Alan Quayle, Independent Review of the results from an anonymous survey of open source telecom software. Comparing the different projects, the preferred application areas of the projects, common issues and solutions, sharing where the industry sees these projects in 5 years’ time.

1. Open Source Telecom Software
Project Survey

2. • Gather across the industry people's experiences and opinions on using Open Source
Telecom Software Projects (OSPs), and share an anonymized aggregate view of the
different projects with those that complete the survey.
• Weblog that introduced the survey
• http://alanquayle.com/2019/05/open-source-telecom-software-project-survey/
• Why? I'm often asked to comment on the different projects, this is an attempt to
provide something more authoritative than my opinions based on who I last talked to J
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Purpose

3. • Overall numbers
• Asterisk
• FreeSWITCH
• Kamailio
• OpenSIPS
• Mobicents/RESTCOMM
• RTPproxy
• FreePBX
• PusionPBX
• Janus
• Jitsi
• Kazoo
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Outline
• Sipcapture-homer
• Vicidial
• Wazo
• Matrix
• Node-Red
• Comparative Analysis
• A few take-aways

4. Survey Responses
Collected over period 21 May 2019 to 21 June 2019
Google Slides Responses 19
Google Sheet Responses 12
Google Survey Responses 64
Total Good Responses 95
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Numbers are OK for indicative analysis, though need to be closer to 200 for fair representation
across the tens of thousands of people working on open source telecom software.

5. General Questions 1) Which OSPs do you use? (either in your current platform,
or clients’ platforms) OR Which OSPs do you have experience with? (for example
used in projects over the past 2 years)
Which OSPs do you use? Responses %
Asterisk 71 75%
FreeSWITCH 39 41%
Kamailio 41 43%
OpenSIPS 51 54%
Restcomm/Mobicents 3 3%
The only TAS we did not receive feedback from was SIPfoundry/sipxcom. I only recently made
contacts there, likely my lack of credibility in that community meant it did not receive much
attention.
© Alan Quayle, 2019

6. General Questions 1) Which OSPs do you use? (either in your current platform,
or clients’ platforms) OR Which OSPs do you have experience with? (for example
used in projects over the past 2 years)
Management Interfaces / Solution Wraps /
Monitoring & Capture
Responses %
Elastix (for Asterisk) 1 1%
FreePBX (for Asterisk) 21 22%
FusionPBX (for FreeSwitch) 10 11%
Kazoo 2 2%
RTPProxy 18 19%
SIP3 0 0%
Sipcapture - Homer 31 33%
Sippy Softswitch 2 2%
VICIdial (for Asterisk) 7 7%
Wazo (for Asterisk) 15 16%
YETISwitch 0 0%
sipsak, sipp 1 1%
Note: sipsak is a CLI for testing using SIPp (Open Source test tool / traffic generator)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Nice to see RTPProxy being used, it
comes up in discussions more often.
Nice to see more niche projects like
VICIdial being used.
All these projects helps explain the
diversity of application areas we see
for open source projects.
Even though Wazo is relatively new
(it is a fork from XiVo), adoption is
strong. It takes time for projects to
be adopted in open source, stability
and reliability are critical.

7. General Questions 1) Which OSPs do you use? (either in your current platform, or clients’ platforms) OR
Which OSPs do you have experience with? (for example used in projects over the past 2 years)
WebRTC Projects Responses %
EasyRTC 2 2%
Janus 25 26%
Kurento 1 1%
Jitsi 31 33%
Mediasoup 2 2%
Medooze 0 0%
OpenVidu 0 0%
JSSip 7 7% both SIP and WebRTC client library
Additional ones generated but not considered
opentok 2 2% Not an open source project
Other
Matrix 22 23% I include as federation and its RTC capabilities can not be ignored
SylkServe 2 2% I wasn't aware of this project, it's definitely relevant.
Node-RED 1 1%
flow-based development tool for visual programming - included as
it raises some interesting issues on service development
© Alan Quayle, 2019

