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May 24, 2022

• Digium The Benefits of a Managed SD-WAN Service

  Before we talk about the benefits of a managed SD-WAN service, let’s talk about what SD-WAN is. In my last blog, we discussed a Managed Internet Service, whereby a company like Sangoma could manage the internet connections to all of the buildings in an enterprise. And these internet connections could take various forms such as cable, DSL, fiber, wireless, etc.

  SD-WAN leverages these different transport mechanisms so that enterprises can connect securely to the cloud applications that the enterprise is running. Sure, a VPN could do that but a VPN manages the connection, and would not transfer the IP address to another of the transport mechanisms in case of a failure. As such, SD-WAN benefits over VPN, or MPLS, or some other dedicated connections mechanism is utilization of different types of transport mechanisms, centralized management for the enterprise, higher bandwidth given aggregations of links, and typically reduction in cost of your networks.

  Enterprises may choose to run their own SD-WAN services, or may choose to go to a managed services provider to offer managed SD-WAN to the enterprise. Why would an enterprise do that? What are the advantages to such an arrangement?

  Well, first, there is an expert team of people to fully manage your SD-WAN, or co-manage it with your team. And Sangoma, through our acquisition of NetFortris, provides Managed SD-WAN Services to companies of all sizes. We are not just a reseller of an SD-WAN solution as we have our own international SD-WAN backbone with 40+ PoPs and growing. And our cloud UC platform is also on that network, for a seamless experience. We also host and manage all headend and cloud orchestration components for your deployment.

  The post The Benefits of a Managed SD-WAN Service appeared first on Sangoma.

May 19, 2022

• ng-voice The arrival of VoNR and what it means for service providers

  With the widespread roll-out of 5G well underway, there is a need for service providers to rethink voice services to capitalize on opportunities created by the new technology. If service providers are to truly deliver on their 5G standalone promise, Voice over New Radio (VoNR) must be a part of their 5G strategy.

  In this blog, we’ll explore what the arrival of VoNR means for service providers and why cloud-nativity is key to delivering on the 5G voice promise. 

   

  Why the need for VoNR?

  VoNR (also referred to as Voice over 5G or Vo5G), is the capability in 5G mobile networks that facilitates voice calls. Until recently, mobile operators have been deploying 5G non-standalone (NSA) networks–5G networks reliant on a 4G core. While this evolution in the next generation of mobile technology has been a great step towards “real” 5G, customers on 5G today are still experiencing VoLTE calls–and indeed 2G and 3G calls in some instances. As customers continue to expect more from their 5G experience, it’s critical that mobile operators match expectations with reality. 

  VoNR services work by using an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), using a 5G radio and core network architecture to provide voice services for cloud-native 5G standalone networks.

   

  The impact of VoNR for telcos

  The 5G network opens up new opportunities for voice services and the way in which they are delivered.

  VoNR presents telcos with the ability to leverage the low latency benefits of 5G technology to deliver seamless voice services for mobile users.  

  The key benefits of VoNR include:

  • The removal of disruption during calls, as voice calls using the 5G network are not required to detour via the 4G/LTE network. 
  • The ability to maintain a high-speed data connection even whilst on calls. This makes it possible to download files in the background at a stable high speed, for example. Battery saving for smartphones, as additional energy isn’t required to switch to 4G network technology. 

  The higher quality of service VoNR can offer will support revenue growth for telcos, by creating an overall higher quality of experience and encouraging uptake over other voice services. For example, users may opt to use VoNR, rather than VoIP services, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. In addition, a better experience will contribute to lower churn rates for operators. 

  Fundamentally, VoNR will allow telcos to offer an overall higher quality of service, through more stable call connections, lower latency and reduced battery usage for mobile devices.

   

  Cloud-native and VoNR

  To unlock the true benefits of VoNR, being cloud-native is key. It can deliver additional benefits to the already enhanced service, including flexibility and fast deployment, with lower costs. 

  Service providers need to be able to deliver voice services in a way that meets subscriber demands and needs, while reducing costs and improving their margins. A truly cloud-native approach to VoNR will help them to do exactly that. 

  At ng-voice, we offer a VoNR solution that is truly cloud-native and fully containerized. Our cloud-native IMS core is the first 100% containerized and Kubernetes-based fully-fledged IMS solution on the market. With the smallest container sizes, a high level of automation, and minimal use of resources, our IMS core is scalable, flexible, cost-efficient, and easy to deploy and manage.

  To find out more about why our cloud-native VoNR solution is right for you, contact our team at: sales@ng-voice.com or learn more here.

  

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  Varun Jain

  Customer Solution Architect

  Publisher Bio

  Varun Jain is a Customer Solutions Architect for the Sales Team, he has over 16 years of experience in telecom industry, working for companies like Ericsson India Global services PVT LTD and NOKIA.

May 12, 2022

• Digium RAY BAUM’s Act & 911 Dynamic Location Routing

  On January 6th 2021, the deadline for RAY BAUMs act compliance for fixed Interconnected VoIP, Multi-line Telephone systems, and Telephone Relay Services had hit. Requiring “dispatchable location” to be shared when making a 911 call from fixed services, or services with a physical address associated with it (e.g. wired phones).

  Now, a year later, on January 6th 2022, we reached the deadline for RAY BAUM’s for non-fixed services. Non-fixed just refers to service that is not tied to a physical location (also known as “nomadic” or “mobile” devices) that can be readily moved by the user to multiple locations and/or be used while in motion. This would include things like softphones on laptops/mobile phones.

  What is a “dispatchable location”?

  The goal of the act is to provide specific location information for the emergency services personnel to allow them to quickly locate the caller. There are ultimately 2 components to a dispatchable location:

  1. Civic Address or coordinate-based location information that can be used to determine the civic address
  2. In-building location such as Suite, Apartment, Room #, or Floor

  Practically, the information sent should be the most specific information that you can give as to the caller’s whereabouts. In a building with marked rooms, that would mean a room number, but if a large building has unmarked rooms, the floor should be sent at the very least.

  How can I be compliant?

  While the deadline for fixed devices has already past a year ago, we’ll discuss those as well. There are a few different options in terms of compliance for fixed devices. Since fixed devices won’t change their location, it’s much easier to handle compliance on them (hence, the faster deadline for them).

  Using traditional E-911 service, a fixed device can have a specific ANI assigned to it that has that phone’s specific location registered to it. For example, one device would have 412-555-1111 registered as 123 Sesame Street Suite 101 and another device would use 412-555-2222 registered to 123 Sesame Street Suite 202. This is the simplest way of handling compliance under the limitations of traditional E-911 service.

  However, traditional E-911 service will not work for non-fixed devices since it’s not typically possible to update registered addresses in real time. For non-fixed devices, you will need to utilize a Dynamic Location Service. Fixed devices can certainly benefit from a Dynamic Location service as well, as it would allow you to manage a single 911 phone number instead of assigning a different number to each possible fixed line.

  What is Dynamic Location Routing?

  Dynamic Location Routing utilizes technology like PIDF-LO (Presence Information Data Format – Location Object) to allow for location data to be created and sent at the time a call is made. This means instead of assigning a location to a phone number before the call is made, the device or PBX can send its location at the time of the call either based off input from the user/administrator or using GPS location information.

  For non-fixed devices, this could be used to send the devices GPS coordinates at the time the call is made, or it allows the user to keep updated address information as they move the device around (e.g. between work and home). This could even theoretically be used to update the devices’ location within a building.

  Dynamic Location Routing isn’t just useful for non-fixed devices; a PBX can use dynamic location routing to fill in the in-building location of the specific device making the call. In a multi-line telephone system utilizing traditional E-911 service, you need to manage different numbers for each different location (room/suite/floor/etc.) that you have. However, with dynamic location routing, a PBX could instead use the same number for any device making a 911 call and simply append the sublocation data based off the extension making the call.

  Looking back to our previous example, instead of needing 412-555-1111, 412-555-2222, and 412-555-3333 for suites 101, 202, and 303 respectively, the administrator can simply use 412-555-1111 and have the PBX use PIDF-LO to send the Suite # based off the phone that is making the call.

  Currently, there are not many PBXs that inherently support PIDF-LO, but the teams at Sangoma are working on implementing the feature in most Sangoma PBXs. This is likely to become a staple feature of VoIP devices moving forward and will allow for better management and compliance for your multi-line telephone systems.

  Have more questions?

  VI Communication Services currently offers dynamic location routing with our E-911 service. If you currently have our E-911 service, documentation for the feature can be found in our knowledge base. If you don’t use our E-911 service or have additional questions about it, please contact us.

  The post RAY BAUM’s Act & 911 Dynamic Location Routing appeared first on Sangoma.

May 10, 2022

• Digium The Benefits of a Managed Internet Service

  We all need the Internet. Many of us can’t do our jobs without that access. And for long-time readers of this blog who have read many things from me about UC and UCaaS, those systems can not operate without access to the Internet.

  And for larger companies, with either a few or even a slew of different offices, there is a hodge-podge of Internet access. Someone at the site figures out how to buy it, and they buy it. It may not be the best price, but maybe it was easy to do. And the bills are paid somehow. And the access works, or it doesn’t. And whoever bought it has to deal with the ‘issues’ of slow Internet or the Internet being down. And at this point, it’s impacting business. And that is not good. So, what to do?

  Many companies now turn to Managed Internet Providers to obtain the Internet that best suits each location and proactively manage the uptime to ensure your business has connectivity.

  What types of access are out there? Fiber, Cable, T1, 4G, and Ethernet over copper are some of them. And each of them may make the most sense for different physical locations. Maybe you don’t need fiber at each location. You don’t need one size fits all for your entire company, and you need what’s suitable for your company.

  If this sounds interesting, let’s go through some of the benefits of using a Managed Internet Provider. As indicated above, the provider obtains the best type of access for each site, gets the best price, and does QoS configuration. So the provider would set up your network for your whole company.

  The provider would also perform up/down circuit monitoring and alerting and be there for support so that the provider would manage and maintain it. The provider could also provide network backup, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that either.

  And the company would get one single unified bill from the Managed Internet Provider, so you wouldn’t have to sort through all kinds of invoices that you don’t understand.

  Through our acquisition of NetFortris, Sangoma provides Managed Internet Services to companies of all sizes. In short, we build a customized solution to provide the best connectivity, security, and reliability options for your organization.

