Asterisk: A Rising Star of Open Source Telecom

What does open source software have to do with telecom management? A lot, if Digium Inc. has its way. This communications equipment provider in Huntsville, Alabama, oversees development of the dominant open source IP-PBX, Asterisk. Asterisk provides only basic PBX functionality, but benefits from the help of its open source developer community. Since users can freely modify the code, they gain independence from the manufacturer. The software sports 72 telephony features now, up from 54 two years ago. Asterisk’s 10 posted reference customers—among them Canada’s Aheeva Technologies—are widely varied, ranging from an agency bringing phone service to impoverished communities around the world to a three-site 100-agent brokerage. And don’t forget, both software and community development help come for free. Telemanagement gave Asterisk a test drive two years ago, by way of a hosted PBX service provided by Sudbury-based Vianet Internet Services. We ran into some of the characteristic annoyances of Voice over IP, found Vianet’s tech support very competent, and liked the overall service very much (see Telemanagement #219). ‘Proprietary’ Open SourceThere’s been a major addition to Asterisk recently that moves away from the purity of the open source concept, while adapting the product to the needs of a wider range of corporate customers. The original Asterisk was suitable only for small- to mid-sized operations, as it lacked clustering capabilities and 911 support. Earlier this year Digium unveiled the Asterisk Business Edition for larger implementations. Although built on the open source Asterisk design, the Business Edition is proprietary to Digium and sells for US$995 (introductory price—$795). According to Digium spokesman Jim Webster, some enterprises are wary of open source equipment. They prefer vendor-owned tech because it comes with dedicated support such as warranties and regular updates. The Business Edition is Digium’s way of capitalizing on this caution. Business Edition users have the option of taking part in the Asterisk development community themselves or of leaving these chores to Digium. The new Asterisk underwent numerous tests to ensure its robustness. Digium discovered some bugs in that process, and shared the fixes with the open source community, so open source Asterisk operators also benefit from the work done on the Business Edition.Business Edition works on two kinds of servers: Dell Inc.’s 2850 and Hewlett-Packard Co.’s DL 360. Digium means to expand the list of interoperable hardware. Asterisk is now clusterable via its internal inter-exchange protocol. Meanwhile Digium’s Distributed Universal Number Discovery (DUNDi) protocol provides number lookup across multiple servers in networked environments. Digium plans to send DUNDi to the IETF for potential ratification as a standard. Asterisk still lacks 911 support, but "we’re working with a number of partners that have various 911 solutions," Webster says. "You can expect to see some announcements in the relatively near future." "We don’t control what people do with Asterisk, although we do control the destiny of the Asterisk project," Webster explains. "Digium basically approves all of the changes that go into the Asterisk open source project tree. As to what people do from there, we don’t have much insight." The new Business Edition by no means spells an end to the open source version. "We are firmly committed to the open source business model," says Webster. "We will continue to offer Asterisk under the GPL (General Public Licence). We certainly have no plans to change that. The Business Edition is just another option for customers."

Asterisk: A Rising Star of Open Source Telecom

News | August 25, 2005

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