Asterisk

, Zimbra

Asterisk RealTime LDAP Driver Guide

Friday, July 25. 2008

W. Michael Petullo has published a very detailed article for Red Hat Magazine about using the Asterisk RealTime LDAP^[?] Driver and Fedora Directory Server.

It's well written and a good read, but just so you know, OpenLDAP can easily be used and should have been the first choice as I'm sure our partners in crime Symas would point out too

But hey, it's a Red Hat Magazine so you can't blame them really...

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has emerged as a popular technology for modern voice communications. Many organizations have replaced their analog or proprietary digital telephone systems with VoIP-based solutions. This allows the consolidation of telephone services into an existing IP infrastructure. In addition, using IP to host voice services lets the organization leverage existing expertise–while retaining all of the network’s management advantages. Though not without its disadvantages, VoIP provides a compelling option to those looking for a telephone solution.

This article will present a simple VoIP solution using Asterisk, an open source private branch exchange (PBX) product. It will show you how to install Asterisk, configure it using its LDAP backend, and connect to it using the Ekiga software VoIP client and a Cisco 7900 Series VoIP telephone to make calls.

The first comment about the article is right though:

In general experienced users from the Asterisk community advise against purchasing Cisco phones for business deployment with Asterisk and recommend Polycom, Aastra or Snom instead. Cisco phones are very expensive, difficult to setup, technical documentation is not easily accessible for the end-user, their SIP firmware has some nasty surprises and as far as I know that cheap SmartNet contract is still quite difficult to get.

The LDIF Schema and normal LDAP schema are available in non-FDS format and are contributed to the Asterisk Project by Suretec and maintained by Suretec.

Thanks,

Gavin.

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, Fedora, Linux, Open Source, OpenLDAP, Suretec at 20:25 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Digium

, Directory Services

, Enterprise Directory

, Fedora

, Fedora DS

, Fedora Directory Server

, IAM

, IDM

, IP Telephony

, Identity Management

, LDAP

, LDAP Schema

, Linux

, Red Hat

, eDirectory

, linux

LDAP, Mark Spencer and Asterisk

Thursday, June 26. 2008

In Interview With Asterisk Founder, Mark Spencer:

3) What improvements would you personally like to see in any upcoming releases? Perhaps Active Directory or LDAP^[?] integration?

LDAP, Clustering Events, and Video are three areas I'm especially interested in in terms of the core of the software. I'm also interested in ways to make Asterisk even more approachable for new developers of either core functionality or new systems utilizing Asterisk.

Suretec agree and are trying to help.

[...]I think a low-cost Asterisk unified communications solution is a perfect opportunity for Digium. Thus, perhaps something called Asterisk UC Edition might be a good name. Your thoughts on this idea?

[....]we want the core of Asterisk to remain Open Source and as such encourage the development of Open Source technologies wherever possible. I believe it would be foolish to attempt to make Asterisk's innovation only available as a proprietary product when clearly it is its Open Source foundation that made it so successful and continues to do so[...]

Excellent to hear!

[...]Mark didn't take my idea of offering a "premium" UC (closed) version of Asterisk, that I felt would give Digium a potentially strong revenue source, I found it very fascinating that Mark continues to hold the "open source" mantra flag high. This only re-confirms Mark's (& Digium's) strong commitment to keeping Asterisk 100% open source that Mark stressed to me[...]

Of course, as it should.

I have to commend Digium for sticking to their 100% open source guns, but honestly, I don't think anyone would begrudge them if they copied the SugarCRM/MySQL/Movable Type model where they offered an open source version and a premium (closed) version. Ok, maybe some open source zealots would.

Suretec would, as would everyone else. Keep it 100% Open Source.

Posted by Suretec in Asterisk, Open Source, OpenLDAP, Suretec at 20:13 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Digium

, Directory Services

, IAM

, IDM

, IP Telephony

, LDAP

, Linux

, PostgreSQL

, Symas

, UC

, UM

, Unified Communications

, VoIP

[asterisk-biz] Open letter to digium, asterisk developers and consultants

Wednesday, June 11. 2008

There an interesting thread going on just now over on the Asterisk Business List:

I am writing this letter to Digium and all those that use or develop
software for Asterisk. Asterisk is released under a dual license, the
one I will focus on is the GPL license.

