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PIKA WARP Appliance Adds BRI Support

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in March 3rd, 2009   
Topics: Asterisk, BRI, PIKA WARP Appliance, Pika, Schmooze, TMCnet, VoIP, appliance, freepbx, support     

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PIKA Technologies announced today the release of a BRI expansion module for the PIKA WARP Appliance. The PIKA WARP Appliance is a very flexible hardware telecom appliance that can run various flavors of Asterisk, including native Asterisk, Schmooze, trixbox CE, and others. They even support FreePBX, the popular front-end GUI for Asterisk. They support FreeSwitch as well.

PIKA’s BRI module supports two ports and four channels, allowing the WARP Appliance to reach a total port density of four ports and eight channels when two BRI modules are installed. BRI is very popular in Europe and is very commonly used in the SMB space, making the WARP Appliance a suitable option.

Check out my PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk review for more details on this flexible piece of hardware.

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PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 18th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Bandwidth.com, David Clarke, PIKA WARP Appliance, Philippe Lindheimer, SIP, TMCnet, Terry Atwood, Unified Communications, VoIP, appliance, bandwidth, freepbx, freepbx support     

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When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.
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According to PIKA, “While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio. With today’s announcement, PIKA has once again demonstrated its responsiveness to the needs of its user base.”

“We are very pleased to have supported the effort to adopt the FreePBX application to run in the PIKA Warp environment,” said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA Technologies. “Used in many Asterisk implementations around the world, including Trixbox, FreePBX has proven its value, time and again. When the FreePBX team expressed their willingness to work with us to port to the Warp Appliance, we jumped on the opportunity.”

“FreePBX has become the de facto standard for enterprise grade PBX functionality delivered to the SMB business and includes a very rich set of functionality and customization potential,” said Philippe Lindheimer, open source community director of Bandwidth.com and leader of the FreePBX project. “But no GUI is complete without a wide range of hardware options to complete the package. We are delighted that PIKA can now include FreePBX in the PIKA WARP and bring our two eco-systems together.”

Today’s announcement from PIKA follows news of a new partnership between FreePBX and Bandwidth.com, a complete business communications provider offering advanced VoIP, Internet services and managed network services to small and medium businesses. Bandwidth.com will devote significant resources to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to remain open source and free.

“The partnership with Bandwidth.com is great news as it gives FreePBX the support it needs to grow while ensuring it remains a free GUI for the entire open source eco-system,” said David Clarke, business development manager at PIKA and director of the PIKA Warp Community. “I know the choice of Bandwidth.com was a decision that Philippe made only after months of consideration and sound input from the key developers and contributors to the FreePBX project.”

Out of the box, FreePBX provides a long list of features including many typically found only in an enterprise-grade PBX, some examples are:

• Unlimited number of voicemail boxes
• “Follow me” functionality
• Ring groups and call queues
• Unlimited number of conference bridges
• Paging and intercom functionality
• and much more

The PIKA WARP Appliance product portfolio is ideal for deploying small- to medium-sized IP-PBX systems, IVR self-service systems, predictive dialling systems, fax servers and many other features typical of a traditional, purpose-built business telephone system that are often lacking in a computerized system. Compatible with a variety of open-source development platforms, including Asterisk and Linux, the Appliance offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional off-the-shelf computers and plug-in-card network connectivity in a smaller footprint.

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New Blackfin BF51x Processor Launches

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in October 27th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Astfin, BF512, BF514, BF516, BF518, Blackfin, Flash Memory, GIPS, Power Consumption, TMCnet, VoIP, analog devices, appliance, blackfin processors, convergent processor, power, processor, uClinux, voiceengine     

analog-devices-blackfin.jpgAnalog Devices unveiled the new Blackfin BF51x series, the newest members of their convergent-processor family. Blackfin processors are very popular when building Asterisk-based appliances, including the Digium Asterisk Appliance AA50 and Astfin. The Blackfin convergent-processor architecture offers reduced cost, power consumption, and software complexity. Although the processor is popular in creating Asterisk appliances, it can be used for a variety of low-cost, low-power consumption required applications.