  The post The Benefits of a Managed Internet Service appeared first on Sangoma.

• Jitsi Introducing Car Mode!

  Virtual / hybrid meetings are part of our everyday life now. Some meet in their home office, kitchen, slouching in the couch, while taking a walk, or even while driving! We won’t encourage you to have meetings while driving since any distraction can be fatal, but we know many are doing it and decided to implement a distraction free mode for those who choose to have a meeting while in the car.

  On the latest Jitsi Meet beta version (22.2.0) you will notice a new button in the drawer: Car Mode. This will open the car mode screen, a brand new in-meeting experience which has the basic meeting controls like ending the meeting, selecting sound device and microphone muting, but with enhanced sizes so you can easily use them without much distraction.

  

  Car mode also saves you bandwidth as it disables all incoming/outgoing video streams, for a distraction free meeting experience.  Another useful feature in car mode is push-to-talk: simply long-press the un-mute button to keep the microphone active and release it to automatically mute again. Push to talk is especially useful for passengers in the car, or when joining a conference while having a stroll. That’s right, you don’t need to be in a car to use this feature!

  

  CarPlay

  Those of you with Apple CarPlay enabled vehicles may have noticed the car did not show up in the sound devices selection and this created some confusion. This has been fixed and you’ll now see an entry in the audio device selection drawer:

  

  More to come

  This first iteration of the feature only opens the car mode when selected from the toolbar button. We are planning to add automatic detection for the user being in a car and automatically offering to switch to this mode in that case.

  Android users: worry not, better Android Auto integration will come!

   

  Your personal meetings team.

  The post Introducing Car Mode! appeared first on Jitsi.

May 04, 2022

• ng-voice ng-voice is shortlisted for the Cloud Innovative Award at the Carrier Community Global Awards 2022

  ng-voice is proud to announce that has been shortlisted for The Cloud Innovative category within the 6th annual CC-Global Awards (CCGA), a prestigious event that brings together both regional and global operators to celebrate innovative achievements and the best players in the industry.

  
  Our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core has been shortlisted for The Cloud Innovative category, which recognizes the best cloud technologies implemented and utilized to deliver agile, automated, and scalable solutions and services.

   

  For ng-voice, being shortlisted with such valuable players in the telco industry means that we are on the right track to building the future of mobile networks. ng-voice’s Global Sales VP, Qawa Darabi, mentions that “it is a pleasure being recognized in the CC-Global Awards, as we have been working hard to deliver the most innovative, fully containerized and cloud-native IMS in the market to our customers and partners.”

   

  The award ceremony will happen on 23rd June in Berlin within the Europe 2022 CCGM, CC-Mobile Messaging Summit 2022,  and CC-Enterprise Summit 2022.

  

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  Kathrin Hißner

  Content/Digital Marketing Specialist

  Publisher Bio

  With her marketing and design background, as well as her experience in brand and communications management, Kathrin brings her unique skills to ng-voice. As a digital marketer, Kathrin supports our growth strategy by increasing the visibility of our brand to potential customers.

  She enjoys working on information visualization and infographic design.

• Enable Security We're hiring a pentester / security researcher
  Do you know anyone who would like to join the team at Enable Security as a pentester / security researcher? We have a remote open position for the right person. We are mainly looking for someone full-time but persons interested in joining us part-time should also apply. More details can be found at the actual hiring page.

May 03, 2022

• Digium What is MSP and UCaaS all about?

  As many of you know by now, Sangoma has purchased NetFortris, and now we have added some new “Managed Services” offerings. What are managed services? It’s no surprise that IT is getting more and more complex. As an IT manager, you have cybersecurity concerns; there are many ways to get connectivity. Your company wants to run all kinds of cloud applications, and now it’s even hard to get the required hardware you need.

  As an SMB or even medium-sized business, it’s hard to keep up. Add onto that you may have outdated/old systems that you constantly have to keep adding “patches” on. And add onto that the ability (or inability) to get enough IT staff. It’s just too much, and as an IT manager, you cannot support the business. As such, another model was born. This model is outsourced IT, offering managed services in an MRR or ARR pricing model.

  And there are all kinds of managed services being offered. You might already have UCaaS, which is a managed service. And you get the benefits of not having to worry about upgrades and the service provider taking care of everything for you. So why not add more? As I said, there are all kinds – from device management and tracking to IoT analysis, security, storage, and disaster recovery.

  And so we get back to the NetFortris acquisition. With this, Sangoma adds the following managed services, in addition to the ones we already have:

  Managed Internet includes mixing and matching connectivity types by location and provides network monitoring, analytics, up/down circuit monitoring, and wireless backup.

  Managed SD-WAN includes:

  • Being able to handle multiple internet connections from multiple providers so that if one connection fails, the customer does not lose connectivity, resulting in uninterrupted uptime
  • The ‘aggregation’ of bandwidth from those two different internet providers makes the customer kind of ‘see’ those as one pipe
  • Traffic shaping whereby certain types of traffic can be given priority or forced down in priority

  Managed Security, or unified threat management, for all traffic into the business network. This service helps protect customers against attacks and losses from spam, viruses, ransomware, botnets, etc.

  In the following few blogs, I will go into more detail on each new managed service.

  The post What is MSP and UCaaS all about? appeared first on Sangoma.

• Jitsi Jitsi as a Service: a two-way street, by Tsahi Levent-Levi

  

  Tsahi Levent-Levi, also known as BlogGeek.me, has established himself as, arguably the most prominent WebRTC analyst. He has been commenting on the industry for the past decade, while also training WebRTC professionals, co-running the testRTC business and that’s without even getting into his prior real-time comms experience with Amdocs and Radvision. We asked Tsahi if he could share his thoughts on RTC CPaaS and specifically how Jitsi as a Service fits into the space. The following is what he wrote. Enjoy!

  ---

  In the past two years I’ve seen many service providers and enterprises run their own video meetings based on Jitsi. It is one of the easiest ways to get video meetings implemented today – with all the bells and whistles.

  After 8×8’s acquisition of Jitsi, the Jitsi team has been hard at work on 4 different tracks:

  1. Continuing to develop Jitsi as an open source community project
  2. Integrating Jitsi into the 8×8 meetings app
  3. Growing and improving their meet.jit.si Jitsi Meet service
  4. Introducing JaaS – Jitsi as a Service – a managed CPaaS offering of Jitsi

  The introduction of JaaS is a very interesting angle to Jitsi, especially when coupled in with the open source project itself.

  Today’s Video API solutions

  Look at today’s video API solutions – the CPaaS vendors who happen to offer video APIs so you can develop your own communication applications. What you’ll find is great platforms for developing your services, with the small caveat of being vendor-locked. The APIs of these vendors are specific to them. Any decision to switch from one vendor to another would necessitate a rewrite of the code communication aspects of the application. And they offer no open source alternative of their own – one where you can just install, host and maintain your environment on your infrastructure of their technology.

  That’s not something bad or new. It is how money is made in many of the cloud API vendors across all sectors of the software industry.

  Lowcode/nocode and video APIs

  In recent years, we have seen a shift and focus in lowcode solutions with video APIs.

  Video APIs were mostly about publish and subscribe. You could publish your microphone, webcam and/or screen, and subscribe to other publisher’s content. While this approach is quite flexible, it is also daunting and prone to performance issues. As they say, with great power comes great responsibility, only that the responsibility here was shifted towards the developers using the APIs.

  Now, it is understood that this approach can’t scale and a different approach is needed. One such approach is to reduce the complexity by offering a higher level abstraction that handle the complexities on their own. These can come in the form of a reference application, new API set or a UI widget that can be embedded into applications.

  Jitsi was similar in a way. It always offered a video bridge (the open source media server), but also the Jitsi Meet experience – a complete implementation of video meetings provided in open source and as a hosted end-user service.

  JaaS – the WordPress of video

  Enter JaaS – Jitsi as a Service

  Jitsi officially announced JaaS in January 2021. It added another layer to the Jitsi story – one of CPaaS and Video APIs.

  With the Jitsi ecosystem, you now had 3 different ways to make use of Jitsi:

  1. Take the Jitsi open source project and build your own application
  2. Use Jitsi Meet’s set of open source projects, install and host it on your own, making whatever changes you see fit to it
  3. Brand and modify the Jitsi Meet experience while having the Jitsi team host and manage the video infrastructure for you

  This reminds me of the way WordPress works – you could take the WordPress framework, install, host and maintain it on your own – or you can use Automattic’s or other vendors managed hosting service for WordPress, removing a lot of that headaches and focusing on what’s important to you – the actual site content.

  With Jitsi, you can decide to run and host everything on your own or use JaaS, having the Jitsi team manage and host it for you, removing a lot of the infrastructure headaches.

  What I love most about this is the dogfooding part. This isn’t only about taking an open source project and making Video APIs out of it. Jitsi Meet is a managed service that has seen its own growing pains as it needed to scale in recent years. A lot of the work done in the Jitsi codebase and the DevOps scripting around it comes directly from end users who communicate and complain directly to the Jitsi team.

  Jitsi a la carte

  As if this weren’t enough, in November 2021, Jitsi announced a kind of an a la carte hosting offering. As that announcement states:

  We are currently working on a service that would let Jitsi users easily connect their self-hosted Jitsi  deployments to 8×8’s PSTN, LiveStreaming, Recording and transcriptions clouds.

  This means that developers can now run their own Jitsi deployment, but then connect it to managed “features” of JaaS on a case by case basis. Want to have PSTN? Push a meeting to a live stream on YouTube? Record a session? Transcribe it? All of these things add complexity to a deployment and can now be abstracted out and “outsourced” to JaaS while maintaining your own hosted Jitsi cluster.

  In a way, Jitsi unbundled their JaaS offering, making it simpler to adopt.

  Towards a two-way street

  From Jitsi, to JaaS through the new a la carte offering, a flexible solution has emerged for developers needing video meeting solutions. One that can be consumed in many different ways.

  This reduces the vendor lock-in challenge that many video API vendors have, simply because you are never bound to the JaaS offering in any way other than them offering the best possible service. Not happy? Take your code and host it on your own. No rewriting or vendor migration necessary.

  I think this gives developers a very compelling solution that is a kind of a two-way street:

  1. From self hosted to managed

  Developers can start by self hosting their own Jitsi Meet service.