Digium maintains a trademark on the word Asterisk, along with other
words. The trademark policy they have forbids marketing a product with
the asterisk word if it is not "Genuine Digium Software". If you modify
software, apply a patch, add 3rd party modules, this trademark policy
prevents you from distributing that software saying that its based on
asterisk, or even using the name asterisk within the program.

The most interesting part is that there is an unofficial response from Digium's john Todd and an official one coming:

I would agree that we have failed to make this as obvious as we
should, and that will be a topic of discussion and possibly
clarification in the document. Our intention has never been to lock
the word "Asterisk" so that it is impossible to use - that is not our
goal, nor is it possible legally. If you are a consultant who works
with Asterisk, by all means please put that on your website and in
your CV! We encourage that type of use; it broadens the Asterisk
ecosystem. Using the word "Asterisk" in a statement of factual use
is not prohibited - you can say "My company works on developing code
and systems which utilize Asterisk." However, when it becomes used
as a descriptive term such as "Asterisk Enabled" then that does seem
like it is an infringing use. More on this in the follow-up reply to
this soon to come.

We'll keep you posted on just how you can use the word Asterisk^®

Posted by Suretec in Asterisk, Open Source at 21:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Digium

, IP Telephony

, Linux

, PABX

, VoIP

Progress with Asterisk Realtime LDAP Driver

Tuesday, May 27. 2008

More bugs being fixed.

Posted by Suretec in Asterisk at 09:31 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, IAM

, IDM

, Identity Management

, PABX

, VoIP

Old news I know - Zaptel project being renamed to DAHDI

Saturday, May 24. 2008

What's in a name?

Posted by Suretec in Asterisk at 00:29 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Asterisk LDAP Realtime Schema Updates

Wednesday, May 7. 2008

New versions (3.1.5) at:

asterisk.ldif
asterisk.schema

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, Suretec at 13:28 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Asterisk LDAP Realtime Schema Updates

Tuesday, March 18. 2008

There's now a new section at Asterisk LDAP^[?] Realtime on voip-info

It's prompted me to do an Asterisk LDAP Schema update for asterisk.schema and asterisk.ldif

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, OpenLDAP, Suretec at 11:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Digium

, LDAP

, LDAP Schema

, Linux

, PABX

, VoIP

Asterisk 1.6.0-beta5 Now Available

Thursday, March 6. 2008

The Asterisk.org development team has released Asterisk 1.6.0-beta5. As of this
beta of 1.6.0, 1.6.0 is now feature frozen.

Complete changes since 1.4

I'm really looking forward to mainstream LDAP^[?] Realtime Driver support for Asterisk!

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, OpenLDAP at 09:02 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Linux

Asterisk 1.6.0-beta2 has an LDAP RealTime Driver!

Tuesday, January 29. 2008

Asterisk 1.6.0-beta2 now has a LDAP^[?] Realtime Driver.

See the Changelog for more.

Gavin.

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, OpenLDAP at 08:05 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, LDAP

, LDAP Schema

, Linux

LDAP Realtime Driver gets merged with Asterisk 1.6 branch

Wednesday, January 23. 2008

After a wee push in the right direction and some complaining, there is now an LDAP^[?] Realtime Driver in the 1.6 branch of Asterisk!!

Excellent news and even better that the LDAP Schema file and LDIF that Suretec did got merged too!

Posted by Gavin Henry in Asterisk, OpenLDAP, Suretec at 09:59 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, Linux

Asterisk 1.6 Beta Released (with no LDAP Realtime Driver)

Tuesday, January 22. 2008

So, it's been a few days, but we thought this was worth commenting on.

Asterisk 1.6 beta brings many new changes and exciting features, but one very disappointing thing missing was the LDAP^[?] Realtime Driver.

This is mainly down to the code not being moved forward for the 1.6 branch, as it was written for the 1.4 branch and testing.

For those of you out there that would love to see Asterisk integrated with your enterprise directory server, we urge you to subscribe to the tracker and help test.

Posted by Suretec in Asterisk, OpenLDAP at 10:38 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

Defined tags for this entry: Asterisk

, LDAP

, Linux