smith (“Voice of Asterisk”): Did he have any inkling whatsoever that Asterisk be as huge and empowering as it is today? Word is that you developed it as a way of not paying a high price for a VoIP system.

Mark Spencer: I wish I could say I had a vision for it. I really did create Asterisk as a way to make a system less expensively than going out and buying one. Even when I named it I hoped it would be the everything of telecommunications. I didn’t recognize the impact of what it was going to be on the whole. Similarly, the fact Asterisk was open source was because I’m an open source guy. It wasn’t until later it was important that Asterisk be open source. I made the right decisions, but I made them not necessarily knowing they were right at the time. It just worked out that way.

Part Two:

Suzanne Bowen: I know personally, at DIDx I listen to people every day talk about a new VOIP company they are starting, or getting into IP communications. Almost 50 percent of them are using Asterisk. You would not believe the remote areas of the world they come from, how they got started, the tools they are using and the real empowerment that comes through Asterisk. It is amazing to think you are looking to lower the price and using open source. Look what happens, helping people all over the world to make money and take care of their families.

Sean Fairchild, in Hawaii, works with a CLEC there. He’s a big fan of flying. I always when I was young used to dream of flying, like a bird. Not in an airplane, but like a bird. Can you share a little bit about your flying and your airplanes?

Mark Spencer: It something that started when I hired Dean Windham to come be CEO of Digium. He was a pilot. I always kind of had an interest in airplanes but Danny and Steve Harvey, our VPSLs, are both pilots. I had gone on a couple of trips with them in small aircraft. It’s one of those things when you experience that usually most people either you love it or hate it. The vast majority of people I have gone with have absolutely loved it after a couple of trips; you don’t have to stand in line, you don’t have to go through security. You leave when you want to leave; you come back when you want to come back. It was just like, ‘wow, this is something I have to learn to do.’ It started to some degree more out of an interest in going from point A to point B. I have since developed an addiction to aviation to where I spend as much time as I can; probably about twice a week, searching for excuses to go fly.

Suzanne Bowen: So you really had a practical reason in the beginning, now it’s something you enjoy. You probably cannot imagine a life without flying.

Mark Spencer: In the U.S. it is a lot easier for people to learn to fly than it is in a lot of other countries, just because it is so accessible, especially with some of the new licenses, the light sport licenses. People can fly themselves a lot less expensively, than they think that it may cost, especially for recreation.

Brough Turner: Let’s talk about market share. I believe all open source PBXs (of which Mark’s is the largest) now account for 20% of all PBX lines in North America. I assume open source PBXs cost less per line than Nortel, Avaya, etc. So, you’re hollowing out a once large business that others took for granted before Asterisk came along. Share some facts and figures please.

Mark Spencer: I remember Brough at the Pulver parties, He was always out front and he made it through a lot longer than I did, especially dancing; kudos to him on that fromt. Maybe we’ll start a club of dancing CTOS.

Nortel, it turns out, was number one in terms of VOIP ports deployed in terms of individual companies. Asterisk was actually number two behind Nortel and only by a little bit. In fact, if you combine Asterisk and the other open source projects; keep in mind asterisk is 90 percent of the open suurce market, even if you add the remaining ten percent it was bigger than Nortel in terms of VOIP ports deployed according to the Eastern Management Group study. So, Asterisk is making an enormous dent, that puts it ahead of cisco avaya and others. That counts all of Asterisk, not just the people who buy it from Digium.

Part Three:
Brough Turner: When will Asterisk support wideband audio between HD voice handsets like those from Polycom and Skype? Many want to understand your wideband audio plans.

Mark Spencer: We do support Polycom’s codec, we will be supporting Skype codec shortly. There are some architectural changes in Asterisk that have to take place to make it seamless with conferencing and stuff like that. I cannot tell you a specific date; its not a trivial change, but something we are actively working on right now.

Suzanne Bowen: I’ve always been of the belief that when you roll something out you want it to be the best possible and not just throw something out there because peole are asking for it.

Mark Spencer: You have a balance between getting something out there for peole to work with. You have to be careful because it is so integral and an important feature, you want to do it in the right way so it is not a maintenance headache where you regret it in the near future.

