Open Source VoIP
Open Source VoIP
You’ve likely heard alot of buzz surrounding open source movements and VoIP technology. It seems like every day a new open source project is springing up and a new VoIP service is being announced.
If you’re like most, you’re probably not sure what exactly open source means or VoIP means, let alone how it can benefit you and your business. Lucky for you, gaining a better understanding of both open source and VoIP is not terribly hard - if you have the right information.
What is VoIP?
VoIP, in simple terms, is a technology that allows voice calls to be transported over a network (such as your LAN or the Internet). VoIP provides the same sort of calling experience as you are use to with your landline at home or POTS lines at work, it’s just delivered differently as it uses IP (Internet Protocol) as the underlying transport mechanism for calls.
What is open source?
Open source is a term used to describe a method of distributing software, applications and or products by making them generally available to the public for free under GPL (GNU General Public License) or something similar. This means that you can edit, access and control the software, application and or product any way you want. Giving you a level of flexibility never before seen.
Open Source VoIP
This leads us back to open source VoIP (the reason you were here in the first place).
Open source VoIP is really just a term used to describe a set of freely available, widely supported softwares and applications that allow folks to leverage VoIP technology. The most famouse piece of open source software is Asterisk.
Asterisk is the world’s leading open source telephony engine and tool kit. Offering flexibility unheard of in the world of proprietary communications, Asterisk empowers developers and integrators to create advanced communication solutions.
In addition to Asterisk, there are a number of other open source VoIP projects:
- trixbox ce. Formerly Asterisk @ Home, Linux / Asterisk based open source PBX platform created by Andrew Gillis. Acquired by Fonality.
- Pingtel. Linux based open source PBX that was recently acquired by Nortel.
- FreeSWITCH. open source telephony platform designed to facilitate the creation of voice and chat driven products scaling from a soft-phone up to a soft-switch. It can be used as a simple switching engine, a PBX, a media gateway or a media server to host IVR applications using simple scripts or XML to control the callflow.
- Yate.Open Source telephony platform from Romaina.
- Call weaver. Community-driven vendor-independent cross-platform open source PBX software project.
- PBX in a FLASH. High-performance turnkey open source PBX that’s easy to upgrade with dozens of add on scripts to provide virtually any feature you can imagine.
- Elastix. Appliance software that integrates the best tools available for open source-based PBXs into a single, easy-to-use interface.
- Druid. Open source unified communications platform, built around technology such as Asterisk, IMAP, XMPP.