8. Projects
© Alan Quayle, 2019
2600Hz / Kazoo Refocused on CPaaS / UCaaS enabler with Kazoo
Asterisk (Digium/Sangoma) Leading open source telecom app server, largest community
easyRTC (Priologic Software) WebRTC toolkit suitable for building highly secure, WebRTC applications
elastix (3CX) UC wrap including Asterisk, FreePBX, HylaFAX, Openfire and Postfix.
FreePBX (Sangoma) open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages Asterisk
FusionPBX
FreeSWITCH GUI (Graphical User Interface) for PBX, carrier grade switch, call center server, fax server, voip server,
voicemail server, conference server, voice application server, appliance framework and more
HOMER (qxip) SIP Capture system and Monitoring Application
Janus (Meetecho) lightweight (written in C) WebRTC Gateway
jitsi.org (8X8) JavaScript WebRTC application and can be used for videoconferencing
Kamailio (Astipo + many more)
SIP server for building SIP services such as a SIP proxy, SIP Presence Server, SIP location server (direct competitor to
OpenSIPS)
Kurento (Twilio) WebRTC media server. Bought by Twilio, code still available.
mediasoup
Open Source WebRTC SFU for Node.js. mediasoup is a low level component to build multi-party video conferencing
applications.
Medooze SIP Video Multiconference Media Server with WebRTC support.
openSIPS (OpenSIPS Solutions) SIP proxy/server for voice, video, IM, presence (direct competitor to Kamailio)
RTPProxy (Sippy Software)
Sippy RTPproxy is a high-performance software proxy server for RTP streams that works together with OpenSIPS.
Typical scenarios where RTPproxy needs to be used are NAT traversal or network bridging
Signalwire / FreeSWITCH
Telecom application server for real-time communication, WebRTC, telecommunications, video and Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP)
SIP3 (SIP3) RTC and VoIP traffic monitoring & analysis
sipXcom (eZuce)
Unified communications solution. Plug & play management system. Installation and configuration is automated and
GUI based, phones from over 10 manufacturers are plug & play managed including auto-discovery, full configuration,
directory management, speed dial, BLF, and firmware management, and users are provided with a Web portal for
self-service administration.
Telestax / Restcomm Enabler transitioning from opensource project / services to cloud based enabler
VICIdial (VICIDial group) VICIdial is an enterprise class, open source, call center suite in use by many large call centers
Wazo Fork from XiVO, focused CPaaS / UCaaS enabler
WebRTC (Google + lots of others) provides browsers and mobile applications with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple APIs.

9. Asterisk Project Survey
RESULTS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

10. 5 What is the main application(s) / market need(s)? (PBX, Conferencing, Contact
Center, Mobile App Comms, CPaaS, UCaaS, CCaaS, PBX, video CC, what is the
scale of the implementation (100, 1000, 10k, 100k, 1M+))
Application (66 responses) Responses %
PBX 50 76%
Conferencing 28 42%
Contact Center 37 56%
Mobile App Comms 6 9%
CPaaS 4 6%
UCaaS 7 11%
CCaaS 0 0%
Video CC 0 0%
Media App Server 6 9%
Scale (66 responses) Responses %
100 22 33%
1000 12 18%
10k 25 38%
100k 11 17%
1M+ 3 5%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
The “popular” view: Asterisk is used for PBX implementations at enterprise scale.
This provides some quantification on the breadth and scale of Asterisk applications.

11. 6 What to you consider the strengths and weaknesses of the OSP?
Strengths
41
responses %
Features 8 20%
Reliability 15 37%
Openness 3 7%
Flexibility 14 34%
Community 17 41%
Maturity 10 24%
Easy to set-up / configure 9 22%
Small footprint 8 20%
Well documented 3 7%
Weaknesses 33 results %
Uncertainty over new
ownership 5 15%
IPPBX centric 8 24%
Cloud support 7 21%
Multi-tenancy 6 18%
Scalability 9 27%
Performance 4 12%
Direction from Community 4 12%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Community, Reliability and Flexibility are top features. A correlation on the weaknesses is those
highlighting scalability, IPPBX-centric, cloud support, were NOT providing feedback on the solution
wraps / management interfaces.

12. 7 How do you view the future of the OSP? (e.g. will remain dominant platform in
CPaaS, or will face increased competition from projects X in UCaaS, or
uncertainties around business model mean we are examining other OSPs but
have no plans to change).
Future (33 responses) Responses %
Will remain dominant IPPBX / remains
dominant project 19 58%
Depends on Sangoma 8 24%
Unknown / not sure 6 18%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Astricon (Oct 29-30) is going to be interesting, see you there!

13. 9 How active and vibrant is developer community (Quiet - some contributions
mainly from the core team – active from a limited number of companies - Lively
(>10 companies contributions))? (66 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
At the end of
this report
we’ll do some
comparisons
between the
OSPs on the
community
questions.

