The Suretec Blog

Hi all,

Just a quick note to say last week we passed the BT VoIP interconnect interoperability testing which means our interconnect with BT and all our Ofcom number ranges will finally be live next month. We can of course supply numbers and do number porting right now as normal.

Thanks,

Gavin.

Hi All,

Quick one to say we've just signed our BT VoIP interconnect contract and paid up our setup fee. Now on to interop testing then hosting of our Ofcom number allocations!

Our new website will be up very soon for our VoIP ITSP - SureVoIP

Don't worry, that website will be very non-technical in most places unless necessary!

This would not have been possible without the power of Open Source software!

Thanks,

Gavin.

Exciting news!

Our Communications Provider Identity ("CUPID") code application has been processed by Ofcom and we just received our number of 291.

The start of many good things to come with our own VoIP provider SureVoIP (brand and website being worked on now). We're also listed as an ITSP at ITSPA.

Thanks,

Gavin.

A quick update:

SureVoIP a new startup ITSP will be launched by Suretec very soon. It is currently in development and being installed in a Scottish datacentre using various enterprise grade Open Source products. Keep an eye out for when it goes beta and will be available at http://www.surevoip.co.uk

There's been lot's of hard work gone into 2.4.17 and I say it every time, but this is the best release so far!

A huge thanks to the following significant contributors to this release:

Howard Chu (Symas Corp)
Hallvard Furuseth (University of Oslo)
Quanah Gibson-Mount (Yahoo! Inc)
Ralf Haferkamp (SUSE Linux)
Gavin Henry (Suretec Systems)
Pierangelo Masarati (Sys-Net)
Rein Tollevik (Basefarm AS)

It's been 3 months almost to the day since 2.4.16 so you'll see lot's of fixes and a new tool. It always amazes me that there are still bugs even though OpenLDAP is so stable, widely deployed and so fast! Well, software will always have bugs

The nice new tool is Slapschema: "Slapschema is used to check schema compliance of the contents of a slapd(8) database." See man slapschema (8)

For complete fixes etc. see the OpenLDAP CHANGES file.

Oh, and where are all my new docs? We've been so busy with existing and new clients that things have slipped, sorry. Lots of work with our partners Symas too and we're also prepping a new VoIP platform for Suretec Telecom called SureVoIP (which OpenLDAP plays a big part!).

More later and upgrade, upgrade, upgrade!!

Just a quick one to say that we now have svn commit access to the res_config_ldap RealTime driver to maintain it and the Asterisk LDAP^[?] schema in the Asterisk source code.

Any bugs you find, please report them!

The first official release is out, and you can see lots of new features . Unfortunately there are still a few Realtime LDAP^[?] driver bugs, but it's getting there.

It's well worth having a play with Asterisk 1.6.0 though.

Gavin.

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.

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.

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^®