Year: 2018

Sangoma Reaffirms Open Source Communications Commitment and Leadership at AstriCon

Posted on by Jim Machi

New Releases of Both Asterisk and FreePBX Software Announced

AstriCon, ORLANDO, Fla., October 9, 2018 – Sangoma Technologies Corporation (TSX VENTURE: STC), a trusted leader in value-based Unified Communications (UC) and UC as a Service (UCaaS) solutions and the world’s largest provider of open source communications solutions, today at the annual AstriCon users and developers conference, announced Asterisk 16 and FreePBX 15, the next major releases of the world’s two most popular open source communications projects.

“On behalf of all the employees of Sangoma and Digium, I would like to welcome the global community of open source communication developers to AstriCon,” said Bill Wignall, President and CEO of Sangoma. “It is clearly the premier event in the world today for this part of our industry, with attendance approaching 1,000 people, dozens of speaking sessions from amongst hundreds of submitted abstracts, and a full exhibitor floor. I’m very excited about this year’s event, and as we work hard at bringing our two companies together, I’d like to take this opportunity to assure the community of our commitment to these critical open source projects that mean so much to the communications world. I hope that today’s major releases of both Asterisk 16 and FreePBX 15 demonstrate that we are already actively delivering even more innovation that will further enhance the missions of the two projects and their value to the communities.”

Read the Full Press Release

FreePBX EndPoint Manager & PhoneApps Now Free for Digium D Series Phones

Posted on by tonyclewis
Great news for Digium D Series phone owners. Sangoma is pleased to announce that the latest Edge release of FreePBX EndPoint Manager (EPM) and PhoneApps now support the Digium D Series phones free of charge. In the past you would need to purchase a commercial module license to use Digium phones with EPM and PhoneApps as a 3rd party phone, but now that Digium is part of the Sangoma family we want to save you money!

Currently this includes the following D Series Digium phones: D40/45, D50, D70 and all D6X. As of this release the D80 is not supported in FreePBX or PBXact, but we are working on getting that done ASAP for all of our users.

The following versions of EPM and PhoneApps are the minimum version you need to be using to have Digium phone support unlocked for free.

  • FreePBX or PBXact 14 EndPoint Version 14.0.2.153 or greater
  • FreePBX or PBXact 13 EndPoint v13.0.118.103 or greater
  • FreePBX or PBXact 13 or 14 Restapps 13.0.92.20 or greater

Stay tuned here for more updates, and welcome to the new Sangoma!

Sangoma, Open Source Communications & AstriCon

Posted on by Jim Machi
With Sangoma now the primary developer and sponsor of the world’s two most widely used open source communication software programs (Asterisk and FreePBX), I find myself working for the largest open source communications company in the world! And with AstriCon two weeks away, this is a good time to reflect on that journey.

I’m not sure I saw this coming, especially coming from the UNIX System V world where I saw Linux totally supplant what we had built there. And when I went to Dialogic from that world, I latched onto Linux drivers immediately for my products. This had the effect of showing me both sides of the disruption in the UNIX/Linux atmosphere. Ultimately Linux ended up being better for the customers, and the industry, and it’s now in more places than UNIX could have ever imagined.

Here at Sangoma, with Asterisk and FreePBX, the disruption caused by those products is somewhat mature. It has changed the industry, but there is still more to do. Voice obviously isn’t as central to enterprise communications as it used to be, but it is still important. And Asterisk is still an open source communications platform, so it is still there for creative minded people to build on. This has led to our growth as a company, and will be part of our continued growth.

FreePBX By the Numbers
Download Infographic

Now that Sangoma is at the helm of both of these products, we are still getting questions about whether Asterisk and FreePBX will merge. Before I answer that question, I want to make a point that we at Sangoma take the “stewardship” of these open source platforms seriously. We’re not going to do anything rash. Both Asterisk and FreePBX will continue. They serve two different purposes. Asterisk is a development platform for many different kinds of communication solutions. The most widely known of course is a PBX, with FreePBX being an example of a such a PBX. FreePBX is built on Asterisk, so they don’t compete at all. They are complementary and have always been complementary.

Yes, developer teams can share ideas and new features as applicable given a PBX is an important result of Asterisk, but that doesn’t mean they’ll merge.

Join Sangoma at AstriCon to hear more about it!

FreePBX 15 Alpha Now Available for Testing

Posted on by Andrew Nagy

It’s been a long time since we last updated you on the work in FreePBX 15. We started working on FreePBX 15 around August of last year. Throughout this time, we’ve continued to support FreePBX 14 and 13 with countless bug fixes and even a few new features. In this post we’d like to bring you up to speed on what’s been going on in FreePBX.

