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Open Source VoIP: Asterisk or FreeSwitch?

blogs.zdnet.com — When the time came for a new PBX, Brian Snipes chose to do something a bit unconventional. The IT manager at law firm Hare, Wynn, Newell, and Newton LLP didn’t purchase a commercial PBX, nor did he settle on the open source market leader, Asterisk. No, Snipes chose to become the first enterprise to deploy the new open source IP PBX, FreeSwitch.

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  • diegoviola, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5I tried to use Asterisk as my office PBX, but it has many bugs... sound quality was terrible, I experienced DTMF issues, audio corruption issues, a few deadlocks, etc.

    I reported some of those problems here:

    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12628
    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12653&nbn=18
    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12810

    Now I'm switching to FreeSWITCH and the learning curve is not bad, the community is very nice and supportive, and this is what people is already saying in the early test of my FreeSWITCH installation:

    "Hemant: the audio quality is really good"
    "Hemant: no noise heard"
    "Hemant: the sound quality is crystal clear"
    "Hemant: i think this is better than asterisk"
    "Hemant: yep, and it even connects very fast"

    And this is on a XEN virtual machine (Amazon EC2). Where Asterisk completely refused to work, due to the Zaptel (ztdummy) requirement for MeetMe (conference module). FreeSWITCH just works, and it does soft-based conference just fine, and it's something that I can really trust it.

    I wrote a more detailed explanation of my Asterisk experience in the real life, and how FreeSWITCH is improving our lives, read here: http://pastie.org/pastes/231693

    Thanks Anthony (anthm) and the FreeSWITCH community for the masterpiece that FreeSWITCH is, it's the best telephony platform I ever used.
  • hmmhesays, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5I agree many of us have had great success deploying freeswitch where asterisk just won't cut it.
  • pvanveen, on 07/23/2008, -0/+5My first encounter with Asterisk was well before its 1.0 release. At the time I was responsible for a team that implemented Asterisk at a carrier to offer VoIP services. If I compare Asterisk to FreeSWITCH then I feel that FreeSWITCH is absolutely fabulous and superior to Asterisk for a number of reasons limited to ten to keep it short:
    (1) FreeSWITCH just works and it has no deadlocks
    (2) FreeSWITCH performs way better than asterisk on the same hardware
    (3) FreeSWITCH is rock solid stable
    (4) FreeSWITCH has more features and flexibility than asterisk
    (5) all of FreeSWITCH's features actually work (try presence & TLS/SRTP on Asterisk)
    (6) FreeSWITCH uses Nokia's excellent high performance sip implementation (Sofia-Sip) and doesn't suffer from Digium's not-invented-here syndrome. Chan_sip in Asterisk is a dead cow (I feel sorry for Olle's massive and underpaid efforts. I wish Digium would give him some of their VC money to rewrite chan_sip. Seems Digium feels their money is better spend on malfunctioning inflatable beach balls...)
    (7) the FreeSWITCH community is way more open, friendly and welcoming than Asterisk's
    (8) FreeSWITCH isn't controlled by a commercial company so all vendors are treated as first class citizens
    (9) the FreeSWITCH developers fix *all* bugs at an impressive turn-around time
    (10) FreeSWITCH is truly Open. Reasonable requests for enhancements or improvements are most welcome and are often implemented at extreme short notice. Patches are most welcome too and do not result in endless discussions but instead are valued and acted upon. If you need some functionality and have some cash to spare, the developers are most likely to meet your needs even faster than they already do with regular requests

    If you have experienced the pain that Asterisk causes then I recommend you have a look at FreeSWITCH. You will be pleasantly surprised.
  • gservat, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5Like someone said in one of the comments for that story, what really sets FS apart (aside from the software itself) is the community behind it. The devs monitor the mailing lists and help out the community. Just recently somebody asked if they could use YAML instead of XML for the config files. Just a few hours later, Anthony had mod_yaml ready for testing. Of course, we can't expect them to implement all our crazy ideas as features but it just goes to show the motivation behind the devs to continously improve the product.
    Nice work FS team. Keep it up!
  • mirzasahib, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4Concur, I've had fs boxes do 10x the call volume of asterisk boxes without a hiccup. If you want a home or office pbx Asterisk may do the trick, but if you want a carrier grade solution or a real platform for a switch, Freeswitch has what it takes. And a great community too ... kinda what Asterisk's used to be like eons ago ... Now ... if we could just get ss7 in it :) TONY!!!!
  • mercutioviz, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4FreeSWITCH "just works" and it does so in many different ways. Asterisk is "ok" but FS is incredible.
  • ctrix, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4Great!
  • diegoviola, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4FreeSWITCH rocks!

    Best telephony platform I ever used.
  • anthm, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3ok, Sangoma is announcing today OpenZAP and ss7Boost interop so ask and you shall receive.
  • diegoviola, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2I tried to use Asterisk as my office PBX, but it has many bugs... sound quality was terrible, I experienced DTMF issues, audio corruption issues, a few deadlocks, etc.

    I reported some of those problems here:

    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12628
    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12653&nbn=18
    http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=12810

    Now I'm switching to FreeSWITCH and the learning curve is not bad, the community is very nice and supportive, and this is what people is already saying in the early test of my FreeSWITCH installation:

    "Hemant: the audio quality is really good"
    "Hemant: no noise heard"
    "Hemant: the sound quality is crystal clear"
    "Hemant: i think this is better than asterisk"
    "Hemant: yep, and it even connects very fast"

    And this is on a XEN virtual machine (Amazon EC2). Where Asterisk completely refused to work, due to the Zaptel (ztdummy) requirement for MeetMe (conference module). FreeSWITCH just works, and it does soft-based conference just fine.

    I wrote a more detailed explanation of my Asterisk experience in the real life, and how FreeSWITCH is improving everything in our lives, read here: http://pastie.org/pastes/231693

    Thanks Anthony (anthm) and the FreeSWITCH community for the masterpiece that FreeSWITCH is, it's the best telephony platform I ever used.
  • rtelles, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1FreeSWITCH is going to be the best VoIP open source plataform!
  • diegoviola, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1FreeSWITCH already is the best VoIP open source platform ;)
  • aenone, on 01/14/2009, -0/+0Great!

    Buy VoIP Hardware -> http://www.voiptoshop.com

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