The new Blackfin processors are the BF512, BF514, BF516 and BF518. According to Analog Devices, “All are single-core convergent processors that surpass outdated, heterogenous MCU+DSP approaches in reducing part-count, system cost, board space, and power consumption. Like traditional DSPs, the BF51x processors feature high clock rates and low power dissipation per unit of processing (MMACs/mW), and like traditional MCUs, these convergent processors are OS and compiler-friendly.”

All four of the new 16-/32-bit BF51x processors are available at clock speeds up to 400 MHz (800 MMACS) and include 116 kBytes of RAM plus an optional 4 Mbits of serial (SPI) flash memory. Each also integrates Lockbox™ security for code and content protection.

The Blackfin processors on-chip integration assures easy connection to a variety of audio, video, imaging and communications peripherals and memory types. Integrated features include support for sixteen stereo I2S digital-audio channels, twelve peripheral DMA channels, and an advanced memory controller for glueless connection to multiple banks of external SDRAM, SRAM, Flash, or ROM. Each processor includes two dual-channel synchronous serial communication ports (SPORTs), a high-speed parallel peripheral interface (PPI), an I2C compatible two-wire interface (TWI), dual PC-compatible UARTs, and 2 SPI-compatible serial peripheral interface ports.

“System solutions ultimately determine how much power any particular application will consume,” said Jerry McGuire, vice president, General Purpose DSP, Analog Devices, Inc. “It’s quite intuitive that a single convergent processor with the right mix of integrated peripherals is always going to lead to lower BOM costs and power consumption than an inelegant combination of disparate processors and parts can possibly achieve. Many companies today talk about the lowest power or the highest performance. But what is important for today’s applications is the highest levels of performance at low power.”

All of the new Blackfin processors, delivering 8.5 MMACs/mW (100 MHz), include dynamic power management (DPM) functionality that lets developers match the processor’s power consumption to processing requirements during program execution. ADI pioneered the application of DPM more than seven years ago with the release of the first Blackfin processors.

The BF512 is the new low-cost entry point in the Blackfin processor family. The device balances performance, peripheral integration, and price, and is well suited for the most cost-sensitive applications including portable test equipment, embedded modems, biometrics, and consumer audio. All members of the BF51x family also include a new 3-phase PWM generation unit for inductive motor control applications and a quadrature interface for rotary encoders.

The BF514, BF516, and BF518 all extend the convergent processor family further into the portable application space with on-chip removable-storage interfaces. All three devices include Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) for connectivity to standard flash memory and Wi-Fi cards; a power-optimized CE-ATA storage interface for small form-factor handheld and consumer electronics applications; and an embedded multimedia card (eMMC) interface for integrating mass-storage flash memory in a wide range of consumer electronics, wireless, navigation, and industrial applications.

For developers of network-connected industrial and instrumentation applications, the BF516 adds an Ethernet 10/100 MAC with Media Independent Interface (MII) and Reduced Media Independent Interface (RMII). Highly integrated for industrial, portable and VoIP applications, the BF518 Ethernet MAC supports the IEEE-1588 clock synchronization protocol for networked measurement and control systems.

An increasingly wide variety of applications are viewing the contemporary convergent-processor approach as the soundest choice for cost- and power-sensitive designs. For example, some voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony system developers have designed in separate DSP and microcontroller chips to implement the required media and control functionality. With BF51x Blackfin processors, however, a single architecture enables full VoIP telephony functionality in a unified software development environment with faster system debugging and deployment, lower overall system cost, and the lowest possible system power demand.

“GIPS VoiceEngine media processing capabilities meet the highest requirements of VoIP equipment manufacturers and paired with Analog Devices’ Blackfin processors we can assure customers a consistently high quality VoIP experience. The performance, power and functionality profile of Blackfin is a superb fit for VoIP technology,” said Larry Golob, Senior Director Business Development, Global IP Solutions.

With the Global IP Solutions (GIPS) VoiceEngine package of VoIP software components available for Blackfin processors, and a VoIP reference platform available on uClinux, the feature-rich Blackfin family has driven down the price required to easily design and deploy a fully scalable range of VoIP telephony designs across multiple market spaces.

