Cool!
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Seven Du<[email protected]> wrote: > Hello All - > In the spirit of ClueCon (which we are missing this year, but hopefully > not next), we wanted to document our "FreeSWITCH Story". We've posted it to > the > wiki(http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/FreeSWITCH_Testimonial_on_Idapted.com) > and it is copied below. > Thank you all and enjoy a good conference! > Seven Du (seven) > Jonathan Palley (jpalley_idapted) > Idapted Ltd. > > How FreeSWITCH has created hundreds of job opportunities and changed lives. > We want to share our experience working with FreeSWITCH. FreeSWITCH has > been a key enabler of our business. We hope this story can be a small way > to say a very big THANK YOU ALL. > "Changing lives" is an over-used cliche, but in this case, FreeSWITCH has > really allowed us to do just that. > What We Do: > We are not a telephony business; we are an educational technology and > service business. In Asia (China, in our case) students must pass English > examinations to study or work abroad and gain new experiences. However, > there is limited access to native English speakers and the access students > can gain is typically very expensive. At the same time, in the U.S., there > are many professionals looking for work-at-home opportunities - people who > need jobs and would create great teachers. Through our technology and > content we empower these people to be effective English teachers. Does it > work? Yes. The majority of our students are getting test scores that many > failed for years to get. Just hours ago one student called one of our sales > agents crying with joy. And for our teachers, they are now working in an > industry that was previously unavailable to those living in the U.S. > http://www.idapted.com > Why FreeSWITCH Enables This: > FreeSWITCH has been a key enabler of our business. Recording calls, > controlling routing, integrating with various web-based interfaces, enabling > multiple endpoints - these are all key features of what we must do. Most > importantly, setting up various servers and routes to mitigate cross-Pacific > and country-specific network challenges is key. Doing what we are doing > with commercial solutions would have made the business unworkable. > Our Experiences with FreeSWITCH: > We started using FreeSWITCH as our VoIP Platform in April 2008, after > receiving unsatisfactory results with other open source solutions. It took > one day of reading through the FreeSWITCH source code to know, "this is it. > This is the VoIP platform we build our business on". It took a few days of > working with the extremely competent and focused community to re-affirm this > commitment. > Our Setup: > Our teachers use a custom software that integrates a VoIP client with our > web based platform. Students connect to our teachers "on-demand". Simply > put, on a web-based comet interface the student enters a phone number (or a > skype name or a gtalk account) and our platform bridges the best available > trainer and the student. At the same time a web-based interface is being > updated. > The challenge for us is the connection between teachers and students over a > cross-continent network. For example, we experienced problems earlier this > year when a Asis-Pacific communication fiber broken... So, we've learned to > setup multi servers in multiple datacenters for redundancy. > > We run multi instances of FreeSWITCH so we can always use the cutting edge > and mitigate the effects of bugs. A main, "stable" FreeSWITCH(FS) instance > connect to other FreeSWITCHes - Fs-skype only loads mod_skypiax and FS-gtalk > only loads mod_dingaling. Here is one beauty of FS: We just had to create > different conf dirs (/usr/local/freeswitch, /usr/local/skype, > /usr/local/gtalk etc). This allows us to run the same code base over > different configurations, and call skype and gtalk accounts just like a > normal PSTN gateway (sofia/gateway/pstn/.... or sofia/gateway/skype/.... or > sofia/gateway/gtalk/.... ). More important, if one FS (say FS-skype) behaves > abnormally or crashes, we can easily change to another FS-skype server (we > run other servers located in various places in China and HK for > redundancy). > FS --| > |---PSTN gateways > |--- FS-skype > |--- FS-gtalk > |--- FS-skype2 > |--- more ... > > > COMMUNITY: > The community's commitment cannot be undervalued. The insightful, modular > design of FreeSWITCH allows anyone to contribute, whereever their skills > lie. It also allows us to easily make modifications to the underlying code > to suit our specific use-cases We want to highlight a few key people and > modules in the FS ecosystem: > mod_sofia: SIP is how we connect to our PSTN gateways and to our teachers > clients. PSTN is zero-conf for the user and mitigates troubles with the end > users network/microphone, etc (which is significant with our user base). > However, cheap providers fail randomly and FreeSWITCH's ability to control > routing, use multiple endpoints all while clearly seeing what is going on is > key. > Most importantly, anthm and the core team have been super helpful in getting > SIP to work with us. Back in the pre 1.0 days anthm made significant > changes to mod-sofia to enable clients behind nats without STUN. Its > important to point out that he didn't just make the changes -he forced us to > really make a compelling case as to why the changes were important for > FreeSWITCH. This is a good thing. > skype (mod_skypiax): Due to the facts that users prefer skype, we configured > skypiax. It was unstable at the beginning and that's one of the reason we > started running that separate FS instance. To be fair, it has caused a lot > of trouble - but we know this, its new software that takes a big risk and > implements a complex hack. What is important is that the author of > skypiax(Giovanni Maruzzelli) has been a huge help. He's been very active > fixing bugs and logging in to our box to help trouble shoot. We owe him a > *big* thanks. > To make Skypiax more useful, we also created some patches including the ANY > and RR interfaces for sequential and round robin line hunting, some bug > fixes and other features like continue-load-on-fail and auto-skype-user > which haven't been merged into trunk yet. Thanks a community that gives us a > platform where we can all benefit and contribute. > erlang (mod_erlang_events): Another key enabler of the next release of our > system is the erlang interface. We have a complex realtime queue routing > system has it handles input not just from freeswitch, but numerous other web > interfaces and sockets. Erlang was the perfect technology to implement this > in and luckily an Erlang module for FreeSWITCH was already written. > Beautiful. > THE MORAL OF THE STORY: > FreeSWITCH is a great piece of software that has enabled new technologies > and business models. The design has allowed (and the core team has > nurtured) a vibrant and exciting community that has made the software even > better. Every day we go to work excited to push the boundaries of what can > be done with telephony technology and are confident this is the platform of > the future. > Thank you all. > > Sincerely, > Du Jinfang (Seven) - Technical Operations/VoIP Manager > Jonathan Palley - CTO > Idapted Ltd. > _______________________________________________ > FreeSWITCH-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users > UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users > http://www.freeswitch.org > > _______________________________________________ FreeSWITCH-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org