When we began working on FreePBX 15 our goal was to limit the number of features being added to focus on a small number of pain points we’ve repeatedly heard about from YOU! In fact, it’s your feedback that’s helped us to complete the 2 major features of this release; a reworked version of backup & restore with the ability to do between major version restores (want to back up from 14 and restore to 15? Now you can!) and a way to allow you to better integrate FreePBX into your existing workflow and processes using an API (Application Programming Interface).

FreePBX 15

Learn more about the new Backup and Restore in FreePBX 15 on our wiki: https://wiki.freepbx.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=114852215

While we’ve been quiet since January with our most recent blog post asking for additional feedback on FreePBX 15, the team has been hard at work ensuring we are able to deliver on what we promised and give everyone a chance to play with it. Without further ado, on behalf of the FreePBX and Sangoma team, we are officially releasing FreePBX 15.0 in alpha today for everyone to play with. In this alpha release, all open source FreePBX modules support the new backup & restore methods, which will allow for between major version restores. Instead of trying to group all data together in backup & restore each module is now responsible for its own data during the backup and restore process. Second, we have completed about 10 modules using our new built-in API, powered by GraphQL with more planned soon.

FreePBX 15

Learn more about the FreePBX API on our wiki https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/API

Now with that said, we also know that we asked you for feedback for what you wanted to see in FreePBX and we’ve been actively watching and listening to your suggestions. Unfortunately though, we were unable take on the added workload and really focus on any additional features you’ve ask for, but we look forward to working with the community to bring them to future releases of FreePBX.

Great, but how do I get FreePBX 15?

In the past, we’ve traditionally released an ISO and asked everyone to download and install for testing. However, we are taking a different approach this year with the hopes that it’s easier on YOU to test and provide feedback on the new functionality. This year we are releasing a version upgrade module but not through our traditional methods. Usually we release the version upgrade module via module admin, when we release our release candidates allowing customers to upgrade from the previous version, as we feel the product is close to its final release. This year we are releasing the version upgrade module at the link below which users can manually choose to download, upload and install to move to 15 and not wait for FreePBX 15 to be released as a Release Candidate. Once we feel FreePBX 15 is closer to an RC we will publish new ISOs and move the version upgrader into the module admin system in FreePBX.

However, before rushing off to upgrade your system, please note that this is NOT INTENDED FOR PRODUCTION USE. Let’s me say that one more time, please DO NOT INSTALL THIS ON A PRODUCTION SYSTEM! The version upgrade module is being provide for users to upgrade a new installation or backup of an existing system. The code will have bugs and at this point shouldn’t be relied on for production use.

To try out FreePBX 15, follow the following steps:

  • Navigate to your PBX, login and go to Module Admin
  • Click “Upload Module”
  • Make sure “Download from the web” is chosen and enter http://mirror1.freepbx.org/modules/packages/versionupgrade/versionupgrade-14.0.1.1.tgz as the “Download Remote Module”
  • Click download from web
  • Go to Manage local modules
  • Install the new module (should show locally available)

At this point you have done the equivalent of downloading and installing the module as if it had been available online. To complete the process, select the ’15 Upgrade Tool’ from the FreePBX Menu and follow the instructions on the screen to upgrade to the ALPHA version of FreePBX 15.

We hope you enjoy this release and that it makes working with FreePBX easier for everyone moving forward. As always, please report any issues to issues.freepbx.org.

Andrew Nagy, On behalf of the FreePBX Team

Remote IP Phone Security Using VPN

Posted on by Scott Beer
Using VPN (IP-Sec) is a completely different way to provide a secure VoIP solution. Using already well-established encryption tunnel technologies, a secure tunnel is created between the remote phone and the IP‑PBX.

In this example, the IP‑PBX resides behind a typical network firewall. The firewall is the border element between the Internet and LAN. The remote phone is located on a remote network across the Internet and the remote phone is establishing a VPN (IPSec) tunnel to the IP‑PBX. VPN (IPSec) is a network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts the packets of data sent over the network. The firewall is relaying the VPN (IPSec) tunnel from the remote phone to the IP‑PBX.
Security Best Practices

In this example, the IP‑PBX resides behind a firewall, the firewall is the border element between Internet (or untrusted network zones) and Local Area Networks (or trusted zones). The firewall is a network security device and will forward the VPN (IPSec) traffic from the remote phone to the IP‑PBX.
Security Best Practices

If you enjoyed this blog, and would like to learn more about Security Best Practices for VoIP, download our whitepaper here: sangoma.com/voip-security-best-practices/