Pricing and Availability
The BF51x family includes the BF512 at $4.95, the BF514 at $7.75, the BF516 at $8.75 and the BF518 at $11.85. Processors are sampling immediately. All prices are based on 25,000-unit quantities.

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PIKA WARP Appliance adopted by Schmooze

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 16th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Schmooze, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, appliance     

Today, as I’m blogging from the ITEXPO press room I learned that the PIKA WARP Appliance has been adopted by Schmooze (aka the Yiddish Asterisk ). If you recall, I reviewed the PIKA WARP Appliance last week. The WARP Appliance can run Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, and now Schmooze.
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Schmooze Communications will be using PIKA WARP the Appliance as the hardware component in a new line of its PBXact business telephone systems.

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PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk Review

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in September 12th, 2008   
Topics: AA50, Asterisk, Computer Hardware, Computer Software, Digium Asterisk Appliance 50, Flash Memory, PIKA Technologies, PIKA WARP Appliance, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, WARP Appliance, appliance, appliance asterisk, asterisk appliance, ip pbx, power failure, software flash     

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There is no doubt that open source Asterisk has taken IP telephony by storm resulting in many vendors offering solutions based on Asterisk. Because the “free” Asterisk software is open source, it has helped drive down the cost of installing an IP-PBX. Only one major cost factor remains - the hardware. If you install Asterisk on a traditional PC, you have several hardware components - the motherboard, the CPU, the memory, the hard drive, the power supply, CD/DVD drive, etc. Some of these hardware components aren’t necessarily required to operate a fully-functional IP-PBX or could be replaced with inexpensive alternatives. For instance, instead of a hard drive, why not use Flash memory? It’s cheaper, more reliable, is more easily upgraded, and can be easily swapped after a failure. It also uses less electricity than a hard drive resulting in a “greener” Asterisk solution. When you consider how tight profit margins are when offering an IP-PBX to the SMB market, shaving off a few dollars in hardware costs can be a huge pricing competitive edge. For these reasons, PIKA Technologies offers an embedded Asterisk appliance called the WARP Appliance targeting the SMB market with a cost-effective telephony development platform. PIKA pointed out that WARP is not exclusively tied to Asterisk explaining, “Our customers have developed call logging system, IVRs, predictive dialers and 50% of them use Asterisk, 50% don’t.”

The PIKA WARP Appliance isn’t a turn-key Asterisk IP-PBX, but instead is a development platform that enables resellers and VARs configure Asterisk 1.4.x to their liking, and then offer a customized version of Asterisk through their distribution channel. In fact, PIKA sells what they call the “PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk Developers Kit”, which includes a PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk, one 4 port FXO (trunk) module, one 4 port FXS (station) module, one SD Memory Card (1Gb), one Serial Cable (programming), a network cable, and Getting Started Guide. The PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk Developers Kit is discounted to $550 (limit 1 per company) to encourage developers. The normal non-discounted list price is $725. The main concept behind the WARP Appliance is to offer resellers and VARs an inexpensive Asterisk hardware platform that they can OEM and offer under their own brand name. I should also mention that the WARP Appliance now also works with FreeSWITCH, so developers can also choose to embed FreeSWITCH instead of Asterisk. In fact, any telephony application such as IVRs, call logging, predictive dialer etc. built using PIKA’s telephony APIs can be integrated onto the appliance, whether it is a proprietary application or based on an open source platform.

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Back Panel and the cover taken off to show the inner guts of the WARP Appliance

Importantly, the Kit comes with 4 analog phone ports and 4 analog trunk lines, or essentially a 4×4 “development” phone system, which is perfect for many SOHO and SMBs. In fact, considering many IP Phones are >$200 and analog phones can be had for $20, one should not underestimate how many small businesses would like to dip their feet into VoIP but aren’t ready to commit to expensive IP phones. The PIKA WARP Appliance allows them to get a fully-featured Asterisk IP-PBX while offering up to 4 analog phone stations and 4 analog trunk lines. In fact, resellers can even offer 8 analog stations by swapping out one FXO card and instead including two FXS cards - all modules can be mixed and matched in any combination, including BRI in future For inbound and outbound calling the reseller can offer 100% SIP for the trunking side, which has the added benefit of lower per minute charges compared to traditional PSTN dialing. The configuration of the appliance is modular and can include up to 9 ports of a combination of FXO/FXS/BRI plus VoIP stations and trunks.
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Top View looking inside the WARP Appliance