  This keeps control in the early days as they get acquainted with the platform and its nuances. At some point as they grow, it makes sense to think about a more global and scalable deployment. And one easy way to get there is to simply switch from the self hosted path towards the managed one by using JaaS.

  2. From managed to self hosted

  Developers can also start from the managed JaaS solution.

  The beauty of it here is that if they are unhappy, or decide they want to do things differently, they can simply install their own Jitsi servers and start maintaining their own infrastructure – without changing the actual application code as they do that.

  With Jitsi and JaaS you can move from a self hosted to a managed service or vice versa.

  Check out the Jitsi offering

  Here’s the thing. If you’re looking for a video meeting service to make your own, and only care about a bit of customization to the video experience itself, then Jitsi is a great solution.

  It enables you to go the route of a self hosted open source solution or to go with a fully managed video infrastructure and video APIs approach. All that wrapped with one of the most popular WebRTC media servers on the market.

  By Tsahi Levent-Levi

  May 5, 2022

  Interested in Jitsi as a Service? Try it out!

  The post Jitsi as a Service: a two-way street, by Tsahi Levent-Levi appeared first on Jitsi.

May 02, 2022

• ng-voice My first month at ng-voice: Axel shares his journey joining the Deployment Team at ng-voice

  I am Axel and I am a telecommunications engineer originally from Mexico. I started my journey at ng-voice as a Deployment Engineer in the Hamburg office and I want to share my experience of the past months in Hamburg.

  Who am I?

  I studied Electronics and Communications Engineering in Mexico City, where I spent most of my life. I started working at Huawei as a Support/Delivery Engineer, and later on had the opportunity to join Nokia México, where I had the chance to work closely with customers on their premises in Latin America and the Caribbean. Then, I moved to Metaswitch México as a Professional Services Engineer, working primarily on the STIR/SHAKEN regulation in the US and Canada. These experiences made me realize that I wanted to look for an opportunity abroad.

  

  
  Why did I join ng-voice?

  I wanted to have a professional career in Germany, so when I came across ng-voice on LinkedIn it appeared to me like an amazing opportunity, especially because I already knew Hamburg, which is an amazing city, and longed to live here. I knew that ng-voice cloud-native IMS was really innovative and top in the industry and I wanted to be a part of it, delivering the best-in-class VoLTE / VonR solution to customers. 

  My experience at ng-voice so far

  I arrived with my family (my wife and 3-year-old kid) in Hamburg on February the 25th and started at ng-voice on the 1st of march. On my first day in the Hamburg Office, I met my teammates and had a welcome lunch to introduce myself and get to know each other a little, they all were very kind and made me feel comfortable. After two years of lockdown measures and adapting to working from home in Mexico, this was a big but pleasant change. Besides, the hybrid work model that ng-voice offers makes it easy to choose whether to stay at home or to go to the office, depending on my schedule. 

   

  Moving from Mexico to Germany implied a bunch of paperwork which I was afraid to do, but the ng-voice team made it really easy for us. I got assistance for getting my Blue Card, housing, as well as for the local registration and kindergarten for my kid, allowing my first weeks to go smoother.

   

  In these first couple of months, I started learning and working on projects along with my talented colleagues, who have plenty of experience and knowledge. I am already looking forward to what we will achieve by putting all of our different backgrounds together. 

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  Axel Arroyo

  Deployment Engineer

  Publisher Bio

  Axel is a member of our deployment team. He had the opportunity to work for major companies in the telco industry, such as Huawei, Nokia, and Metaswitch in Mexico. Axel brings his skills and expertise to understand our customers’ needs to guarantee a smooth delivery of solutions.

April 29, 2022

• Olle E. Johansson 35 years of Open Networking
  Edvina was founded in 1987 and we’ve come a long way since. Today we’re a consulting company working in many areas, with realtime communication and network security as a common theme. Here’s a few examples of projects we’ve been working with during the last five years: Building a realtime platform for live radio broadcast Training […]

April 27, 2022

• Enable Security We're hiring, new SIPVicious PRO tools, advisories and blog post galore
  Welcome to the April edition of the RTCSec Newsletter. We have a lot this month, and this must be the most packed newsletter so far. In this edition, we cover: We’re hiring! Our blog post explaining how OpenSSL’s CVE-2022-0778 is a problem in WebRTC environments Latest SIPVicious PRO news Various blog and news posts: 3CX pre-auth RCE explanation Open SIP relay abuse ITW How LAPSUS$ probably abused VoIP OpenSIPS' new TCP module versus DoS attacks Cisco Expressway and Telepresence VCS vulnerabilities A new tool to exploit STUN and TURN servers called stunner, from Firefart Advisories and vulnerabilities fixed (or not) in: FreePBX pjsip Asterisk PBX JunOS WebRTC Cisco Expressway and Telepresence VCS We bring back the Tweet of the month!

April 26, 2022

• Digium How is UCaaS Priced?

  Every once in a while I’ll get asked by an end-user customer about how “UCaaS is priced”. I get this question since the end-user sees all kinds of pricing, from under $20/seat to quite a bit over that. It’s really important to understand pricing and what you get with that price, before you pick a vendor.

  So, let’s start with that – $20/seat. That means $20 per user per month. And a lot of this kind of pricing comes with 3-year contracts, and over 100 seats. So, when you see pricing under $20 per user per month, you need to understand for how many seats and for the length of time of the contract. And you also need to consider what I’m writing about below. What actually is included in the monthly per user charge?

  The second thing to ask is about the desk phones. Are the phones included in the per user pricing or not? They might be part of the per user per month charge, or you might be able to buy the phones outright at a one-time charge, or you might also be able to pay for them per month. And maybe you also want the mobile and/or desktop client. Is that also part of the monthly per user charge as well. Or is that an add-on charge to use the mobile and / or desktop client?

  Speaking of voice, are you having to pay for the phone numbers (DIDs)? You need to ask about this as well. Or if you have them already, is there is cost to “port” them to your new UCaaS system?

  So, let’s talk about the client. Is it just voice? What about the video part? If video is involved, the UCaaS vendor may be using a 3rd party like Zoom – that likely means yet more additional fees. (Note: Sangoma has its own video meeting service, called Sangoma Meet).

  And the client also probably has a collaboration part. The client referenced above may or may not also include collaboration features (ability to instant message and share files and have workstream channels).

  I also frequently get asked about maintenance costs. When you buy equipment outright, such as buying a PBX or UC system for your premise, typically you will also have a yearly maintenance charge so you can get software updates, etc. In a cloud system, there should not be a separate maintenance charge. It should be included in the monthly price per user.

  There might also be an option for alternative networking. For instance, if your internet connection goes down, do you want the system to be able to switch into a wireless backup? With 4G and 5G, this is possible as well. How much does this cost?

  Sangoma offers UCaaS offerings with easy to understand pricing, and a range of feature options as well.

  The post How is UCaaS Priced? appeared first on Sangoma.

April 21, 2022

• Digium Sangoma Receives 2022 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award

  Sangoma Technologies Corporation (TSX: STC; Nasdaq: SANG) (“Sangoma” or the “Company”), a trusted leader in delivering cloud-based Communications as a Service solutions for companies of all sizes, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named their Unified Communications suite as a recipient of a 2022 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award.  

  Sangoma’s Unified Communications portfolio includes the industry’s most comprehensive, fully integrated suite of “as-a-Service” solutions. Businesses can get all of their communications from a single source and customize them to their unique workflows. Solutions include:

  • Pure Cloud, On-premise, and Hybrid Cloud deployments
  • Unified Communications as a Service
  • Video Meetings as a Service
  • Collaboration as a Service
  • Desktop as a Service
  • Communication Platforms as a Service
  • Contact Center as a Service
  • Fax as a Service
  • Access Control as a Service
  • Security as a Service
  • SD-WAN Managed Services
  • Network Access as a Service
  • Trunking as a Service
  • IP Endpoints
  • Mobile Clients
  • Applications & Custom Development
  • Network Interconnect
  • Development Environments

  “I am honored to recognize Sangoma with a 2022 Product of the Year Award for its commitment to excellence and innovation,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “In the opinion of our judges and editorial team, their Unified Communications portfolio has proven to be among the best communications and technology solutions available on the market. I look forward to continued leadership from Sangoma.

  “It’s an honor to receive recognition for our product excellence for another year,” added Jim Machi, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Sangoma. “As Sangoma continues to innovate and evolve in the industry, we are committed to enhancing our solution suite and offering more resources and support to our partners. We look forward to providing more customers with the all-inclusive solutions they’re looking for through our invaluable partner base that continues to grow with us.”

  The winners of the 2022 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year will be featured in INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine online and on TMCnet.

  The post Sangoma Receives 2022 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award appeared first on Sangoma.

April 19, 2022

• Digium Typical UCaaS Customer

  I get asked the following question quite a bit – “What does your typical end-user customer look like?” It’s really hard to answer that question since every customer is different.

  We have many single-site UCaaS customers that are small offices that might have 20 to 30 employees. These customers NEED excellent phone service – customers call them, at the office. Employees working from home will end for them, or has already ended for them. Our UCaaS service is great for these types of businesses since our all-in-one pricing approach, and features and functionality that fit these customers, is spot on.

  But we also have many multi-site UCaaS customers. Car dealerships, large retail chains, restaurant chains, etc. These have a much larger number of seats, and they are big enough that they might want to have a single dialing plan across multiple sites, use Sangoma Meet video meetings to conduct both internal and external conference type calls and use collaboration for instant messaging across distributed work teams. They might also want integration to Microsoft Teams for internal communications, and use Sangoma UCaaS for calling outside, because of it’s superior call routing capability.

  So, our end-users span from single site small companies to large distributed companies.

  We highlighted a few end-users last summer.

  The post Typical UCaaS Customer appeared first on Sangoma.

April 15, 2022

• Kamailio Development For v5.6.0 Is Frozen

  Here is the formal announcement that the development for the next major version 5.6.0 is now frozen. The focus has to be on testing the master branch.

  Also, the master branch should not get commits with new features till the branch 5.6 is created, expected to happen in 2-4 weeks, a matter of how testing goes on. Meanwhile, the commits with new features in the C code can be pushed to personal branches, new pull requests can still be done, but they will be merged after branching 5.6.

  Can still be done commits with documentation improvements, enhancements to related tools (e.g., kamctl, kamcmd), merging exiting pull requests at this moment, exporting missing KEMI functions and completing the functionality of the new modules added for 5.6.

