Is Linux Used in Production Telephony? 354
jamesva asks: "The telecommunications industry is rapidly converging on Windows NT/2000 for all telephony and voice-related needs. Most ACD systems, virtual operators, and voicemail are being ported to Windows if they're not already running on it.
In the past, telephony apps have existed most
notably on OS/2, SCO, and even DOS. However,
free Unix (or unix-like) platforms have absolutely no penetration in this area, with seemingly no chance on the horizon.
The Bayonne app server from the GNU folks seems to be the one exception, but even then there doesn't
seem to much built around it or anyone using it. It reached a 1.0 release in September and was met with no fanfare. Even the
LinuxTelephony doesn't seem to have much news. Can someone prove me wrong? Why is this the case? I'm interested in finding out if anyone is using Linux (or any free OS) in a production environment for something like voicemail or ACD. These types of systems require high availability and reliability and Linux just seems like a natural fit."
Wait a second.. (Score:3, Interesting)
3Com's NBX System is a BSD Variant (Score:3, Interesting)
Here at work we use a 3Com NBX 100 system [3com.com].
I've FTP'd into it and it seems to be running some sort of a BSD variant.
I guess it could also run linux.. but I don't quite feel like pokeing around in our production telephone system.
asterisk (Score:2, Interesting)
limited penetration (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, I think the fact that vendors support creation of telephony systems using Linux at all is an indicator that it is in fact being used. I would not use the relative success/failure of a handful of telephony related projects as a guage for the success/failure of Linux in telephony.
But for what it's worth, I am aware of a $7-digit custom speech system that's running reliably on RedHat 4.2
Not the fit you want (Score:3, Interesting)
They probably *could* do the same thing under Linux, but I'd rather that they not do it. (The situation with Oracle on Linux is already too close IMHO).
Is it worth it for the companies? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wait a second.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Avaya (Score:2, Interesting)
Extensively used in the SIP community (Score:2, Interesting)
In the SIP community, Linux is used quite extensively. I just returned from an even called SIPIt [sipforum.org] which is the major interoperability event for SIP based telephony. There were around 50 vendors there -- everyone from big players like Cisco and Polycom to little startups. Many, many people there were using Linux for their products -- I would say at least 50%.
I also have worked with several SIP companies recently, Vovida [vovida.org], and open source SIP stack and suite of applications later aquired by Cisco, and Jasomi [jasomi.com], a company that produces telephony boundary control products. These places used Linux extensively as the deployment platform, and there are real working deployments out there using these products.
So for SIP anyway, the answer is a resounding yes!
I simply *cannot* risk using Linux in business... (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't designed to be a flame, or a troll and this isn't an attempt to start a my OS is better than your OS flame war. It's just a fact of life that I've observed.
As a manager responsible for exactly these types of things for a very large corporate, I wouldn't use Linux in these applications, or in any business related way in my company. I cannot.
'WHY EVER NOT?' I hear you ask (and yes, I can hear that indignant tone, and the anger rising in your voice from here).
My Answer to why not (You're not gonna like this): "Because it's Linux".
My business-based perception of Linux is that it's a random assembly of a large assortment of independant programs. They probably all work together, but no-one ever checked that to a level that I, in my position, can rely on to the extent that I would be prepared to put my butt on the line with.
Linux is a *kernel*. That's it. I can, to some extent, rely on that - but even that has it's issues.
There are too many operating systems that call themselves 'Linux'. So tell me, which one is the One True Linux(tm)? And while you're there, answer me this: Do you answer rhetorical questions?
I don't hate Linux. I *love* the open source movement, and I love free software almost as much. There's an incredible array of absolutely brilliant work out there. I use Linux lots, every day. I run Mandrake and Red Hat at home. The fact that, despite that I've been a professional unix administrator for over ten years, but the fact that I still have problems with the most basic 'these should have been fixed before release' problems on a daily basis with both my samples of 'Linux' tells me that I absolutely cannot put my nuts on the line with these OS's in a business critical production application
Telephony is exactly that: A business critical production application. Even more so for a company that makes it's money from telemarketing or customer service. I absolutely *cannot* send the entire staff out for coffee mid-afternoon because the flurgenhurger didn't work with the dooverlacky and it took the production box down.