While there are many DIYers (Do It Yourself) out there that have built their own home-brewed embedded Linux Asterisk appliances, PIKA has spent considerable resources on choosing reliable embedded hardware and performing quality assurance (QA) testing. When building your own appliance, DIYers have to be concerned with EOL (end of life) on components such as motherboard, memory etc and have to deal with software installation issues and integration with the hardware (ie. drivers)

WARP comes pre-loaded with the 2.6x Linux Kernel (stripped down PIKA version) and includes SSH (Dropbear), Asterisk and Asterisk GUI (1.4.x), database (SQlite3), Httpd (webserver), PHP5, NTP, DHCP, TFTP server & client, as well as VLAN and DNS. As previously mentioned, you have the ability to add any software package that your application requires.

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I got to test drive the PIKA WARP Appliance in the lab and was pretty impressed how easy it was to load firmware, add packages, and build a fully-functional copy of Asterisk. The unit includes a RAM disk, full root access, 256MB of RAM, and 256MB of Flash for loading the Linux kernel. Additionally, you can add an SD memory card for additional memory storage, useful for storing voicemail. The processor is powered by a AMCC Power PC 440EP, which operated at 533MHz. The outside of the unit features a 2 x 20 backlit LCD display, with API-controlled front-panel scroll button. You can even control the LED with simple shell commands.

Make the LED red:
echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/warp-red/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/warp-green/brightness

Make the LED green:
~ #> echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/warp-red/brightness
~ #> echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/warp-green/brightness

Make the LED orange:
~ #> echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/warp-red/brightness
~ #> echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/warp-green/brightness

To turn the LED off you just echo 0 to both.

I learned this tip on David Clarke’s blog/community. David is the Business Development Manager at PIKA Technologies and he started the blog of a place where developers can find 3rd party add-ons such as various Asterisk GUIs and WARP tips. It is relatively new but content is growing daily. You can check it out here: www.pikawarp.org

The back of the unit includes Music-on-hold audio in, paging system audio out, an SD slot, a single Ethernet port and one USB port. I’m told PIKA is working on a dual-Ethernet port WARP Appliance in the near future. This would allow the appliance to add NAT firewall capabilities. Importantly, the unit includes a power failure switchover emergency PSTN port. In the event of a power failure, you can still make an outbound call, i.e. 911.

The appliance can run software from flash memory or via a network file system (NFS) located on your development computer. According to PIKA, “Initially, you will use NFS to execute the software( kernel and ramdisk). NFS will be the primary method for running software on the appliance during development. It is faster to boot using NFS, updates to files can be done without taking the time to write new images into flash and, depending on the file type being modified, without rebooting.” There are 3 methods available to load software onto the Appliance.
a) svn checkout of PADS
b) tarball of PADS
c) pre-built images file for the appliance

Building the software is very straightforward using PADS (Pika Application Development Suite) to compile the various packages and then transferring it to the WARP Appliance. You can also compile directly on the WARP Appliance itself using gcc. (See: http://pikawarp.org/?p=53) If using PADS, your development computer requires the following Linux packages in order to use PADS:
• A serial client (e.g. minicom on Linux or HyperTerminal on Windows)
• TFTP (Trival File Transfer Protocol) Server
• NFS (Network File System) Server
• WGET
• Subversion (SVN)
• AUTOCONF
• AUTOMAKE
• LIBTOOL
• NCURSES
• SSH client
• GCC 4.x or greater

On your development Linux PC you go to the location of your unpacked source or SVN checkout of PADS and simply type:

#make menuconfig

This command displays the package selection menu. This will include default menu selections, but you can easily add/remove packages from the Appliance. Next you select ‘Exit, choose ‘Yes’ when asked if you want to save your configuration and then enter the command:

#make

This will build the software with the packages you chose. When the build is complete, you will have an NFS mount point at <Your PADS path>/build_warp/root.