Syed Osman (CEO, HATC.com): How can you make Asterisk to be a media station which can produce radio and video to phone as you dial extensions?

Mark Spencer: Asterisk already can play back audio files, and it can play back video files if they are recorded through the video voice mail capability. you can also connect streaming servers like icecasts through mpeg-1/2/3 to be able to stream into an audio conference bridge. We don’t have a good way to stream a live video because our conferencing doesn’t have video support. There are some existing patches some people have developed that functionality. It is something we are looking to integrate into Asterisk as well.

Max Glucksmann: That will be live video?

Mark Spencer: Live video as opposed to video voice mail.

Steve Cayona (Super Technologies/DIDX): What were you thinking when you wrote Cheops, that fine hacking, oops, I mean “network discovery” tool?

Mark Spencer: I intended Cheops as a way to discover resources on the network and make them more accessible; combining things like Queso and INMAP, which could identify operating systems, port scan, trace route and some DNS stuff. You could type a domain name or an IP address range and it would discover all of the computers there and show how they were connected. It was handy before firewalls. In 1997 people really didn’t think about firewalls then the way they do now; it was incredibly powerful in terms of what it could show you on the network and how to access things on the network.

A lot of people know i started Game the instant messaging program which is now called Pigeon. i worked on it for about two to three months before I handed it off. Cheops was the next project, and I thought it would be so much bigger than Game ever was. It seemed like such a core thing, but I never got anyone who was able to take Cheops over like they did Game. It is an excellent example in an open source project where not only do people use it but participate in the use of the program. I think Cheops could have been cool if it had been maintained, or I could have found someone to maintain it.

Max Glucksmann: Besides the network development tool, which can be helpful for security and network projects, is there any type of ability for alerts?

Mark Spencer: At the time I made it it had some basic SNMP support, it could also alert when it stopped responding to pings or when services went away. That was about all in there. Nobody’s maintained it in a very long time. It was a projected to become a next generation version but i don’t know where that sits right now. If there is someone using the project and would like to revive it i would love to help them out any way i can, even though it’s been missed the last ten years i would like to see it get another life.

Suzanne Bowen: Kind of like a baby that didn’t get to grow up.

Mark Spencer: Something like that; it’s been in stasis for a long time.

Part four:

Suzanne Bowen: Mark I know you always have new ideas. Your mind is spinning with in different directions of things you want do whether they are Digium related or your own interest. I was just wondering if you share some thoughts about your future or history.

Mark Spencer: Well, sure. Let me start with just one thing. In building Digium I was really fortunate that I had other entrepreneurs and mentors that helped me with the project. I mean with building my company and they provided advice. Now, I am fortunately in a position that I have been able to try help other entrepreneurs get started. I want to really encourage people that want to be entrepreneurs to make a run for it and to try it out. Try to build your business as long as you are building it for right reasons because it’s something you are passionate about. If you just trying to build it with the idea that you want to be your own boss, that’s probably not going to be a very good way of building a business. If you are building it with the idea that you have service that’s going to make a difference, absolutely go for it. building a business is not just about what you know but believe it or not, I think a lot of it is about what you don’t know. One of the reasons why Asterisk was so successful is because it was so different from other PBXs. I didn’t know anything about how to build a PBX. Don’t feel like you need to know everything about a subject before you start. Picture it and do it. I certainly did it that way.

Suzanne Bowen: I like how you put that, and I know that there are definitely kind of many entrepreneurs with ideas who are going be listening to this discussion. I want to add one thing to do if you don’t mind. It’s like how you said, “It’s also about what you don’t know It’s also about what your idea can do for people, and not only for those you are providing the service to, but how it helps those surrounding those you are providing the service to. People cannot imagine the positive Domino effect that this will have and it all starts with something like an innovative use of open source of telephony like Asterisk and a niche that you can serve to help solve a problem
or to make new opportunities available. Go ahead!

Mark Spencer: It’s been really rewarding when I see people that come for training for example at Digium. I can’t really emphasize this enough through lot of people that still I don’t know whether they think this way or logically in their mind. They think that’s some how you know I single-handedly made Asterisk and honestly that is no way the case. There are so many people that participated in Asterisk, but I still get people particularly come for their training that are just so appreciative of our existence.