14. 13 Do you find it easy to hire knowledgeable consultants, or otherwise access
operational support for the platform from outside your immediate organization
(easy – OK - hard) (59 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
We’ll add geographic
focus on the next
revision of the survey as
I think the spread in
knowledgeable
consultants is in part
linked to this.
From my experience its
expertise in multiple
projects, e.g. Kamailio,
OpenSIPS, Asterisk,
FreeSWITCH and
others…

15. 15 How do you architect your deployments (choices not exclusive and multi-
dimensional)
Responses %
Container Images 14 22%
Container Orchestration 9 14%
VM Images 48 75%
Bare Metal 41 64%
16 Do you use a configuration management/scripting
system like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, Terraform
or CloudFormation etc.
Responses %
none 4 8%
own / in-house 8 15%
SaltStack 2 4%
Ansible 29 56%
Pupper 9 17%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Bare Metal,
Ansible and
Self Hosted
(see next slide)
- This is not a
party for AWS
and Google J

16. 17 Do you host on: own infrastructure, cloud provider, or both
Responses %
Own 28 55%
Cloud 11 22%
Hybrid 12 24%
18 How do you support redundancy? - no standardized approach, I've grouped
some responses, but almost every answer was difference in some way
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol
OS Clustering
Local hardware redundancy
Multi-site + load balancing
Failover
Kamilio
Wazo
OpenSIPS proxy
SIP proxy
Multiple VMs
Heartbeat
Failover
Don't bother
Home designed cluster
In-house design, proprietary
© Alan Quayle, 2019
We need to follow
up on the
redundancy
approaches. Is
there an opportunity
to better share
experiences /
architectures?

17. Kamailio Project Survey
RESULTS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

18. 5 What is the main application(s) / market need(s)? (PBX, Conferencing, Contact
Center, Mobile App Comms, CPaaS, UCaaS, CCaaS, PBX, video CC, what is the
scale of the implementation (100, 1000, 10k, 100k, 1M+))
Application (40 responses) Responses %
PBX 17 43%
Conferencing 8 20%
Contact Center 9 23%
Mobile App Comms 8 20%
CPaaS 13 33%
UCaaS 12 30%
SBC 2 5%
Class 5 termination 3 8%
Class 4 telco interconnect 3 8%
CCaaS 3 8%
Call routing / SIP routing 9 23%
Header manipulation 2 5%
Video CC 1 3%
Scale (38 responses) Responses %
100 0 0%
1000 13 34%
10k 14 37%
100k 10 26%
1M+ 15 39%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Broad base of projects with a slight bias to large scale deployments, which jives with my discussions
on implementations where Kamailio is used as the front-end with multiple Asterisk or FreeSWITCH
applications servers on the backend.

19. 6 What to you consider the strengths and weaknesses of the OSP?
Strengths (34 Responses) Responses %
Performance 12 35%
Community 11 32%
Modularity 2 6%
Available Modules 3 9%
Flexible / Extensible / Open 12 35%
Secure 2 6%
Lightweight 3 9%
Stability 11 32%
Scalability 6 18%
Weaknesses (6 Responses) Responses %
Documentation is tough for
newcomers 4 67%
Can be tough to configure 3 50%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Strengths in Performance,
Community, Flexibility,
and Stability.
Weaknesses are well-
known, “You’ve got to
know what you’re doing.”

20. 7 How do you view the future of the OSP? (e.g. will remain dominant platform in
CPaaS, or will face increased competition from projects X in UCaaS, or
uncertainties around business model mean we are examining other OSPs but
have no plans to change).
Future (15 responses) Responses %
Will remain dominant Open Source
Telecom Platform 15 100%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
I think this is in part a reaction to the uncertainty hanging around Asterisk and FreeSWITCH. Kamailio
and OpenSIPS appear to have a more stable future.

21. 8 What client protocol/interface/platform do you use to connect OSP, e.g. SIP.js,
JsSIP, sipML5, other SIP SDK, other in browser signaling (like raw JSON over
WebSockets) + WebRTC?
Client (26 responses)
Response
s %
SIP.js 11 42%
JsSIP 4 15%
SipML5 0 0%
Other SIP SDK 12 46%
In browser signaling 9 35%
WebRTC 9 35%
SIP phones / hard phones 0 0%
Custom / in-house 5 19%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
We need to investigate what is used in “Other SIP SDK” in the next survey.