The software image for the kernel (cuImage.warp) is created during the previous step. To create software images for the ramdisk and the persistent file system, you simply enter the command:

#make image

The following compressed images will be located in <Your PADS path>/images:
• cuImage.warp (kernel)
• uRamdisk (ramdisk)
• image.jffs2 (persistent filesystem)

The next step is loading the images into the appliance. There’s a few ways of doing it, including entering a special bootloader mode called U-Boot and using a serial cable and software like HyperTerminal. But a much easier method is doing it across the network using TFTP or SCP to transfer and load the software onto the appliance. To actually write software to flash you use warploader. warploader is a PIKA’s tool that allows you to write software into flash memory while the appliance is running. The tool provides a single step to replace software eliminating the need to enter the special U-Boot prompt and a serial connection to load new software.

After transferring the image to the appliance, you just type this command to load the software into Flash:
#warploader -p <partition name> filename

For instance:

#warploader -p kernel /root/cuImage.warp (kernel)
#warploader -p root /root/uRamdisk (RAM Disk)

Flash memory has a limited number of write-erase cycles. A utility is provided to track the writes to the NAND flash and can be used to monitor excessive or rapidly increasing amounts of data written to flash which may indicate a problem with an application.

To view the amount of data written, enter the following at the Linux prompt on the appliance:

cat /proc/driver/ndfc
or on my version:
cat /proc/driver/pikasd

Unfortunately, the number of writes is reset to zero after a reboot, but still a useful utility.

Two additional partitions called persisent1 and persistent2 are provided in flash memory for user-defined purposes. This space can be used for additional persistent data or for files that will not fit into the ramdisk image. I should point out that when the system is booted, the ramdisk is read from flash or NFS into memory and therefore, the size of the ramdisk is an important consideration for system performance. The maximum size of the ramdisk, using the current settings is 64 Megabytes, out of the total 256M of RAM. PIKA claims that this size is sufficient for a load that includes all of the packages currently made available by PIKA in PADS, with the exception of GDB (GNU Project Debugger).

I hooked up some analog trunk lines using a Teltone analog simulator as well as a few analog phones. I also registered a Polycom IP650 and an Aastra 57i IP phone. I was able to make extension-to-extension calls, outbound calls through the Teltone simulator, and inbound calls to the auto-attendant. In my testing of the PIKA WARP Appliance, it handles fax just fine. It doesn’t currently support T.38 real-time fax over IP because T.38 is very processor intensive, but PIKA told me T.38 support is in the works. PIKA includes some special built-in extensions to speed development and testing. For instance, I was able to dial 500 and make an IAX VoIP call to Digium’s corporate auto-attendant (misery.digium.com) with no firewall configuration. I’m always impressed how IAX is able to traverse NAT firewalls without messing with the firewall.

Here’s a list of the built-in testing extensions:

Extension Purpose/Destination
2222 - Connects to the audio in port to listen to the audio sent from an external device such as an MP3 player.
2233 - Connects the handset microphone to the audio out port on the appliance, used for paging.
2244 - Begins playing pre-recorded prompts to the audio out port on the appliance. After dialing, if you hang up, the prompts will continue to play.
2255 - Stops the pre-recorded prompts started by dialing extension 2244.
4001 to 4005 - These extensions call FXS lines 1 to 5, respectively. If the FXS module is not present, the call will be routed to voice mail.
4006 to 4010 - These extensions call the sample SIP Agents defined in sip.conf. If the SIP agent associated with the extension is not registered, the call will be routed to voice mail.
4060 - PIKA FAX receive test. Connect a FAX machine to one of the FXS ports, dial this extension and the
appliance will receive the FAX. A tiff file will be stored in /tmp/warpfax.
4061 - PIKA FAX transmit test. Connect a FAX machine to one of the FXS ports, dial this extension and the appliance will send a test FAX (the PIKA logo) to your FAX machine.
9<number> - Calls out on an available FXO extension. If no FXO extensions are available, congestion will be received.
500 - IAX test call to Digium’s auto-attendant.