  Once the branch 5.6 is created, new features can be pushed again to master branch as usual. From that moment, the v5.6.0 should be out very soon, time used for further testing but also preparing the release of packages.

  If someone is not sure if a commit brings a new feature, just make a pull request and it can be discussed there on github portal or via sr-dev mailing list.

  A summary of what is new in upcoming 5.6 is going to be built at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/wiki/features/new-in-5.6.x

  Upgrade guidelines will be collected at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/wiki/install/upgrade/5.5.x-to-5.6.0

  Everyone is more than welcome to contribute to the above wiki pages, especially to the upgrade guidelines, to help everyone else during the migration process from v5.5.x to 5.6.x.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post Development For v5.6.0 Is Frozen first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.

April 14, 2022

• Digium UCaaS and the Automotive Industry: Should Wheels be the Next to Hit the Cloud?

  For so long, the automobile industry has been a consistent field. Reinforced by the needs of every potential customer segment — as consumers, businesses and agencies all need reliable transportation — the demand for vehicles has traditionally been viewed as stable, even as clamor has grown or waned.

  Of course, the last two years have taught us to expect the unexpected. Since the onset of COVID-19, more people than ever are working from home and driving less. This factor, paired with severe logistic and supply chain issues, has hit the auto industry in a very noticeable way. Car manufacturers frequently struggle to meet present demand, with many of them even logging a drastic decline in the number of U.S. vehicles that they are able to produce.

  Today’s automotive sector needs any edge to help drive customer service, production and, most importantly, sales.

  Enter UCaaS. Alternately known as “Unified Communications as a Service” UCaaS is a cloud-hosted portfolio that brings on-demand access to the enterprise communications and collaboration tools that are vital for today’s businesses. Available over a single, streamlined user interface, UCaaS covers aspects such as mobility, business telephony, conferencing, unified and instant messaging and other communication applications.

  Generally speaking, a UCaaS system such as Sangoma’s helps to streamline operations in many different ways, making it an optimal choice — on the front or back end alike — for anyone competing in the auto sector.

  Reinforcing CRM

  UCaaS can help to optimize customer service, presenting elements to aid CRM, including sales oversight, query fulfillment, customer retention and quality assurance. At the same time, the auto sector’s customer-facing window is vastly expanded, replete with in-person and virtual options for car shopping and service requests that only complicate matters.

  By employing a UCaaS system, more call center employees can work remotely, providing access to resources via traditional phone, messenger, website popup or app.

  Improving Call Management

  The UCaaS interface is streamlined to provide quick, easy access to its features. Employees can field, answer and route calls, view and navigate the customer queue, handle queries, record calls, generate custom reports and interact with colleagues over this messaging interface.

  Plus, UCaaS supports other elements to streamline your workflow, including call screening, worker presence and pre-set custom routing and forwarding.

  Promoting Worker Mobility & Oversight

  Car sales/support team members can access UCaaS features from any connected device, including a personal mobile phone. This aspect promotes a work-on-the-go atmosphere while simultaneously making the call center more accessible than before.

  The software also supports internal collaboration, helping to monitor calls, enter private chats and intervene in discussions.

  Streamlining Operations to Lower Cost

  The auto sector can benefit from UCaaS in the same ways as any other industry: by helping to keep your operations organized, putting employees — and even customers — on the same page and promoting streamlined collaboration.

  On the basic level, such pay-per-use offerings from Sangoma and other companies help to save money because of their convenience, subscription package options, as well as the a la carte availability of the options they provide.

  Vehicle manufacturers need to re-establish a legitimate connection with the customer bases that fuel their success. Given fewer commutes, increased gas prices and reduced inventory, the gap between them may only continue to grow.

  Today’s auto sector, at large, would be smart to consider any option that increases its customer satisfaction, operations and cost efficiency. For many, the answer may actually come in UCaaS.

  The post UCaaS and the Automotive Industry: Should Wheels be the Next to Hit the Cloud? appeared first on Sangoma.

April 13, 2022

• TADHack Conner Luzier – seeking full-time or project work in programmable comms / WebRTC

  Conner Luzier is a TADHack regular. Check out his hacks from TADHack-mini Orlando in 2018, 2019, and 2020. He’s also presented at Enterprise Connect several times, how many soon to be graduates have such industry exposure!

  He’s looking for work, ideally full-time, but is happy for project work to build his references in the industry. Conner has shown his abilities and get-up and go time and again at TADHack. So please get in contact with Conner, thank you.

  https://github.com/cluzier

  https://cluzier.github.io

  From TADHack-mini Orlando 2020. TeleQuest (Garrett Curtis, Conner Luzier, Jenn Gibson, Eric Good) – won Apidaze and Intelepeer prizes. TeleQuest is a phone-based adventure game, perfect to keep your social distance while connecting with others.

  From TADHack-mini Orlando 2019. SaveMe by Giancarlos Toro, Conner Luzier, Thiago Pereira, Vikki Horn won prizes from Flowroute, Telesign, and VoIP Innovations. It is a secure video reporting app using WebRTC and SMS.

  From TADHack-mini Orlando 2018. Polls IO by Conner, Paul, Giancarlos used VoIP Innovations to create a service that allows local government to be be more involved with their constituents and allows their constituents to be more involved with the local government by allow easy opinion polling on new projects, bills, etc. This will also allow the local governments to be able to easily send out updates on new legislature and its progress. This polling service can be generalized to be used for businesses and events. They won the VoIP Innovations prize and t-shirts from Code for Orlando. See their pitch video here, and their slides here, and a video of their demo at Enterprise Connect here.

  Conner Luzier's Resume from Alan Quayle

  Here’s Conner at Enterprise Connect in 2019, third from the right.

  

  The post Conner Luzier – seeking full-time or project work in programmable comms / WebRTC appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

April 12, 2022

• Digium A Video Meeting Service Should Be Tightly Integrated with Your UCaaS Platform

  As many of you know, at Sangoma, we have our own video meeting platform called Sangoma Meet. We launched this right around when the pandemic first happened two years ago. And this is integrated well with our UC clients for our UC platforms, Switchvox, PBXact, and Business Voice. You can make a video call outright or context switch from voice and/or text to a video call when using those clients. Or you can set up a meeting, and in the meeting invite, choose to have it occur over Sangoma Meet. It has all the business features you would need – screen sharing, multi-platform support, security settings, easy recording, and, like I said, it’s easy to create meeting invites. We’ll also soon have annotation and live streaming.

  As you may expect, we at Sangoma use it all the time. I’m on it quite a bit. It’s not just “us” using it, though. It’s getting excellent traction out there as a business alternative to Zoom. Last month, in March, we had over 20% growth in users from just a few months ago, with a similar increase in minutes. While our minutes and users are not at the Zoom level, the usage growth shows us our platform is a good business platform. Our customers know this can work for their business needs, and our partners know it too.

  The reason I was reminded to write this blog is really because of NetFortris. We just picked up a whole new bunch of colleagues, who use Zoom all the time, the way we at Sangoma use Sangoma Meet. And we’re doing calls with the NetFortris, a Sangoma Company employees now on Sangoma Meet all the time. So, think of them as a typical company. And they just switched to Sangoma Meet seamlessly.

  It is nice being on calls getting comments like “This works great, I love it”, “This is really solid”, “The picture quality is great”, “It was straightforward to create a meeting”. Comments like that reminded me that we don’t just have a video meeting platform anymore. We have a really good video meeting platform now.

  So, if you’re looking for a UCaaS system and don’t feel compelled to use Zoom, you don’t have to. Just come to Sangoma.

  The post A Video Meeting Service Should Be Tightly Integrated with Your UCaaS Platform appeared first on Sangoma.

• WebRTC Hacks The WebRTC Bitcode Soap Opera (Saúl Ibarra Corretgé)

  Saúl Ibarra Corretgé of Jitsi walks through his epic struggle getting Apple iOS bitcode building with WebRTC for his Apple Watch app.

  The post The WebRTC Bitcode Soap Opera (Saúl Ibarra Corretgé) appeared first on webrtcHacks.

April 08, 2022

• Enable Security Exploiting CVE-2022-0778, a bug in OpenSSL vis-à-vis WebRTC platforms
  Executive summary (TL;DR) Exploiting CVE-2022-0778 in a WebRTC context requires that you get a few things right first. But once that is sorted, DoS (in RTC) is the new RCE! How I got social engineered into looking at CVE-2022-0778 A few days ago, Philipp Hancke, self-proclaimed purveyor of the dark side of WebRTC, messaged me privately with a very simple question: “are you offering a DTLS scanner by chance?” He explained how in the context of WebRTC it would be a bit difficult since you need to get signaling right, ICE (that dance with STUN and other funny things) and finally, you get to do your DTLS scans.
• TADHack TADHack Global 2022 Launch, Save the Date, 15-16 Oct

  TADHack is the largest global hackathon focused on programmable communications since 2014. This year we are partnering with Network X (Broadband World Forum, 5G World, and Telco Cloud) as the pre-event hackathon. This is similar to what we do before Enterprise Connect with TADHack-mini Orlando in March.

  Thank you to STROLID, Symbl.ai, Telnyx, Jambonz, and Subspace for making TADHack possible.

  At TADHack Global 2021 Symbl.ai achieved an amazing result, 21 hacks, and Telnyx was even more impressive with 30 hacks; all created over one weekend by developers from around the world.

  The locations we anticipate running are: Chicago, Tampa, Colombia, South Africa, Berlin, UK, Sri Lanka, Amsterdam, France, and remote (anywhere in the world). We are adding new locations, e.g. TADHack France (run by Le Voice Lab), and Amsterdam as we are the pre-event hackathon to Network X (Broadband World Forum, 5G World, and Telco Cloud).

  We had great success with TADHack Teens in Sri Lanka in 2021 thanks to hSenid Mobile and Ideamart, and plan to expand this initiative to South Africa and the US. We’re training the next generation of programmable communications engineers and entrepreneurs, as well as excellent summer interns!

  We have two additional initiatives for 2022: 

  • Accessibility prize with judges Chris Lewis of Lewis Insight and Manisha Amin, CEO of The Centre for Inclusive Design. We’ll be providing resources to help the accessibility hacks.
  • TADHack Founders Academy to help hacks build product/market fit, seed financing, and preparing for series A using the experience of everyone involved in TADHack. More coming on that soon.

