[Asterisk-Users] Fwd: Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and...

[John Todd]

Every half year or so, I probably will repost this list, adding and 
subtracting as the community makes advances (or ignores what isn't 
required.)


>Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 04:51:23 -0400
>To: asterisk-users-lists.digium.com
>From: John Todd <jtodd at loligo.com>
>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