Benchmark: RTPProxy v1.0 with OpenSER 1.3

Transnexus has done an interesting analysis of using RTPProxy 1.0 with OpenSER 1.3, of course specific with their use case.

It has very interesting results, you can check here:

http://www.transnexus.com/White Papers/OpenSER_RTPproxy_test.htm

There was a lot of discussing regarding space for improvements and tunings to get better performances on the mailing lists, but still it is a good reference to be used. The page includes details about everything you need to do the test by yourself.

Transnexus is the developer of OSP module in Kamailio/OpenSER.

Kamailio v1.4.1 Released

A new release in 1.4 series is out. Kamailio (OpenSER) 1.4.1 is based on the latest version of branch 1.4, therefore those running 1.4.0 are advised to upgrade.

Source tarballs are available at:

http://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/1.4.1/src/

Detailed changelog:

http://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/1.4.1/ChangeLog

Download via SVN:

svn co https://openser.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/openser/branches/1.4 kamailio

Tag for this release can be browsed at:

http://openser.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/openser/tags/1.4.1/

Project site at SourceForge.net (still using old name):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/openser/

Modules' documentation:

http://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/1.4.x/

Ekiga 3.0

Ekiga, the open source SIP softphone, announced yesterday the release of Ekiga 3.0.

There are many new features, including SIP SIMPLE presence. Check the release news at:

http://blog.ekiga.net/?p=97

Congratulations to the team, it looks very promising and I am just waiting for the Debian packages to try it out.

Skype Channel In Asterisk

Last day of AstriCon brought out a very surprising news: official Skype channel in Asterisk from Digium, as there is a press release from both sides.

Link to official press release.

It looks like the cost will be per channel and licenses are available from Digium via Asterisk market place.

This means a lot in bringing Skype users connected to SIP world.

Generic Data Container

A new feature that allows to store and share arbitrary data across Kamailio (OpenSER) configuration file is available

Elena-Ramona Modroiu has just introduced a generic hash table container for usage in configuration file. The hash table is in shared memory, therefore the values are global over all kamailio processes.

The items in hash table can be accessed via $sht(name). The name can include pseudo-variables that will be evaluated at runtime. In this way, the hash table can be used to store data per user or other key and can offer functionality of dealing with array of values.

An example of how to protect against dictionary attacks is in the README:

http://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/htable.html

As a roadmap for the new module, planned for addition:
- MI commands to get/set items in hash table
- ability to save/load in/from database
- ability to init items at startup
- auto-expire time for items

This completes global variables space along with shared variables $shv(name)) which are single value and allow only static name, but they are faster to access (see cfgutils readme file for more details on $shv(name)).

Announcement email is here:

http://lists.kamailio.org/pipermail/users/2008-September/019764.html

Cisco Buys Jabber.com

Two weeks after end of SIP-XMPP Workshop in Paris, an important move has been announced on the Instant Messaging and Presence market: Cisco, network device and telco vendor, to acquire Jabber Inc.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/corp_091908.html

Jabber leverages open standard eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) to provide enterprise class unified communication platforms. Yet another big company invests in XMPP after Google selecting XMPP for their GTalk service.

Kamailio (OpenSER) includes its SIP/SIMPLE-XMPP gateway for a while now, although still in beta stage. With a speed up of IM&P growing market, the interoperability between SIP and XMPP becomes an important fact that can lead to successful communication service.

Oigaa Virtual PBX Service

Jesus Rodriguez, Kamailio/OpenSER developer and FreeBSD packager, announced today on his blog the launch of new products and services under name Oigaa:

http://www.voztele.com/esp/productos_servicios_voip/centralita_virtual_oigaa.htm

Voztelecom is one of the major supporters of Kamailio/OpenSER project, developing the WeSIP Java SIP Servlet Application Server and seas module. Many of their products and services run on top of several Open Source applications, among them Kamailio/OpenSER and Asterisk.

Good to see such news that underline the power and flexibility of Open Source!

Networking groups on Facebook and Linkedin

For a while now there, you can find groups named "OpenSER" and "Kamailio" on both Facebook and Linkedin Social Networking portals.

If you want to meet people and make connections in Kamailio/OpenSER eco-system and you are member of one of those portals, then join the groups. Access is granted to everyone that applies to join, immediately on Facebook, after group manager approval on Linkedin (portal policy).

A1 InnovationDays Keynotes Presentation

Links to PDF file of my presentation at A1 Innovation Days, named "Sculpturing SIP World", and photos are available at:

http://www.asipto.com/index.php/2008/09/12/a1-innovation-days-keynotes/.

Kamailio (OpenSER) Presence Server: Dialog Info Support

Developed by Klaus Darilion and sponsored by Silver Server (www.sil.at), Kamailio (OpenSER) introduced support for Dialog Info presence states - RFC4235 - INVITE-Initiated Dialog Event Package.

There are two new modules introduced:

* pua_dialoginfo: gets dialog states from dialog module and sends PUBLISH with the dialog state in RFC 4235 conform XML documents
* presence_dialoginfo: extends presence module to handle PUBLISH with dialog-info. Allows aggregation of multiple XML documents into one document.

With these modules you can have BLF without the need for an PBX (Asterisk). It is know to work with SNOM and Linksys phones. Linksys requires some tweaking with module parameters.

For more see the readme files:

http://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/presence_dialoginfo.html

http://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/pua_dialoginfo.html

A1 InnovationDays Remarks

Returning from about two weeks of journey, I am catching up with work now. However, it worth to mention here some events I attended during past weeks.

The A1 InnovationDays Sprint was really challenging.
http://www.a1innovations.at/en/static/a1innovationdays

While participating to other coding sessions in the past, this one had the premises to make it great:

- nice location, one hour drive from Vienna, Austria, at Monastery Und in Krems. An old site turned into a convention place

- competition - five teams ran head to head to win. Finally the project "Spontaneous live comment as A1 sports reporter" got the prize, but I could say all the projects have big potential and the results after two days of coding were impressive: "Thunderbird plug-in for Unified Communications", "SIP Website Widget", "Automated Audio/Video Greeting Service" and "SIP extension for Disko framework". I will try to detail each one in separate posts

- vast knowledge base - it would be hard to get again in same room technical people from various domains working together: Web 2.0, graphic design, SIP, voice and video processing, embedded systems, GUI, GSM/Mobile technology, IMS

The only barrier seemed to be the weather, very nice, warm and sunny, trying to attract out attention away from coding.

However, the most important aspect of the event was the implication of the A1 - Mobilkom Austria in such event. It is the first mobile operator I have seen encouraging Open Source initiatives. Worth congratulations and let's hope they will be followed by other similar companies.

Kamailio updates

Some updates concerning two main topics discussed on the mailing lists. First, the project name, many expressed the concern that a rename in short time will create more confusion. As we are not in front of a new major release, I think it is better to postpone this process for a while and focus on the second topic, the organization for the project.

For this one, I have to thank personally to many people from the list that wrote us, giving suggestions and helping finding solutions. As a result, we are working to create the draft of statute for organization, but we are also investigating the option to join an existing
organization, dedicated to hosting of open source projects.

Meanwhile, the svn repository got couple of new features as well as refactoring of some modules. 1.4.1 will be released soon as we got a bunch of important fixes in the 1.4 branch. Most probably another release in 1.3 branch will follow.

Check the website for updates:

www.kamailio.org