Suzanne Bowen: Yeah it’s a fact.

Mark Spencer: Based on the many companies that have started with Asterisk, others can build their own success stories around it. That’s very rewarding for sure.

Suzanne Bowen: It’s one way to kick the butt of what is called a recession and actually things are improving and not only that, but here is a way to get into some business as long you have a market niche, targeting or making plans the right way. So.. the Asterisk boot camps they take place in US, and also in Europe. I also heard also in Malaysia, Pakistan and other areas.

Mark Spencer: People can go to the website of Digium to the training schedules there. The ones in Huntsville are the ones obviously give the most access to the people at Digium. I tried to meet with as many of the classes as I can if I am in town. It’s good to say hello kind of meet of some people and hear what they are doing with Asterisk.

Suzanne Bowen: Huntsville is not too far from Pensacola where DIDX is headquartered. As always just like I said in the beginning you are friendly, a lot of fun be around, very modest. People can listen to the language that you use throughout this podcast interview to understand what I mean. We do appreciate you and also we do appreciate the thousands of developers around the world and those end-users who help to take something like this forward, working through any glitches. It’s exciting to share the new opportunities it provides, so thank you, Mark, and I want to thank you Max who are among the integrators and developers and also the marketers like me. It’s been great talking with you, Mark.

Mark Spencer: Well, thank you. I want to thank the developers and contributors. They encourage people to continue to contribute forward.

Suzanne Bowen: All right I guess you are going to fly out some where this afternoon.

Mark Spencer: Yeah. I’m heading to Paris in just a little bit. When we finish this call.

Suzanne Bowen: Bon voyage.

Mark Spencer: Merci.

Murtaza Saleem gets the credit for the audio editing. He also does call center project and product management as well as web development.

ITEXPO makes dreams come true

Watch and listen to many ITEXPO comments, critique and success stories in the testimonial area from those such as nPhase, Interactive Intelligence, Excel, Sagem Interstar, Broadvox, ABP, Zeacom, Huawei, and Tandem Transit. Several other examples of dreams come true because of ITEXPO are on Youtube, podcasts, in many Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Linkedin press releases. A discussion in Swahili among Kenyan-Americans (Douglas Kimani, Dhidha Timona, Belinda Waweru, and Cynthia Ndwiga) during one conference led to the addition of Kenya DID phone numbers listed on DIDX. TCMNetworks president Jorge Rodriguez explains how it helped him set up and host 180 call centers. An LAPD technical analyst explains how ITEXPO introduced them to BrightComms, their video conferencing provider. Many an elevator speech is shared at ITEXPO such Gandhi’s from Voxitas, which result in angel investments, buyouts and new partnerships. The world is introduced to hot startups such as MobileMax and brought together with industry giants such as Cisco (IPTV).

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Sign up to participate, present, exhibit, and/or sponsor. It will be a memorable experience, and a favorite of thousands around the world.

September 21, 2009 @ 4:45 pm

Written by Allison Smith. Edited by Hina Iqbal Siddiqui.

My name is Allison Smith, and I have — to say the least — an unusual job.

Most people listen to automated voices on telephone systems on a daily basis and never really give much thought as to just *who* does those recordings — or even that they are articulated by an actual living being.

Well — I *am* that being — or one of them. I have been described as one of the most prevalent telephone voices in North America, having voiced platforms for Verizon, Qwest, Cingular, Vonage, Bell Canada, Twitterfone, and Asterisk — an Open-Source  VoIP platform that has the honor of being the fastest-growing telephony platform in the world.

It was brought to my attention by a valued client that at any given time, my voice is playing in someone’s ear — somewhere around the world.

I work for a vast clientele globally, in a wide assortment of industries, and it seems that the applications to which my voice can be applied is limitless. Visit my website at http://www.theivrvoice.com for a full sense of my client base — and next blog, I’ll write about some of the more…exotic, strange, and just plain wierdball requests I get.

Thanks for reading!