  The TADHack website is still in development, and definitely needs some accessibility improvements Save the date 15-16 Oct 2022, for the largest and longest running global hackathon focused on programmable communications. Thank you.

  

  The post TADHack Global 2022 Launch, Save the Date, 15-16 Oct appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

April 07, 2022

• Digium 3 Ways Mobile Credentials Are Changing Access Control
  Mobile phones are a vital part of our day-to-day lives. We use them for everything from communicating to payment systems via Google Pay or ApplePay. The mobile revolution has also disrupted the access control industry with mobile credentials, effectively replacing the traditional systems with keycards and fobs needed for door entry. With businesses adopting cloud-based platforms and IoT technologies, the use of a smartphone for mobile credentials fits right in. If you have an existing access control system or are moving into a new building, here are the top 3 ways mobile credentials can benefit you, compared to traditional RFID keycard/fob access systems:

  Mobile Credential Benefits

  Let’s look at some of the ways smartphones can permanently change the world of Access Control.

  Better Security

  It’s well documented that RFID keycard systems have clear security challenges such as copying of keys from bad actors to lost/stolen cards. We discussed all of this in detail in our recent blog. Other than the fact that smartphones can’t be copied/cloned, other interesting security enhancements like 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) allow users to leverage biometrics to unlock their phone using FaceID or TouchID. Mobile credentials improve physical security by providing organizations with visual identity verification in addition to the access events recorded in an activity log. If a user loses their mobile device, the administrator can revoke the mobile credentials  immediately, from any remote location, and re-enable once the device is found or a new device is issued. Addressing security issues in real-time is beneficial for safety, and also reduces costly security vulnerabilities and improves the user experience. Also, users are less likely to lend out their personal devices to be used for door entry, so the user helps keep the system secure too. 

  More Convenient

  While tight security measures and convenience don’t usually go hand-in-hand, it does with mobile credentials!  From the user’s perspective, they don’t have anything extra to carry with them to open doors, they simply use the device they always have on hand—their smartphone.  Visitors get a much easier and more welcoming experience too. They get to skip the registration process at the security desk to receive a temporary keycard. Instead, authorized visitors receive temporary mobile credentials via an email they open on their device, containing a secured guest link without needing to download the SmartOffice app. The credential can also be set to expire as the visitor leaves.  And with the demands brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, this aids in reducing the number of touchpoints. The credential can also be set to expire as the visitor leaves. Employees visiting branch offices don’t need to search through a multiplicity of keycards, as is the case with a keycard system. They instead can be authorized quickly via the same mobile app already installed on their smartphone. This is perfect for the administrator as well since they don’t have to deal with the overhead of purchasing and programming keycards and managing check-ins and check-outs.  For the administrator, adding users is very easy. In the case of Sangoma’s SmartOffice Access, onboarding users simply requires an invitation email to the user, where they download the mobile app and click a secured web link to automatically log themselves into their pre-configured account. Since the solution is part of Sangoma’s UCaaS offerings, users are automatically enabled when added to Sangoma’s business tools, and in the same respect, easily removed when needed. For both the user and the administrator, the ability to remotely unlock and lock doors is a great use-case when someone needs entry into the premises and has either forgotten their device, or is a visitor with another authorized reason for requiring entry.

  More Cost-Effective

  Mobile credentials completely eliminate the costs of keycards, their respective printers, storage and handling, and moves the solution from a capital expenditure to an operational one. The costs become more predictable and significantly lower. Think about a larger organization, a hotel or a school, where hundreds or thousands of keycards are issued, over and over again.  In the case of Sangoma SmartOffice Access, the solution is completely wireless, without any  door readers to purchase per door, and no wiring and drill costs to deal with either. If we put this to dollar figures, it would cost an average of $500 per door to deploy (this includes the wireless door lock and the wireless components) where the cost would range from $1000-$2000 with a door reader type solution, per door. And as you add more doors, those price gaps become larger.

  Sangoma SmartOffice Access

  Our solution supports all of these advantages that mobile credentials bring to the modern access control market. It is designed for businesses requiring stringent security measures in a time of increased cyber threats, and for those wanting the cost and time savings of completely wireless deployment. The solution also offers hybrid setup, meaning it works with a business’ existing access control system so that they can plan their migration easily. To learn more about SmartOffice Access, visit www.sangoma.com/access-control.

  Get A Demo

  Get A Demo

  The post 3 Ways Mobile Credentials Are Changing Access Control appeared first on Sangoma.

April 06, 2022

• TADHack Accessibility Resources for TADHack Global 2022

  Over the years we’ve had many accessibility hacks. Last year we had an excellent hack Colloquia11y by team Similarly Geeky, comprising Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin. Its an accessible conferencing solution (using Text To Speech and Speech To Text).

  For TADHack 2022 we’ve created an Accessibility Prize that will be judged by Chris Lewis of Lewis Insight and Manisha Amin, CEO of The Centre for Inclusive Design. Chris and Manisha are also providing some resources to help hackers better understand Accessibility, and how to pitch to a blind person.

  Interview with Chris Lewis, Accessibility Challenges, Straight from the Guide Dog Owner’s Mouth

  I’ve known Chris for several decades He’s been a telecom analyst for 38 years, legally blind for 25 years, and started a focus on accessibility about 7/8 years ago.

  Chris shares his real world experience of using the web as a blind person, getting to a video on a page can take 20-100 clicks. Its like accessing a web page through an IVR (Interactive Voice Response), serial access to what a sighted person accesses in parallel. He demos the challenges he faces using the latest TADHack.com website. I’ve got some work to do there!

  Chris also shares the challenges in using his fancy coffee machine. It has several error lights, e.g. no water, no beans, grounds tray full, drip tray full. But no way to know which one is lit. So he checks all 4 possible problems each time one of them has an error. Chris provides many wonderful insights into the everyday challenges he faces.

  Chris highlights the importance Alexa and Siri play in helping accessibility, for example he needed to know how to spell ‘curfew’. Another challenge is between Zoom, Teams, and many of the other conferencing platforms have different shortcuts, and one of the reasons he’s not yet used Android’s Accessibility tool TalkBack reader is its like learning yet another language, as he already uses iOS and Microsoft’s accessibility tools.

  This 18 min interview is a mine of insights on accessibility challenges and ways of thinking about accessibility. More than I cover in the written section of this weblog, so check out the video. For me, the take away on designing for the edge cases, means the center is free is powerful. And when giving your pitch, focus on the story, and avoid saying, ‘as you can see on the slide’

  Thank you Chris.

  Resources from Manisha Amin, CEO of The Centre for Inclusive Design.

  Coming soon.

  The post Accessibility Resources for TADHack Global 2022 appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

April 05, 2022

• Digium Sangoma at Channel Partners Conference

  Next week, Sangoma will be at Channel Partners at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Channel Partners, at its core, is about all the cloud agents connecting with technology suppliers (people like Sangoma!). And given this is a critical avenue to get our Communication as a Service offering to market, including our UCaaS offering, we will be there. We tend to have back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back (you get it) meetings. It’s lots of great stuff for our partners and us.

  Many readers of this blog will know that Sangoma offers a mix of Communication as a Service offerings – UC, Video Meetings, Collaboration, Apps/CPaaS, Trunking, Fax, and Access Control. Our booth branding will revolve around this “mix” of communications, as you see in the pictures.

  

  And given our purchase of NetFortris last week, we’ll have even more services to sell!

  Come see us. We’ll be serving. Look for us in booth 1439, and we’ll also have a meeting room near the registration area. And if you can’t remember our booth number, go to the bathroom at the show. You’ll see what I mean.

  We’re looking forward to seeing you!

  The post Sangoma at Channel Partners Conference appeared first on Sangoma.

March 31, 2022

• Digium How to Solve Remote Work Security Issues

  In today’s business landscape, remote work has become an increasingly accepted practice. Whether initiated because of COVID-19 restrictions, employee-friendly policy or simple practicality, the fact remains that workers are increasingly completing their daily tasks from a location that is physically set apart from the brick-and-mortar office. In fact, statistics published by Upwork indicate that 42 percent of the U.S. workforce is composed of teleworkers, with estimates projecting that 36.2 million citizens will work in that capacity by 2025. This amount, Upwork noted, marks a two-fold increase over pre-Pandemic levels.

  In light of more businesses embracing a remotely dispersed workforce, one question continually confounds many security administrators:

  How can the organization promote remote work security?

  Perhaps one of the more concerning remote work security issues is that remote workforce technology goes largely unmonitored, day to day. Recently, Forbes identified several key methods that can assist with keeping a company’s remote workforce, their correspondences and shared sensitive documents more secure, even when the theoretical attack surface is larger than ever.

  Establishing Remote Work Security Policy That Promotes Sound Practices and Employee Awareness

  In an environment in which the administrator or security professional has a limited-at-best window into remote worker activity on their private networks, it is critical for the organization to be able to completely trust its staff. This need is compounded by the fact that security breaches are often the result of poor or ill-informed worker choices, opposed to outright maliciousness.

  Today’s organization should promote a cybersecurity policy that focuses on:

  • Deferring to anti-malware and other security software.
  • Promoting cybersecurity education, literacy and awareness.
  • Encouraging smart password management.
  • Mandating periodic data backups.
  • Employing MFA (multi-factor authentication) and passwordless options.
  • Securing personal and other “BYOD” devices.
  • Documenting cybersecurity steps by both parties.

  Above all, policy should include pre-defined objectives to keep these practices a focus for the remote worker.

  Implementing “Zero Trust” Protective Elements

  “Zero Trust” implies that only those with the approved credentials can access information. This concept helps to reduce instances of malicious data interception because it cuts down on the number of employees who have access to—and therefore whose mistakes or malicious behavior could lead to the interception of—information.

  Another particular option to which some organizations turn is the practice of drafting a NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which legally binds the employee to keeping company information and data to which he or she may be privy completely unavailable to non-company employees and, in some cases, any unauthorized party.

  While this concept seems helpful in preventing the spread of company-sensitive data to unwanted parties, it likely accomplishes little. After all, such a policy only really targets staffers with malicious intent; in most cases, an “inside” employee looking to hurt his or her company in an illegal manner is unlikely to be affected by either Zero Trust or NDAs.

