Tag Archives: VoIP

chan_unistim: Nortel IP Phones with Asterisk

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A new channel driver has been committed to Asterisk trunk which allows you to use Nortel IP phones with Asterisk. It was submitted by Cedric Hans. See the commit and the original mantis issue. This module will be available in Asterisk 1.6.

There is some basic documentation and a sample configuration file available.

Nortel phones which have been verified to work with this module are the Nortel i2002, i2004 and i2050.

One of the biggest problems with going with a proprietary phone system is vendor lock-in across all aspects of the system. The amazing thing about Asterisk is the amount of choice that is available. Making it possible to use these handsets with Asterisk will allow those that have previously been locked in to switch to a more powerful and more flexible system without having to invest in new handsets.

That brings the number of VoIP protocols natively supported in Asterisk up to 7. There are:

  • SIP
  • IAX2
  • H.323
  • MGCP
  • Cisco Skinny / SCCP
  • Jingle / GoogleTalk
  • UNISTIM

What’s next?

Open Source: Changing Models, Changing Mindsets, Part 2

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Linux Insider has posted Part 2 of their article on some of the impacts of open source software on the corporate world. There is more discussion of Asterisk in this article.

The open source Asterisk digital PBX (public branch exchange) platform “is the most interoperable, flexible and feature rich PBX in the market today,” asserted Chad Agate, cofounder and CEO of NeoPhonetics.

The article mentions Asterisk’s powerful architecture that lets it fit an extremely diverse set of needs in the telecom market.

Asterisk “allows for transparent switching between all supported interfaces, allowing it to tie together a diverse mixture of telephony systems into a single switching network. It can act as a media gateway for any legacy or VoIP enabled connection available today,” Agate explained.

Open Source: Changing Models, Changing Mindsets, Part 1

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Linux Insider has an article on open source software and its impact on the corporate world. It mentions Asterisk for its impact on the traditional telephony market and its use in the corporate world’s transition toward the use of VoIP.

Asterisk-based VoIP applications and appliances have been downloaded by business phone system users more than 4.4 million times, implying millions of users, according to Digium, whose founder, Mark Spencer, started what has grown to become Asterisk’s globe-spanning open source project collaboration.

It feels great to have our name up on this list with other influential projects such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, Wikipedia, Apache, and more.