Related websites:
www.theivrvoice.com
www.theasteriskvoice.com
voicegal.wordpress.com

Written by Allison Smith. Edited by Suzanne Bowen.
Quite often, I get Asterisk prompt orders through the Digium site in which the client has written something like: “….this phrase comes after ‘Please enter your..’ and before ‘followed by pound.’” It’s a lot of effort to explain where the prompt will occur — especially when I have such an amazingly simple remedy — and it has everything to do with the correct use of punctuation. At the risk of making this entry sound like an lost episode of “Schoolhouse Rock”, the proper use of elipses, commas, and periods will save you a lot of time, and ensure that you get the right inflecxtion from your announcer.

Take the phrase: “your pin number”. When it’s “free-floating” (no punctution anywhere around it),

your pin number

one gets no idea of where you intend the prompt to be placed in the sequence. However, with elipses at the beginning and a period at the end:

…your pin number.

…we know that a phrase has preceeded it (such as “Please re-enter..”) and that this phrase caps off the sentence. Similarly:

Your pin number…

(Capitalized; elipses at the end) tells us that its’ beginning a thought and will likely be followed by something like: “….is incorrect. Please re-enter your pin number.”

Along that same line, ellipses on either end:

…your pin number…

…is wedged into the middle of a sequence which might flow like: “Please enter…your pin number…followed by the pound sign.

It seems persnickety — but it will tell someone like myself — whose job it is to make these prompts concatenate as smoothly as possible — exactly where you need this phrase to fall into the sequence you intend. (And no, writing them all “neutral” — with no discernable beginning or ending — will not solve the problem…..it actually leads to the lifeless, android IVR automaton which everyone is — thankfully — moving away from.)

IVR writers: let me know if this was helpful! Any other tips you’ve found to be helpful in IVR phraseology? Let me know!

Next entry: I’ll be talking about Spanish, Hebrew, Somali, even Tagalog — among the many languages I *don’t* speak — but that doesn’t stop me getting hired to voice prompts in them!
Related websites:
www.theivrvoice.com
www.theasteriskvoice.com
voicegal.wordpress.com

[viddler id-54605350 h-333 w-437]

November 28th, 2008

Previously I had compressed this the wrong way with a result of chipmunk voices.

Corrected and pretty cool! Frognet started in 1996 as a dial-up ISP company. The availability of open source telephony software is only one part of the business operation equation. Other real costs to manage an ISP business include price of equipment acquisition, human capital, training, data conversion and integration. More importantly, finding and hiring motivated CS talent must be factored into this equation.

In a frank conversation with Chip Swanson, CEO, and David Broeckelman-Post from Frognet, and IPiFony’s Matthew Hardeman, the three discuss the other costs for internet service providers. Digium’s Asterisk open source software helps new internet service providers bring soft switch applications including VOIP and other telephony services to the marketplace. DIDX was a media sponsor for ISPCon 2008. Brian Coburn and Anne Tredway recorded this discussion at the San Jose Conference Center in November.

[viddler id-896b9d1 h-333 w-437]

I started recording this section with John Todd’s slide Multi-Dimensional Niche: Mobile! Open BTS for example is a GSM bay station. This was available to cell phones at Burning Man via the IP side. Calls went out over Asterisk and then to a WIFI trunk and then to a SIP termination provider. Check out more information on telephony at Burning Man on Brad Templeton’s website at http://www.templetons.com/pq/.

Stand-Alone Niches

1. Analog to SIP

2. Failover as core or edge

3. SBC-ish tasks

4. Multi-tenant aggregator

5. Semi-intelligent edge router (E911)

6. H323 to SIP

7. SIP/ISDN to SS7

An asterisk machine goes for $500 with 24 channels… session border controller-ish tasks, hide topology, protocol conversion …

You’ve got to listen to his description of a customer of SIP and ISDN and their success using the latest version of Asterisk with 8.6 million calls in 10 weeks with no down time. Who are the Asterisk-based providers serving? Call centers, calling card platforms overseas, alternative to traditional PBX, They are often a part of the Asterisk developing community. They have hired many of the original developer hackers of the Asterisk community.

Find out why Asterisk is more relevant than ever. Watch the four clips I recorded at ISPCON in San Jose, CA in November 2008.

(My colleagues Anne Tredway and Bryan Coburn and I recorded 50 or so videos of ISPCON participants. ISPCON holds a secret stash of telecommunications intelligentsia. This was the first time we attended, and we look forward to next year.)