Because Linux is so loose, so uncontrolled, and so 'random', I cannot - in my capacity as a senior manager responsible for the uptime of business critical systems - risk using 'Linux' in any of it's incarnations in this environment.
What I must do is stick with the tried, true, and proven. Those that are whole operating systems, not just kernels, that are centrally managed and controlled by one body.
What are those? Which are the OS that I /would/ use in my production
environment? Solaris, FreeBSD, and HP-UX of course, in that order. What else?
Now, one more thing: If you've read this, and you're angry, and you feel that you need to flame me for this: You didn't understand what I just said.Regardless of that, I'm expecting a raft of "you're stupid" and "you like goatse.cx" and "your mother smells of elderberries" and other well considered counter-arguments. Save it thanks.
Re:Are the applications there? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, not in the telephony market.
Solaris has lots of penetration there, as did SCO and as do lots of little proprietary real-time operating systems. Windows? Not hardly.
Linux is a fairly natural choice if it can meet the reliability requirements; quite a bit of money and engineering time is being put into just that. My former employer, MontaVista Software, has a high availability add-on [mvista.com] to their embedded Linux distribution; this add-on is aimed at folks in markets just like this one. Hopefully in a few years efforts such as theirs will make Linux a strong competitor in markets, such as this, requiring extreme reliability. (No, Linux is not "extremely reliable" -- not in a market where it's not unusual to have two or more completely independant hot-swappable CPUs sharing a backplane).
Your nice, stock little "are the applications there?" answer is useful in 99% of all relevant situations -- but the telephony market (and most particularly the embedded telephony market) isn't Yet Another Area where Windows is used by most of the computing world. Neither Microsoft nor the Linux vendors have a strong foothold there. Likewise, where the "Linux desktop" was a few years ago was utterly irrelevant to telephony applications, because the desktop has nothing to do with telephony -- and nobody even pretends that a monkey with a MCSE can configure or administer a heavy-duty PBX system.
Mind you, I'm not a telephony engineer. I'm just some guy who worked at a damned good embedded systems house for a while and got a chance to see some of the hardware and software needs the telephony folks have, and appreciate exactly how serious they are about their uptime. The desktop? They don't care about the desktop. They care about reliability -- really, really heavy-duty serious reliability. Linux doesn't really have it yet, and Windows sure as hell doesn't. But we're working on it.
Re:no linux (Score:3, Interesting)
There is tremendous fear from the legal part of the house that using Linux _could_ open us up for lawsuits, primarily in the area of intellectual property, but stability and support is also a concern. What would happen if a 911 call didn't get through and somehow linux was to blame? Lawsuit?
In fact, use of any GNU or other free/shareware licensed SW is completely forbidden throughout the enterprise. There are exceptions, but those are difficult to get signed.
Uptime, huge amounts of support (SUN, EMC, HP, STK, Nortel, Cisco) are required. For Linux, I don't believe the support companies could keep up with our support needs for even a small subset of the applications (we have 1,000s). We won't get into scalability, but it is routine to have 8 64-way servers performing a task and to be considering adding a few more for additional processing and failover. Sometimes I wonder why we're leaving mainframes, then I remember the costs.
Next Generation Voice (Score:1, Interesting)
Products aimed at the Big Telcos, requiring carrier class service (99.999% Uptime) are using Solaris on Sun or OEM Sparc hardware or they are using proprietary Unix versions as is traditional in this market. The SoftSwitch or Call Manager is the next gen product here. It talks SS7 or ISDN to the phone network, and uses MGCP, SGCP, or some other proprietary protocol to control some type of hardware gateway that has all the T1/E1s connected to it. The softswitch can also instruct the gateway to hand off calls to a VoIP network, and can signal in the VoIP network using H.323, SIP, or a proprietary protocol.
For the enterprise, where uptime is not as critical (tell that to someone who can't make a phone call
The only place where Linux is making in-roads is in the SIP world. There are companies out there making and selling SIP Proxy servers that run on Linux, and yes they are being deployed in the real world. SIP won't save us through. MSN Messenger is bundled with every copy of XP, and they're giving it away free to everyone else. So you aren't going to get rich writing a SIP softphone that runs on Windows.
