Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 04:51:23 -0400 To: asterisk-users-lists.digium.com From: John Todd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and...
Mythical Asterisk Creatures, oft-discussed, rarely seen:
1) An "advanced" graphical user interface
We're getting there. There are starting to appear a crop of PHP or in at least one case, Flash-driven front ends for users. These haven't been compiled as part of asterisk-addons, but perhaps sometime in the next month or two the code from the existing various projects can be pushed into the addons directory.
2) An IAX2 hardware device
Any Day Now(tm). Wasim has fallen off the face of the Earth, but I've seen with my own two eyes a working copy of the Iaxy from Digium, so this holds promise. My request for a 1u 24-port IAX-based box that takes Digium daughterboards (FXO or FXS) generated some interest when a show of hands was asked for at the VON show... Bob Knight seemed to have an interest and some time on his hands. ;-)
3) A Radius CDR report module
This sort-of exists now, but again is not a completely robust solution. I've not implemented it yet (due to other pressing issues of life and profit) but it should hopefully work with some of the traditional billing systems that existing VoIP carriers are using.
4) A live-method, robust SQL-based dialplan
Not sure on this one - anyone care to comment?
5) LDAP/SQL/Radius authentication for SIP phones
I hear rumors of this existing, but again, I haven't had the time to investigate. The SQL-friends database hacks might be the answer for an SQL system.
6) Robust R2 signalling support
Steve Underwood says that he's made advances... has anyone else done any work on R2?
7) Multilingual language recordings of all existing * .gsm files
Nothing that I know of towards this end, or at least, nothing that is available on the CVS server. Anyone?
8) Free exchange of PSTN gateways in a centralized routing arbiter model
HO ho ho ho ho... that's a funny one. Actually, I have someone working on TRIP now, but I suspect that budget will get cut as soon as another project starts to explode.
9) Speech recognition support
Nothing towards this yet - sphinx keeps getting mentioned, though I don't know anyone who has had it running in anything other than a crippled test, or at least I don't remember anyone saying anything about it.
Here are this halfyear's additions:
10) Encryption
I'd love to see TLS/SRTP built into the SIP stack, to support the Zultys and Sipura devices which now handle crypto natively. More clients will support this functionality; time to start building Asterisk to work with them. Additionally, IAX2 would be much cooler if it had a full-channel encryption method, which I know is at least being thought about (the aes header files have appeared in the CVS distro.)
11) Presence.
Support for presence integration into devices would be great, and is this year's hot-button technology. Just simply supporting line appearances would help out quite a bit for business users on newer devices which support that feature, but the same technology (subscribe/notify) could be used for more advanced presence features. My ideas about integration into existing chat services might have some merit, or maybe not.
12) BSD Support
We've got Asterisk compiling, now to get Zaptel/libpri working with Digium cards... rumors have someone Almost Done(tm)
13) High-density Zap cards
Inexpensive DS3 Zap-driven cards would be a boon for large providers. The cards exist, there are Linux drivers, all that is required is some GPL'ed glue code and hair-pulling to weave it into Zaptel/libpri. With the data mode on Asterisk, it might also be possible to provide the equivalent of a Cisco CT3+ card that does voice as well.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Comments are welcome.
JT _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