  Eliminating Password Sharing

  Workers that tend to share passwords across multiple personal and work-related accounts—and more dangerously, with other workers—should be dissuaded from this practice. This habit is largely based on convenience.

  Conducting Risk Assessments

  Despite its limited view into remote employee behavior, the organization does have some recourse. One option is to assess the level of risk to which individual staff members expose the company, compiling a risk profile upon which action can be taken to promote better worker choices, close security holes, implement technology and provide dedicated cybersecurity training and understanding.

  Additional Measures

  Other solid steps to help secure one’s remote workforce environments include:

  • Employing encryption in a bi-directional manner, thus making it more difficult to intercept information before, during or after transmission.
  • Making use of cloud-based elements such as a Connected Workspace. These platforms are especially vital for offering basic levels of security with minimal need for manual implementation.
  • Leveraging VPN (virtual private network) technology—Forbes recommends no less than L2TP (Layer 2 tunneling protocol)—to secure connections and promote collaboration security over internet-based lines.
  • Eschewing consumer tools such as Dropbox and Google Drive in favor of subscription-based storage and CRM (customer relationship management) software.
  • Providing access to subscription-based security management applications.
  • Establishing a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or other dedicated personnel to specifically oversee information security and integrity.

  The post How to Solve Remote Work Security Issues appeared first on Sangoma.

March 30, 2022

• ng-voice How we use automated integration testing to test our IMS solution at ng-voice

  In this blog post, we are going to discuss what automated integration testing is and how we exercise it at ng-voice. This blog will provide a brief overview of the usage of automated integration testing in an IMS, possible challenges faced, and the benefits of using this method. The testing process can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, so we’ll explain how automated integration tests are used at ng-voice to effectively reduce the required time and resources while retaining the reliability and quality standards of our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS.

   

  Integration testing is an important aspect of testing a software product – our IMS solution in this case. Using software to perform such integration tests in an automated manner is called automated integration testing. It ensures that multiple independent components – possibly even developed by separate teams – each function as expected when combined with others to form a complete system. The primary objective of such a test is to verify the correctness of a component’s external interfaces. Specifically, in the context of IMS, a large number of Call Flows must be covered with close attention to intricate technical details.

  The standard use of automated integration testing in an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)

  When it comes to testing an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), using genuine handsets (UE, short for User Equipment) is the obvious choice. The goal of such tests is to ensure compatibility between the IMS and:

   

  • Handsets from different vendors employed by the end-user
  • The deployed EPC (Evolved Packet Core)
  • Other IMS from different vendors for roaming

  

  However, this approach to IMS testing comes with a couple of drawbacks, such as:

   

  • Tests using genuine handsets are performed manually, which is time-consuming and can be error-prone depending on the tester, leading to longer release cycles and a more fragile product, respectively.
  • An EPC, an eNodeB (Evolved Node B), and – in case of roaming – an external IMS are required.
  • All IMS components must be available in the shape of either a real component or an emulator.
  • Localizing issues can be challenging due to multiple components being involved.
  • Specification compliance between components within the IMS is not tested explicitly. Therefore, otherwise failing scenarios might succeed due to the same incorrect assumptions present in multiple components or the latter being tolerant to messages not conforming to the specification.

   

  Even though the first two drawbacks can be remediated by using a handset simulator, the latter three still persist. To solve these challenges, ng-voice developed a platform for automatically testing one or multiple IMS components in isolation without using auxiliary components or emulators.

  ng-voice’s platform for automated integration testing of IMS components

  The concept behind this testing platform is to launch the component(s) to be tested and simulate all their immediate dependencies via entities we call User-Agent Mocks (see the diagram below). The purpose of a User-Agent Mock is similar to that of an emulator; both imitate the behavior of a real component for the purpose of testing. The major difference is that User-Agent Mocks can be configured to send arbitrary messages to the System Under Test (SUT), as well as validate incoming ones. Furthermore, all User-Agent Mocks are controlled by the testing platform itself, causing a test scenario to fail as soon as a message fails validation at any of them.

  

  What are the benefits of an automated integration testing platform seen at ng-voice?

  Testing one or multiple components in isolation before integrating them into a complete system yields the following benefits:

   

  • All communication between components can be checked for specification compliance to ensure seamless integration with different IMS, EPC, and handset vendors.
  • Errors can be detected and fixed early during the development of a particular component – without requiring its dependencies for testing – leading to a faster release cycle and a more stable product.

   

  As an industry disruptor, we’re always looking at how to improve our solution and development processes to give our clients the best possible experience. Using automated integration tests aids us in these efforts by saving time and resources in the testing process, as well as helping us retain the excellent reliability and quality standards of our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS. To know more about our solution, get in touch with us and schedule a meeting.

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  Matthias Bräuer

  Software Engineer

  Publisher Bio

  Brings his expertise in test automation, Python, SIP, and Diameter to ng-voice. As a software engineer at ng-voice, Matthias uses his skill sets to design and develop a test automation framework to ensure specification-conformity and correct functional behaviour of our IMS components.

  

  Benedikt Vollmerhaus

  Software Engineer

  Publisher Bio

  Benedikt joined ng-voice as a Python Software Engineer with over five years of experience developing full-stack Java applications and Python-based development tools. He now uses his development expertise as part of our QA team to improve our test automation tools and help us ensure the high reliability of our IMS solution. He is passionate about Linux and open-source projects.

March 29, 2022

• Digium The NetFortris Acquisition

  Some of you may have noticed by now that this morning Sangoma announced it has acquired NetFortris. Why, you might ask? Well, there are a few key reasons. First of all, NetFortris has a UCaaS platform, and has been very successful selling it with tens of thousands of UCaaS seats. Their revenue is over $50M/ year, and over 90% of that revenue is recurring. As such, this acquisition furthers Sangoma’s goal towards creating additional scale, and more firmly establishes us as a profitable, top-tier cloud communications company.

  Many of you also know that Sangoma offers a mix of Communication as a Service offerings – UC, Video Meetings, Collaboration, Apps/CPaaS, Trunking, Fax and Access Control. So, by having more UCaaS seats, this enables Sangoma, through our partners, to cross-sell our other “as a Service” solutions to those existing seats.

  And, NetFortris also comes with additional “as a Service” solutions that Sangoma did not have, namely Security (enterprise VPN/Firewall), network connectivity, and SD-WAN. We can also offer these products to our entire UCaaS base. You, as an end-user, can obtain all the services you need from one vendor. And you, as a partner, can get all these services from one place. This ‘one stop shopping’ concept makes it easier for everyone.

  Obviously, there is more to it than a single blog, but at a high level, these were the deal drivers. We’re looking forward to integrating this all together for you.

  The post The NetFortris Acquisition appeared first on Sangoma.

• Enable Security OpenSSL DoS and DTLS, SIMBoxes, SIP-TLS and lots of advisories
  And a warm welcome to the March edition of RTCSec Newsletter! We have new content for this newsletter, in the form of a video demo of an OpenSSL DoS (CVE-2022-0778). We’ll publish more about this on our blog. In this edition, we cover: OpenSSL DoS (CVE-2022-0778) versus WebRTC infrastructure Usage of SIMBoxes to evade Ukrainian phone companies blocking external phone calls VoIP calls and TLS security instructions Vulnerability reports for PJSIP, Asterisk, Mitel, Pascom, VoIPmonitor, 3CX and Cisco equipment RTCSec newsletter is a free periodic newsletter bringing you commentary and news around VoIP and WebRTC security.

March 25, 2022

• François Marier Connecting a VoIP phone directly to an Asterisk server

  On my Asterisk server, I happen to have two on-board ethernet boards. Since I only used one of these, I decided to move my VoIP phone from the local network switch to being connected directly to the Asterisk server.

  The main advantage is that this phone, running proprietary software of unknown quality, is no longer available on my general home network. Most importantly though, it no longer has access to the Internet, without my having to firewall it manually.

  Here's how I configured everything.

  Private network configuration

  On the server, I started by giving the second network interface a static IP address in /etc/network/interfaces:

  auto eth1
  iface eth1 inet static
      address 192.168.2.2
      netmask 255.255.255.0
  

  On the VoIP phone itself, I set the static IP address to 192.168.2.3 and the DNS server to 192.168.2.2. I then updated the SIP registrar IP address to 192.168.2.2.

  The DNS server actually refers to an unbound daemon running on the Asterisk server. The only configuration change I had to make was to listen on the second interface and allow the VoIP phone in:

  server:
      interface: 127.0.0.1
      interface: 192.168.2.2
      access-control: 0.0.0.0/0 refuse
      access-control: 127.0.0.1/32 allow
      access-control: 192.168.2.3/32 allow
  

  Finally, I opened the right ports on the server's firewall in /etc/network/iptables.up.rules:

  -A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p udp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT
  -A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p tcp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT
  -A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p udp --dport 10000:20000 -j ACCEPT
  

  Network time synchronization

  In order for the phone to update its clock automatically using NTP, I installed chrony on the Asterisk server:

  apt install chrony
  

  then I configured it to listen on the private network interface and allow access from the VoIP phone by adding the following to /etc/chrony/chrony.conf:

  bindaddress 192.168.2.2
  allow 192.168.2.3
  

  Finally, I opened the right firewall port by adding a new rule to /etc/network/iptables.up.rules:

  -A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3 -p udp --dport 123 -j ACCEPT
  

  Accessing the admin page

  Now that the VoIP phone is no longer available on the local network, it's not possible to access its admin page. That's a good thing from a security point of view, but it's somewhat inconvenient.

  Therefore I put the following in my ~/.ssh/config to make the admin page available on http://localhost:8081 after I connect to the Asterisk server via ssh:

  Host asterisk
      LocalForward localhost:8081 192.168.2.3:80
  

  Allowing calls between local SIP devices

  Because this local device is not connected to the local network (192.168.1.0/24), it's unable to negotiate a direct media connection to any other local (i.e. one connected to the same Asterisk server) SIP device. What this means is that while calls might get connected successfully, by default, there will not be any audio in a call.

  In order for the two local SIP devices to be able to hear one another, we must enforce that all media be routed via Asterisk instead of going directly from one device to the other. This can be done using the directmedia directive (formerly canreinvite) in sip.conf:

  [1234]
  directmedia=no
  

  where 1234 is the extension of the phone.

March 24, 2022

• Kamailio Freezing The Development For v5.6.0

  The Kamailio v5.5.0 was released about one year ago, therefore it is time to set the milestones for getting 5.6.0 out.