Features/Specs:

  • Operating system — Denx ELDK, with a 2.6.19.2 Linux kernel
  • AMCC Power PC 440EP Embedded 533 MHz Processor 1200 mips
  • Supports floating point and MMU (memory management unit)
  • Internal flash 256 MB NAND(OS + apps) plus 4 MB NOR memory (uboot)
  • 256MB RAM
  • External removable 1 GB SD flash memory (no hard drive improves reliability) for additional voice mail prompts / storage
  • back -up of configuration files and custom settings (facilitates unit replacement)
  • Reset function remotely controlled
  • Maximum IP ports 75
  • Maximum FXS ports 9
  • Built-in FXS ports 1
  • Maximum FXO ports 8
  • Maximum BRI ports 4 / channels 8 (future)
  • Simultaneous calls 32
  • Dynamic thermal management (fan)
  • Power failure transfer
  • Music on Hold input
  • Paging system output
  • Echo cancellation

Connectivity

  • WAN/LAN ports 1
  • RS-232 interface
  • USB ports 1

Display

  • Size 2×20 character
  • Backlight
  • ScrollButton
  • API

Physical

  • Brandable
  • Desk mountable
  • Wall mountable
  • 9.25″ W x 6.65″ D x 2.18″H


Ratings Score
Installation
Documentation
Features
Usability
Performance
Overall

Conclusion
Comparisons will no doubt be made with Digium’s Asterisk Appliance 50 (AA50), so I thought it might be useful to offer my own comparative analysis. I haven’t tested the Digium Asterisk Appliance, so I can’t compare the development environments between the two. Though, I am under the impression that Digium not longer supports an open development environment. Looking strictly at feature-specs, I see that the PIKA WARP Appliance does have some key advantages, including built-in Music-on-Hold, paging, LCD display, 5 more FXS ports, and higher scalability (75 vs. 50). The Digium Asterisk Appliance does however have 4 LAN ports to the WARP’s single WAN/LAN port and the Digium Asterisk Appliance has an additional WAN port which currently the PIKA WARP Appliance does not have. The PIKA WARP Appliance offers 256MB of RAM to Digium’s 64MB of RAM and WARP offers 256MB of Flash memory to Digium’s 8MB of Flash.

Feature-specs aside, perhaps the WARP’s greatest advantage is that is flexible and customizable while the AA50 supports Asterisk only. I asked PIKA why the AA50 isn’t conducive to 3rd party applications and development and PIKA told me, “With such a small amount of memory and a more complex development environment, allowing 3rd party apps is not realistic to the typical Asterisk developer and Digium likely found it too difficult to support. PIKA has made the development process easy with PADS so it is a more viable option for Asterisk developers.”

The PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk is a compelling platform for developers, resellers, and VARs looking for a low cost, reliable, feature-rich Asterisk appliance to offer to the SMB market. The complete customizability and its ability to support analog trunks, analog phones, as well as IP phones and IP trunks makes it a great solution for small businesses that don’t have voice T1/PRI lines. Further, unlike Asterisk on a traditional PC, the WARP Appliance comes pre-installed with Music on Hold (MOH) and Paging built-in, as well as power failure transfer (PFT). Another key advantage is that it is modular allowing you’re the choice of up to 9 ports of a combination of FXO/FXS/BRI ports. Further, the WARP Appliance can handle up to 75 IP phones and 32 simultaneous calls, which is quite impressive for this very small and surprisingly light device. I should point out that many new small businesses are started each day and these “green fields” are looking for a cost-effective and feature-rich phone system. The PIKA Warp Appliance fits the small business market segment quite nicely both from a price and feature perspective.

Further, medium-sized businesses that have outgrown their current key system or PBX could be enticed to switch to the PIKA WARP Appliance even if their current phone system lease isn’t up yet. The reason is super low-cost of the WARP Appliance. Of course, resellers, VARs, and developers will no doubt package together their own applications and offer a profit premium over the $725 list price. Still, I’d expect the PIKA Appliance to allow developers to offer a full-fledged Asterisk IP-PBX with strong analog support for around $1000, which is a very competitive price. All-in-all, I really liked the PIKA WARP Appliance and I think developers will too.

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Digium Asterisk Appliance AA1080 or AA1060?

