What is it?

FreeSWITCH™ is an open source communications platform. FreeSWITCH™ is a library which ships with a small executable that loads the library, launches the core, and performs the various tasks that are defined by the modules. In its base form FreeSWITCH™ is a soft-switch or PBX telephony application, not completely unlike Asterisk but capable of handling thousands of simultaneous calls.

FreeSWITCH™ makes it possible to build a softphone, PBX system, soft-switch, or interface with other open source PBX systems such as OpenPBX.org, Bayonne, Yate or Asterisk. It can also be used to build a VoIP switching platform uniting various technologies such as SIP (using the Nokia Sofia library), H.323, SCCP, LDAP, Zeroconf, XMPP / Jingle, etc.

As a library FreeSWITCH™ can be used by developers to enable switching in their custom applications. FreeSWITCH™ can be launched not only from a C application, but also via PHP, Perl, or a variety of other languages.

FreeSWITCH™ is written in C, built from the ground up (not a fork of another code base). It is designed to take advantage of as many existing software libraries as possible. It has a modular, extensible architecture, with few and necessary functionality in core (libfreeswitch) with optional modules to do the rest.

FreeSWITCH runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, ARM, and other Unix flavors.

It is licensed under the MPL.

Features

• Runs on Win32/Mac/Unix
• IVR API
• 8kHz/16kHz/32kHz/48kHz audio
• Soft conferencing
• SIP B2UA/SRTP/TLS
• SIP BLF/SLA/PBX features
• Presence
• Google Talk
• IPv4/IPv6
• ENUM/ISN
• Async audio
• Event/logger engine
• Real time
• zRTP (libzrtp)

Supported protocols

• SIP (Sofia-SIP)
• Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP)
• Google Talk (dingaling)
• H.323 (OPAL) (beta)
• Skype (Skypopen) Watch 4 part video of Giovanni Maruzzelli on Skypopen.

VoIP Today News

• Visual Dialplan 3.2 released, with support for credit card processing. (3 Oct 2011 | 6:21 am UTC)
• DAHDI-Linux 2.5.0.1 and DAHDI-Tools 2.5.0.1 Released. (10 Sep 2011 | 9:25 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.8.6.0-rc3 Now Available. (29 Aug 2011 | 6:21 am UTC)
• Sangoma Acquires All Key Assets of VegaStream. (23 Aug 2011 | 9:50 am UTC)
• All Video Channels/Protocols for an advanced IVVR. (18 Aug 2011 | 6:23 am UTC)
• Mavilla: Asterisk Dialer for free and open source. (16 Aug 2011 | 6:52 am UTC)
• Contact Center uses standard SIP phones. (15 Aug 2011 | 6:19 am UTC)
• DAHDI-Linux 2.5.0 and DAHDI-Tools 2.5.0 Released. (9 Aug 2011 | 5:43 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.6.2.20 Now Available. (8 Aug 2011 | 8:42 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.8.5.0 Now Available. (18 Jul 2011 | 4:43 am UTC)
• Safi Communications Suite 1.5.6 Release Candidate 1 is here! (11 Jul 2011 | 4:01 pm UTC)
• Asterisk VQM update is available! (2 Jul 2011 | 9:06 am UTC)
• Asterisk conferencing module: AppKonference 1.7 is now available! (27 Jun 2011 | 7:09 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.4.41.1, 1.6.2.19-rc1, and 1.8.4.3 Now Available (Security Release). (27 Jun 2011 | 7:08 am UTC)
• AstChannelsLive 3.0 is available now! (23 Jun 2011 | 7:25 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.4.42-rc2 Now Available. (21 Jun 2011 | 4:36 am UTC)
• AsterUVX - Asterisk Unified Voice eXchange. (14 Jun 2011 | 5:26 am UTC)
• MDtel selects VXI* VoiceXML browser for Asterisk over Nuance Recognizer 9. (9 Jun 2011 | 4:43 am UTC)
• The Architecture of Open Source Applications. (6 Jun 2011 | 8:38 am UTC)
• Asterisk 1.8.4.2 Now Available. (3 Jun 2011 | 6:42 am UTC)

News Resources

• Switch - Itel billing is designed for the user’s convenience which allows them to be at ease while making calls through Mobile VoIP switch.
• freeswitch.net.ru - Latest News About FreeSWITCH - Communication Consolidation in English, Russian, Ukrainian
• FreeSWITCH 1.0.6 book
• VOIP Today Magazine - Keep up to date on the latest news and views about VoIP and FreeSWITCH PBX.
• SIP and User Directory in FreeSWITCH

Billing Systems

• ITSPtec Complete mature VOIP Billing System for the major open source telephony engines namely FreeSwitch, Asterisk , Yate and OpenSIPS. Offers Carrier services, calling card, residential, and multi-tenant PBX systems. Hundreds of installations. Includes pre and post paid account management, invoicing, rate plans, special packages, payments, rates, vouchers, CDR reports, billing reports and more!. View percentage profitability on call termination per customer account, daily, weekly and monthly. See * ITSPtec

3rd Party Software

• bvtapi by babblevoice A generic SIP TAPI bridge. Designed and primarily tested on Freeswitch. Is capable of screen popping and dialling (it uses SIP presence for screen popping). Open source.