  It has been proposed to freeze the development on Thursday, April 14, 2022, test till mid of May or so, then release the next major version 5.6.0.

  There is a lot of development to existing components and a couple of new modules.

  If anyone wants a different time line towards 5.6.0, let’s discuss on sr-users@lists.kamailio.org mailing list and choose the one that suits most of the developers.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post Freezing The Development For v5.6.0 first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.
• Digium The Challenges with RFID keycard Access Control

  For the past 40 years, businesses have been securing their office surroundings with access control systems based on RFID technology. This allows entry to buildings by simply waving an authorized  keycard or fob within proximity to a door reader, which unlocks the door. But there are major challenges with this technology around security, lack of keycard and fob authorization, and inefficient management.

  
  

  Security

  A fundamental concern with RFID keycards is that they can be easily cloned. This means a bad actor with access to a cloning device (which are easily available online for just a few dollars) can quickly copy a keycard, simply by being within proximity to the person with the keycard. They can then enter the premises, and steal corporate data and/or products (or even harm individuals inside). There are plenty of references online and even instructions on how to do it. But we won’t be publicizing any of that here, of course.

  Keycards are prone to human error and can be lost or stolen—granting building access to anyone. A few years back, a study by Proxy indicated that almost 20% of keycard users lost their card within one year, which in turn costs businesses money to replace and administer with new ones. The larger the business size, the more money and time wasted. In the same study, they cited that an average 40,000-person company loses 10,378 key cards and fobs per year, and the overhead of physical security dealing with these lost cards is equal to the salary of a full-time employee. That’s not just a lot of green cash being wasted—that’s a lot of extra plastic tossed into landfills.

  With the increase of cyber and malware attacks, it would be advantageous for businesses to adopt a modern, more secure access control system. Read our blog for more on this. 

  
  

  Inefficient Management

  Administering keycards is a very manual process. It involves learning the use of very outdated legacy software and tools to program each card for each user. And the keycard system is only  accessible internally to the buildings, which means keycards cannot be managed remotely or in real-time which would cause delays in removing access for security breaches and unauthorized individuals.

  And since we know for a fact that people will lose their keycard at some point in the year, the admin will be required to quickly disable the lost card and spend roughly 15 minutes programming a new one. A company with many employees would certainly drain a lot of time from the admin who has many other job duties. 

  Another drain on resources caused by this form of traditional access control is dealing with visitors. Access security companies charge for each new credential; it’s time-consuming for administrators to manage a potentially high number of visitor key cards and fobs being checked in and out. This is further compounded when dealing with multi-site businesses where an employee visiting another branch office would require notification a couple days prior to visit, in order to prepare security and access. This very manual process wastes a lot of administrative time and can result in leaked credentials.

  
  

  Covid-19 affects on Access Control

  While the pandemic has shown signs of easing, the contactless/touchless and remote work flexibility demands seem to have become permanent. Sangoma’s SmartOffice Access Control is a solution for businesses looking to adopt the current demands of a modern access control solution, which offers contactless door-entry, remote administration, and integration with existing RFID access systems, all from a mobile app! Learn more about SmartOffice Access.

  Get A Demo

  Get A Demo

  The post The Challenges with RFID keycard Access Control appeared first on Sangoma.

March 22, 2022

• Digium The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications: Part 3

  If you’re using all kinds of Unified Communication tools, how do you handle all of this confusion about what to use? One way to handle it is to go with a vendor that offers all of these. Teams for instance. But Teams is expensive. And Teams comes with other cons as well, not to mention do you want to really have your business voice communications be dependent on Microsoft or anyone who is not fully focused on this?

  Customers want to make appointments or order something or whatever. Calling is efficient, so they call, or maybe use a self-service portal and maybe text. And that’s why a company with a focus on inter-company communications (like Teams) or has a sole focus on video meetings or video calling, or just voice meetings or voice calling, won’t be able to service a small or medium business. The interaction with the outside world is critical. A Unified Communication system, which knows how to handle phone numbers, and texting, and all kinds of call control as is found in a “PBX” is required.

  Okay, so Teams isn’t right for your company, but what other options are there? Your company could start with a Unified Communications company, but many of them just utilize Zoom, or Slack, or Yealink phones, anyway. So, you get the same hodgepodge, albeit with a single point of sale and support. The hodgepodge results in the same issues of non-interoperability, and not being able to context switch from voice calling, to video calling, to collaboration easily.

  And what about just the password issues. You have a sheet of passwords and when they expire is now ginormous. Password fatigue is a real thing. Now, identity management and single sign on software from an IT department can help, but that also comes with its own challenges that the IT department must manage.

  A Unified Communication platform, able to manage true multi-modal communications, with control of the UC, video, voice, collaboration and fax technology is required. Welcome to Sangoma. We develop our own phones, our own video conferencing, our own collaboration, our own UC. Going back to last weeks’ blog, you can see that Sangoma can manage a seamless experience across all the different types of communication methods, because we develop them all, and ensure they work with each, and have easy to use look and feels.

  So, let’s get back to Val as a user of a Sangoma UC system. Val uses Sangoma TeamHub to start an IM with a colleague but decides to call the person. She just clicks on the call icon and goes to a call. Then they want to video share some document, so just click on the video meeting icon to discuss an issue. Then when Val needs to call the partner or customer with the resolution to the issue, she just clicks from the same app. It’s all so seamless. Same look and feel. Easy for Val. And easy for the IT Department.

  Now, this can happen whether on Val’s desktop or Val’s smartphone. Her physical deskphone, given it has a screen, can also be tied deeply into the scenarios just described above. And given Sangoma drives the deskphone firmware, we can have these deep integrations and enable the deskphone, desktop and mobile client experience to be seamless.

  Our business at Sangoma, is to enable your business to grow. We have the right tools at the right price.

  The post The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications: Part 3 appeared first on Sangoma.

March 21, 2022

• Kamailio Docker Container With Kamailio And Let’s Encrypt

  Giovanni Tommasini from Evoseed.io published a Github repository with resources about how to deploy Kamailio with TLS in a Docker container using Let’s Encrypt certificates. It can be found at:

  • https://github.com/evoseed/kamailio-tls-letsencrypt

  It should be a good starting point for anyone wanting to start a Kamailio instance with TLS enabled for secure and encrypted SIP signalling traffic.

  Check also Giovanni’s blog post about this project:

  • https://blog.giovannitommasini.info/voip-calls-and-tls-security

  

  We appreciate such contributions to the community, if you write or you are aware of interesting articles about how to deploy and use Kamailio, we are more than happy to publish news about them on kamailio.org website, just notify us about them via sr-users mailing list!

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post Docker Container With Kamailio And Let’s Encrypt first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.

March 17, 2022

• Digium Desktop as a Service & Why Your Business Really Needs It

  You know the scenario: remote work is increasingly becoming the plan of choice for today’s organization. For many, it was born out of the necessity of the pandemic; others have been espousing its positives for years. Either way, today’s businesses need a plan to keep their tele-staff better organized, more productive and increasingly secure in a world where being able to work from anywhere has come into high demand.

  Desktop as a Service: The Solution

  Also known as DaaS, this cloud-based product provides a virtual desktop for remote workers to engage, interact and work over the internet. Licensed on a per-use basis and frequently at a pay-per-use rate, a DaaS system allows work-from-home staff to better engage with one another, connecting them from across the miles as if they sit as close as the next cubicle over.

  On the back end, the service provider handles all of the hassles. Complicated, worrisome management and security tasks are covered as part of your DaaS subscription, allowing you to truly focus on what is most important: worker productivity and the bottom line.

  Related: 4 Reasons Why Businesses Are Moving to Connected Workspaces

  From the end-user’s perspective, nothing changes. They just turn on their system and connect to the service. Upon login, all of your organization’s resources open up right in front of them. Everything is there: tools, software and other productivity apps that they’ll need in order to do their job efficiently and effectively.

  DaaS also helps to cut costs, and not just by consolidating overhead, maintenance and security as part of a monthly rate. It also eliminates the need for a dedicated work system. The DaaS window includes only critical work-related items, helping to keep your employee’s day-to-day work and home life compartmentalized, regardless of the device on which they are accessing the service.

  Types of DaaS

  There are two different types of Desktop as a Service implementations.

  In the case of a persistent desktop, you or your staffer can customize and save the interface’s settings. This way, when your employees log on they gain streamlined access to the software – and any related resources – that they specifically require. With a non-persistent desktop, meanwhile, the entire experience is wiped clean at the end of the session, allowing multiple workers to access the same environment in what essentially becomes a shared cloud service.

  Isn’t That VDI?

  Actually, no. Desktop as a Service relies on an underlying virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that uses virtual machines to run the cloud-based desktop OS (operating system), but this is run by the service provider. Essentially, the virtual desktop is made available to your workers over a cloud connection.

  Related: Top 6 Reasons Your Business Needs Collaborative Workspaces

  A VDI’s assets are traditionally housed in the organization’s physical location, meaning that the owner is responsible for virtually all aspects of management, maintenance and security. This also means – because geo-redundancy is not an option with pure VDI – that there is inherently more risk of business disruption.

  Why Should You Choose Desktop as a Service?

  There are many reasons, not the least of which is the convenience of knowing that virtually all aspects of management are handled without incurring additional, physical investment.

  Business Continuity

  Your information is inherently more available than when it is stored at one physical site. With geo-redundancy, data is simultaneously backed up across multiple servers that are housed in different locations. Almost instantly, issues related to natural – and even man-made – disasters are a thing of the past.

  Security

  Data is encrypted and secured by the host service provider, thus alleviating any headache for the business. Additionally, the software is automatically updated and password management can be pre-set, eliminating concern over remote workers’ poor choices and their effect on the organization’s ultimate bottom line.

  Management

  Complicated and costly hardware and software maintenance become a non-issue, with the provider handling all aspects of the back end as part of your subscription fee.

  Capacity on Demand

  Companies can scale coverage to meet need, even increasing service availability to better support the addition of temporary staff or to address peak seasonal demand.

  Accessibility

  Users can log into a DaaS from virtually any internet-equipped device, and from virtually any location.