If you're really curious about the future of VoIP and voice in general, read up on SIP. Your cellphone will be running it before you know it.
That's the view from behind the curtains here in the VoIP world.
Too new (Score:3, Interesting)
So I'm supposed to bet the farm, our company, and MY job on recommending a 1.0 release of a pivotal tool that:
a) no one else uses
b) requires a massive $ investment to get off the ground
c) has only been out for 30 days.
d) has no support from the company that builds the call center respondent database.
Not likely.
If for whatever reason it craps out, we are out of business. I don't care so much about the operating system as I do the combination of operating system AND application. A crappy tool that runs under Linux is far, far worse than a good tool that runs under a properly administered Win2k OS.
Recommending Linux merely because it is Linux is a fast way to the unemployment line.
Simple: complexity (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right that *nix is a perfect fit for all of this; remember Unix was invented [bell-labs.com] at Bell Labs [bell-labs.com]. The auxiliary applications are there; to support your phone switch you need to reliably record and report all activity across your switch for billing, acct. tracking, etc. I would guess that *nix runs the backbone [montagar.com].
If you'd like you can become a dealer [1cti.com] for the company that claims to have 'the world's first Linux technology based voice processing [1cti.com]' including Unified Messaging.
By the way I think that Bayonne [gnu.org] is encompassed in the umbrella project of GNUComm [gnu.org]; hopefully it's just a matter of time before someone finishes the Embedded Linux Phone Switch [sourceforge.net]. As an incentive to anyone who develops and releases a free system: even used [telemovers.com] handsets cost big money for a particular phone switch; pick wisely 'cause you're most likely stuck with it for a little while. Caveat: you will most likely be pushed out of the market by softphones.
Since you're in the market and I just went through this myself contact me off list and I'll share my experience with Inter-Tel Technologies [inter-tel.net] which is one of the fastest growing [business2.com] companies in the US (short version: no I don't work there and overall positive).
Major Carriers Using Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
QUALCOMM Is Unix.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux, Unix and NT in Telephony (Score:2, Interesting)
It's true that it is much easier to find NT/Windows in a NOC or operations network these days; they typically serve as platforms for reporting, remote graphical configuration interfaces, desktop workstations, etc.
Linux and Open/FreeBSD can be found in telephony networks
Finally, the role of UNIX in telephony is becoming more central (or core if you would)
So, the news of UNIX's demise is perhaps a little premature.
Natty
Worms eating the Exchange (no pun) (Score:3, Interesting)
Turned out that it was the PABX control system. It didn't run any virus protection software, because all antivirus software tested brought down the software.
Now, here's the horrible bit. The PABX itself is a solid bit of engineering, with an ASCII only bit of RS232 based interface controlling it. If those bits had even remotely been documented, anyone with experience with something as simple as expect could have coded up an interface to it in a day at most -- much less time than what was invested in bringing the Windows interface to it on line.
To this date, we're not using the advanced features of the system because just getting it to work right on the supported platform turned out to be too great a nightmare to offset the possible gains from it.
PABX interfaces are the prototypical illustration of why documenting the low level interface can benefit the advanced user without impeding sales of the "integrated" windows "solution" to customers who can deal with interfacing Windows stuff. We're as shortstaffed in Windows DDE skills as we are in low level Unix stuff, but if the RS232 interface had been documented, we could've assessed the risks and benefits of talking directly to the hardware and make an informed decision on which group should handle the PABX interface and which tools to use.
The PABX is basically on life support, because the bundled apps suck and implementing a simple toolkit that covers our basic needs is impossible for lack of docs. That, in management terms, is a "lose-lose" proposition.
Re:Mitel (Score:1, Interesting)
We use Linux in a BIG telco company (Score:2, Interesting)
I work for the biggest telecommunication enterprise in Canada and we migrate our SCO servers to Linux (Redhat 7.x). We have a LOT of servers across Quebec and Ontario.
We use Dialogic and NMS cards with T1. We provides many real-time applications on it for all clients that use a Vista 350 (or similar) screenphones or wireless phones. On our servers, we also run text to speech and speech recognition applications.
We saw a big improvement in our servers performance and reliability.
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
Irony is.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wait a second.. (Score:2, Interesting)