22. 9 How active and vibrant is developer community (Quiet - some contributions
mainly from the core team – active from a limited number of companies - Lively
(>10 companies contributions))? (32 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
At the end of
this report we’ll
do some
comparisons
between the
OSPs on the
community
questions.

23. 10 Does the developer community make itself accessible for participation (closed
– OK – Open (with lots of fast help (hours) and dev events))? (32 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019

24. 11 How easy is it to engage with the community on features/issues that are
important to you? (difficult (no/slow response) – OK (responses can take days) –
good (rapid response, within hours, day max)) (28 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019

25. 12 If you develop and enhance the platform yourself, how open do you find the
community to your submissions and pull requests? (closed – OK – welcoming) (26
Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
The love is
strong for
Kamailio J

26. 13 Do you find it easy to hire knowledgeable consultants, or otherwise access
operational support for the platform from outside your immediate organization
(easy – OK - hard) (29 Responses)
© Alan Quayle, 2019
We’ll add
geographic
focus on the
next revision of
the survey as I
think the
spread in
knowledgeable
consultants is
in part linked to
this.

27. 15 How do you architect your deployments (choices not exclusive and multi-
dimensional) (31 Responses)
16 Do you use a configuration management/scripting
system like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, Terraform or
CloudFormation etc. (26 Responses)
Responses %
Container Images 6 19%
Container Orchestration 8 26%
VM Images 24 77%
Bare Metal 19 61%
Responses %
own / in-house 5 19%
Ansible 19 73%
Pupper 7 27%
Terraform 3 12%
Packer 1 4%
© Alan Quayle, 2019
Bare Metal,
Ansible and
Self Hosted
(see next slide)
- This is not a
party for AWS
and Google J

28. 17 Do you host on: own infrastructure, cloud provider, or both (23 Responses)
18 How do you support redundancy? - no standardized approach, I've grouped
some responses, but almost every answer was difference in some way (23
Responses)
Responses %
Own 14 61%
Cloud 5 22%
Hybrid 6 26%
Redundancy (23 responses) - no standardized approach, I've grouped some responses, but almost every
answer was difference, except 'don't bother'
Local hardware redundancy
Multi-site + load balancing
HA pairs, clusters, and global redundancy
Don't bother
Redis state replication
In-house design, proprietary
SIP proxies
AWS + HAProxy for WebSockets
Different az and region setup within AWS, managed database with inbuilt redundancy
Pacemaker, Corosync
Redundant across 3 availability zones and two regions
Mostly multi-master on many layers, trying to follow eventual consistency on data storage layer© Alan Quayle, 2019

29. Some Comparisons from
Project Survey RESULTS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

30. 9 How active and vibrant is developer community (Quiet - some contributions
mainly from the core team – active from a limited number of companies - Lively
(>10 companies contributions))?
Asterisk FreeSWITCH
Kamailio OpenSIPS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

31. 10 Does the developer community make itself accessible for participation
(closed – OK – Open (with lots of fast help (hours) and dev events))?
Asterisk FreeSWITCH
Kamailio OpenSIPS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

32. 11 How easy is it to engage with the community on features/issues that are
important to you? (difficult (no/slow response) – OK (responses can take days) –
good (rapid response, within hours, day max))
Asterisk FreeSWITCH
Kamailio OpenSIPS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

33. 12 If you develop and enhance the platform yourself, how open do you find the
community to your submissions and pull requests? (closed – OK – welcoming)
Asterisk FreeSWITCH
Kamailio OpenSIPS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

34. 13 Do you find it easy to hire knowledgeable consultants, or otherwise access
operational support for the platform from outside your immediate organization
(easy – OK - hard)
Asterisk FreeSWITCH
Kamailio OpenSIPS
© Alan Quayle, 2019

35. A Few Take-Aways
● For configuration management / scripting, the answer is
Ansible
○ Should each project share popular scripts to aid adoption and setup?
● Native Cloud (AWS, Google, etc.) is not a popular choice
● Geography
○ Some in Europe were surprised at the size of the Asterisk responses, it
would be interesting to map how the projects are adopted around the world
● There’s still much we can do together as a global community
to accelerate open source adoption
© Alan Quayle, 2019

36. Next Steps
● Survey ended up being long….
● Suggest we focus and have a couple of surveys to focus on aspects people
find important
● Looking for guidance…
© Alan Quayle, 2019

37. Standing on the
Shoulders of Giants..
Bernard of Chartres in 12C
Isaac Newton in 1675
..we can focus on the customer
Open
Source
Telecom
Software