Freeswitch

trixter

Just wanted to let you guys know of a fairly new product that has great potential. Already it has done 16Khz conferencing which doesnt require 2x the bandwidth (it can use speex which uses CELP ...) has done fairly high call loads and other stuff.

http://www.freeswitch.org/ - license: MPL (mozilla public license) which is similar to the BSD license.

It can be compiled with gcc on most platforms (linux, *BSD, osX, etc) and supports MSVC in windows (runs native) and XCode in OSX. Its flexible enough that it can be used as the core of a softphone (just add a gui) and is powerful enough it can do class 4 switching or anything in between (such as class 5 or a pbx).


From their FAQ:
Q: What is FreeSWITCH anyway? Is it just another fork of Asterisk or something?

A: That is a good question which I can elaborate on heavily since I have done extensive development on both projects. FreeSWITCH is actually an entirely different application from Asterisk. It shares no code whatsoever with Asterisk but it does share many capabilities. The biggest difference between the two besides the fact that Asterisk is a PBX and FreeSWITCH is a soft-switch is the architecture. Asterisk was originally designed with a purely monolithic architecture meaning that processing, user interface and data all reside within 1 entity (the main asterisk process). Despite the fact that asterisk supports loadable modules the majority of them are not gateways to other technologies but rather inline implementations of whatever technology the module was written for. Also Asterisk is very cautious about the number of concurrent threads they are willing to use and will take any measure to reduce that total. Some work has been done to support Asterisk on a few other UNIX variants but there are no goals set to support anything beyond LINUX and GCC. Since Asterisk feels it only has to concern itself with carrying calls to the PSTN it only supports an 8 kilohertz audio sampling rate, the rate of most telephone circuits. I respect these decisions and because I disagree with some of them at a fundamental level I chose to make a new Application.

FreeSWITCH takes an entirely different approach with its architecture. The initial release of the code already supported multiple sampling rates and even had the ability to bridge calls with unlike sample rates in real time. Portable cross platform code is foremost on the list of requirements which has paid off with support for Windows, MacOSX and many versions of Linux on varying numbers of processors both 32 and 64 bit. External data access and cluster ability has been planned for since day one and the module interfaces are designed to bring existing technology into the core by providing a gateway from existing libraries. So clearly FreeSWITCH aims to create a platform on which to combine technologies where Asterisk, like its namesake the ‘*’ character, aims to implement just about everything.

Zonko

Very interesting, thanks for that info. Was considering setting up an Astrix box, might check out freeswitch now instead.