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 25th, 2008   
Topics: AA1060, AA1080, Asterisk, Digium Asterisk Appliance, TMCnet, VoIP, appliance, digium, model, photos     

Bill Miller commented I may have seen some yet-unreleased products during my tour. During my tour of Digium’s headquarters, I snapped some photos, so I thought perhaps one of my photos might contain some top secret Digium product, so I planned to give them a closer look.

Sure enough two of my photos caught my eye. I zoomed in on the photos and noticed a Digium Asterisk Appliance with a model number printed that says “AA1080″ or “AA1060″. I can’t be sure which model number is correct. Although my Canon Powershot G9 is 12.1 mexapixels, I was too far away when I snapped the photo to get a good resolution shot of the model name. I put on my best CSI and CIA photo enhancement techniques (aka Photoshop) to try and enhance the image, but I still can’t make out if it’s AA1080 or AA1060.

Nevertheless, it would appear Digium has a yet-unreleased 1U appliance called the AA1080 or AA1060. Today, Digium has only announced the Digium AA60, AA300, and AA350 appliances. So the AA1080/AA1060 could be the next iteration. Check out the two photos for yourself…


Click for Full Size - zoom in by the Linux license plate.

Click for Full Size - zoom in by the Linux license plate.

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Digium AA50 1.2 Software Released

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in August 19th, 2008   
Topics: AA50, Asterisk, Digium Asterisk Appliance 50, TMCnet, VoIP, appliance, digium, firmware, trunk, trunks     


Yesterday, Digium released version 1.2 for the Digium Asterisk Appliance 50 (AA50). It’s been awhile since I’ve heard any news about the AA50, so I’m glad to see Digium is still developing for the AA50 even with their new Switchvox-based AA60 appliance offering and their even newer AA300 & AA350 offerings. Actually, I discussed whether Digium’s AA60, AA300, and AA350 would compete against their original AA50 Asterisk appliance, which might be worth a read. In a nutshell, I stated that they target different sized businesses. Still, there is some overlap, which is why I’m glad to see Digium is continue to develop for the AA50.

So anyway, what’s new in 1.2? First this interesting tidbit for Polycom phone fans: “My Polycom 3XX IP phones display acted funny in the 1.1.x firmware releases. Can I have the original, 1.0.x, behavior back?” To which Digium responds, “Yes. In 1.2, on the Options menu, there’s a setting called “Enable Idle Image Display.” Turn this setting off, Apply Changes, and reboot your phone.”

Also new in 1.2 is support for Internet Explorer 7 and numerous usability improvements in the GUI itself. A new System Status page shows “firmware revision, information about your trunks (Did my VoIP trunks register okay?  Did they fail?), and information about your extensions (what’s on your system, and where do they point?).”

One important new feature is on the Trunks page. The pre-configured VoIP service providers are now pulled dynamically from a Digium webservice, instead of being hardcoded into the firmware. Thus, the next time one of the pre-configured providers changes something in their required configuration, Digium can automatically address it without requiring users to download a new AA50 firmware.

Another important new feature is that the Outgoing Calling rules page now allows outbound call pattern matches, in addition to a trunk path, to also be sent to a local destination or out via a fail-over trunk if the primary trunk is unreachable.

All AA50 users that purchased their AA50 and registered their subscription before August 13, 2008 will receive an additional free year of subscription. So essentially, Digium is giving away the 1.2 upgrade for free to those who registered.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s new, so go check of the Digium blog post for more. Lastly, I’m actually headed down to Huntsville, Alabama to meet with the Digium crew at their headquarters to find out what Digium is up too lately. Hopefully, I’ll have interesting news to report. Stay tuned!

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Aastralink RP Deput Coincides with Microsoft Response Point SP1 release

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in July 8th, 2008   
Topics: 6751i RP, 6753i RP, 6757i CT RP, Aastralink RP, Asterisk, Microsoft, Response, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, aastra response, appliance, ip pbx, microsoft response, phone system, point, response point, response point service pack 1, sp1     

aastralink-rp.jpg

As I wrote back in March, the Microsoft Response Point Service Pack 1 (SP1) release would coincide with Aastra’s Response Point phone system debut, which is interesting when you consider Aastra got into the IP-PBX game with a Microsoft IP-PBX competitor - the AastraLink Pro 160 appliance, an Asterisk IP-PBX derivative. Well, today marks the launch of Microsoft Response Point SP1 and the Aastra Response Point system aptly named the AastraLink RP.

Before I go into the AastraLink RP, let me first mention that the Microsoft Response Point Service Pack 1 is available as a free download to current Response Point users. Secondly, the announcement is being made at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008. I’m told, “a very special senior Microsoft executive will make an appearance to help announce.” I would have guessed it will be Bill Gates’s but he retired recently on June 27th. Perhaps a special final appearance in a Microsoft capacity?

SP1 is a significant feature update to Microsoft Response Point designed for small businesses with one to 50 employees. Current Response Point customers and partners in the U.S. and Canada can download SP1 for free at http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint. SP1 includes improved performance, SIP trunking, a call history log, the ability to push out new firmware to the phones automatically, and more. As for the SIP trunking, Junction Networks is the newest VoIP provider supported on Response Point SP1. New Global Telecom Inc. (NGT) and Cbeyond are two previously announced SIP trunking providers that work on Response Point.

Response Point features an easy-to-use admin, voice-enabled user interface, advanced call routing, built-in voice mail, automated receptionist and contact integration with Microsoft Office Outlook. In my pre-SP1 review of Response Point, I opined about the Asssitant’s lack of click-to-dial when I wrote, “Unfortunately, you can’t click-to-dial anyone in your corporate directory to initiate a call, transfer, or conference.” Well, Microsoft added click-to-call functionality for any contact using the Assistant software. The Assistant also now has “presence” so you know when co-workers are on the phone.

I also complained, “Currently, the Music On Hold (MOH) is statically defined in the firmware by the OEM manufacturer and cannot be changed. It would be nice if the MOH could be customizable to support .wav or .mp3 files.” They took that suggestion to heart as well since and SP1 adds the ability to select music for parked calls and hold time. I also wished Response Point had call screening of caller’s name, call screening of voicemail being left live, and the ability to use RP phones remotely for telecommuters. Alas none of these 3 feature ideas made it into SP1, however, I was told by Microsoft that remote phone support is on the roadmap.

I should point out that using the Response Point button on the phone employees can press one button, wait for the chime, and then simply by issuing verbal commands to access anyone in the company directory, including anyone imported via their Outlook contacts. Press the RP button say “Dial John Smith” and it instantly dials. It’s a great usability feature, especially when combined with the Aastra cordless handset.

The AastraLink RP comes with a cordless phone option (part of the 6757i CT RP model) which Microsoft and Aastra told me includes the “Response Point” button with speech-rec functionality. Aastra is one of three Response Point hardware manufacturers and the AastraLink RP base unit comes pre-loaded with SP1 and is available to customers in the U.S. and Canada starting today.

As part of this announcement, Aastra will offer a starter package that includes a base unit, external analog telephony adapter and three phones (including one cordless model) for a suggested list price of $2,400. Additional desktop and cordless phones are available ranging in price from $139 to $399 MSRP for the cordless model; prices are estimated retail prices. D-Link Corp. and Quanta Computer Inc. also will begin to roll out SP1 on their Voice Center IP Phone System and Syspine systems, respectively.

The AastraLink RP phone system is comprised of the RP 500 Base Unit which hosts the Response Point system software, the RP 540 Gateway with 4 analog telephone ports, and a choice of three Aastra Response Point IP phone models. The gateway and phone devices all feature auto-discovery and auto-configuration, making installation a snap.

Three different enterprise-grade phones have been developed for the AastraLink RP system; the entry level 6751i RP, the full featured 6753i RP, and the advanced 6757i CT RP which comes with a cordless handset. Offering larger display screens, superior audio, programmable keys, full duplex speakerphones, and POE support, AastraLink RP terminals deliver enterprise level features and functionality to the SMB market. In addition, the 6753i RP and 6757i CT RP models have headset jacks and support up to three expansion modules.

The All in all, Microsoft seems to be making great strides in the feature-set for their Response Point IP-PBX targetting the SMB, including adding some of my suggested features from my 2007 review. Also, the AastraLink RP phone system seems like a good IP-PBX solution for the SMB at an attractive price-point. I might just have to get one to review and check out.

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