  Reduced Overhead & Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

  DaaS eliminates the need for costly investments in hardware, software or their maintenance, replacing those expenses with a periodic, all-encompassing subscription cost. Areas where DaaS can help decrease total cost of ownership include, to name a few:

  • Helpdesks: Support personnel can resolve issues remotely instead of being tied to the physical device
  • Desktop Maintenance: With the ability to access desktops and applications using BYOD or thin client devices, IT staff saves time and effort maintaining company-purchased devices
  • General Labor: OS patching, desktop infrastructure maintenance, finance, and application delivery are simplified with Desktop as a Service

  These are, of course, only some of the reasons why a virtual Desktop as a Service deployment may be the right choice for your company and its remote staff.

  For additional information on Desktop as a Service or its benefits to your organization, Sangoma is here to help. Contact us or request a demo today!

  The post Desktop as a Service & Why Your Business Really Needs It appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice My first month at ng-voice: Tia shares her experiences joining our Global Sales team

  I am Tia Wang, originally from China, and have lived in Sweden for almost 4 years. I started working at ng-voice on the 1st of February 2022 as the Global Sales Operations & Business Development Manager. I am writing this article to share my first month’s experience at ng-voice GmbH.

  Who am I?

  I came to Sweden in 2018, where I spent the first year as a gap year and graduated from the Department of Strategic Communication at Lund University in August 2021. Since then, I have been looking around for job opportunities in the communication area. I have explored the business culture in Sweden by working as Nordic Community Manager at an NGO for 1 year, my personal Daigou business project for 1.5 years as 2C sales, and a marketing intern in a local Swedish e-commerce company for 3 months.  So it has been clear to me that I would like to work around marketing and sales based on my interest and experience.

  

  Why did I join ng-voice?

  What I would like to pinpoint in how I joined ng-voice is the result of mutual matching. By mutual matching, I mean surprisingly, my role involves both marketing and sales operations. Based on this, I have a great passion for my work and thus, could bring more value to the team. In addition, the telecommunication field is a new and challenging whilst interesting area worthy of exploring. I have seen my teammates with dozens of years of experience as software engineers or sales in B2B, the great potential to be learned from them and to grow in myself, and the connection between my sales marketing in 2C and 2B fields as well as the vast development in my career path starting with my current role.

  The First Month (My experience at ng-voice so far)

  In the first month, I have spent 11 days in the headquarter office in Germany for the onboarding and half a month in Stockholm when I relocated from southern Sweden, and I had the chance to meet all teams both virtually in our town hall meetings and physically in Hamburg and Berlin offices. I have seen this scale-up startup is joined by more and more organic active people who share such values.  Luckily, I seem to have joined at the right time because the company was having a fitness challenge, a voluntary monthly challenge that is really fun and teammates from different functions could get together to exercise.

   

  While I began the onboarding, I could immerse myself into the ng-voice organizational cultural values such as ownership, trustworthiness, and many more by having individual meetings with teammates. My onboarding buddy had come to Berlin to work together and introduced the company comprehensively. My team lead helped me to get familiar with the strategic blueprint of the company and let me know where I am standing in the journey. I have also had intro meetings from the CEO, COO for us new joiners, and 1-1 meetings with the Financial team, People Team, Business Operations Team, and even got a brief from our engineer architect colleagues about the basic IMS core components functions. In this case, I have received a full picture of the history of ng-voice, the team structure, the product portfolio, the benefits to our customers of having a truly containerized and cloud-native IMS solution, and the market potential for VoLTE and VoNR. With such training and onboarding, I started an outreach campaign that had a great result for lead generation. In a nutshell, the first month has been such a blast. I feel happy and self-growth in such an active working environment.

  

  

  

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  Tia Wang

  Global Sales Operations & Business Development Manager

  Publisher Bio

  Tia comes to ng-voice with a background in digital marketing (Nordic-China Startup Forum) and E-commerce (Skosh AB, and Arla Foods). She joins our team to further optimize our sales processes and generate new business opportunities. 

March 15, 2022

• Digium The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications: Part 2

  Last week, I introduced you to Val, who is a knowledge worker with so many ways to communicate. She has a dizzying array of applications to manage, for both Val and for the company IT department, or person, or part of a person, depending on the size of Val’s business. She, and the company, have to navigate through all kinds of applications from different companies. Do they work together? Can she log into one and have access to all of them? Or are there layers of logins to go through? Do they even work with each other? Can data from one go to the other? Can you context switch from one application to another? Are they all secure?

  And is she missing communications since there are so many apps to look after, and she “forgot” to check one? Or doesn’t really know how to use them well.

  You know what, yes it is complicated. And confusing for Val. Teams. Zoom. Slack. Webex. Hangouts. They all look different, they don’t talk to each other. And there are a lot.

  In next week’s blog I’ll discuss one way to deal with this.

  The post The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications: Part 2 appeared first on Sangoma.

March 10, 2022

• Digium Mobile Access Control is Disrupting the Market—for Good Reasons
  Rapid cloud computing and access control developments are transforming and dominating the security and access control markets at break-neck speed. Just like an RFID keycard, your smartphones can be used to quickly gain access to doors, elevators, and turnstiles, all with a tap or a swipe. With such ease of use, it’s clear to see why mobile access control is a game-changer:

  • Smartphones are always on hand and quick to access. 
  • Mobile access delivers stringent security when compared to the traditional keycard. Smartphones leverage the use of biometrics, such as FaceID and TouchID, in order to gain access to any of the applications. A report by Mordor Intelligence indicates biometrics is on top for market trends in access control. 
  • Mobile access controls are powerhouses. Mobile credential-based platforms can provide instantaneous access data, enabling security teams to integrate technology such as passive tailgating and people counters to know how many users are in the office—a critical feature during an emergency. 

  Further bolstering the platform’s security, mobile credential-based access control systems are backed by cloud infrastructure. This comes in handy for multi-site deployments and the management of these sites. Let’s look at a use case: if an employee visits another office branch, with an RFID keycard access control system, this would typically require advance notice of the visit to prepare security and access. Administrative time and resources drain from this manual process while exposing the company to leaked credentials. With a cloud-based system, access levels are managed centrally. This improves not just management and resource allocation—it’s also convenient for the user. 

  A touchless lifestyle leads to explosive growth

  The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a touchless lifestyle, leaving businesses rushing to find solutions to physical methods of security. Moving to the adoption of mobile and cloud-based credential platforms, there’s a significant increase in the growth of the access control market. In 2020, the market was valued at USD 7.65 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 11.7 billion by 2026 and grow at a CAGR of 7.38% by 2026. Coupled with the cost-effectiveness of these modern platforms in comparison to traditional access systems, small businesses can now afford the simplicity and enhanced security that mobile access control provides. Where it would cost on average $1000-2000 per door with an RFID-based system, it could cost as low as $500 per door. Tune in for a future blog comparing the cost of ownership of these two different systems. 

  Sangoma’s mobile access control solution 

  Sangoma SmartOffice Access delivers contactless access control while being mobile and cloud-based through the convenience of a smartphone for easy premise access. It’s deployed entirely wire-free, with wireless door locks and no door readers to install. With a smartphone in hand, biometrics deliver secure authorization with a simple swipe on the mobile app or physical proximity to a door. SmartOffice Access is based on IoT technology, making the solution extremely cost-effective, since it eliminates all the costs of breaking down walls and drilling, to physically wire the solution. It’s also future-proof to evolve security measures and features based on market demands for increased security methods. The platform integrates with existing traditional access control systems allowing users to continue to use their existing system at the same time while going completely wireless in the future.  Learn More about Sangoma SmartOffice Access.

  Get A Demo

  Get A Demo

  The post Mobile Access Control is Disrupting the Market—for Good Reasons appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice ng-voice at the MWC22: Returning to Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona

  ng-voice returns to exhibit at the Mobile World Congress (MWC22) in Barcelona, Spain. From the 28th of Feb until the 3rd of March, the MWC Barcelona 2022 took place both in-person and virtually. As referred by many, Mobile World Congress is considered to be the most important global event for the telecommunications industry. 

   

  After just 7 months from the 2021 edition, we at ng-voice were excited to return to this global event and be able to meet everyone once again. This year the event saw a lot more activity given that the covid-19 vaccine is widely spread and travel restrictions were lowered around the world. In partnership with the Spanish health authorities and medical partners, the GSMA was able to provide a safe environment for our industry to reconnect, reimagine and reinvent. With the theme “Connectivity Unleashed” many people came back to Barcelona to get in touch with the latest industry trends and meet with potential customers and partners, making the event a great success.

  

  ng-voice brought to the MWC our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core – the first and most containerized IMS core in the market, which was nominated for the GLOMO Awards for two years consecutively. We exhibited in this year’s MWC with a booth in Hall 2, alongside main industry players such as Red hat and Casa Systems. As part of our team of delegates, we had our CEO David Bachmann, our CTO, and Founder Carsten Bock, our VP of sales Qawa Darabi and 5 other team members from both technical and business teams.

  

  Our CEO also had a chance to talk to the media and showcase our innovative IMS solution and why it stands out. In his interview with Light Reading, our CEO David Bachmann mentions how innovative players like ng-voice are disrupting the telecom market and what the future of 5G holds in the industry.

  

   

  Of course, we also took some time to meet up with the VP of Sales, Qawa Darabi to share his experience at MWC 22. He stated, “It always feels great to be back at MWC, being able to catch up with the industry’s latest innovations and share this experience with potential customers, suppliers, partners, and the general public.”

  
  To know more about the MWC Barcelona 2022, visit www.mwcbarcelona.com. You can get in touch with our team at info@ng-voice.com to know more about our fully containerized and cloud-native solutions.
  
  

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  Barbara Silva

  Marketing Lead

  Publisher Bio

  After 10 years of working for Telefonica as a Business Development and Marketing Manager, along with developing serval projects in Latin America. Barbara’s plans to connect and share her own experience in Branding and growth strategies with the readers. She enjoys talking about any topics, from Netflix series to Politics, making her a versatile and fun person to talk to.

March 09, 2022

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.4.8 Released

  Kamailio SIP Server v5.4.8 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.4.7. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

  Kamailio^® v5.4.8 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.4 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.4.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.4 branch.

  Note that 5.4 is the second last stable branch, still officially maintained by Kamailio project development team. The latest stable branch is 5.5, with v5.5.4 released out of it.

  Resources for Kamailio version 5.4.8

  Source tarballs are available at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.4.8/src/

  Detailed changelog:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.4.8/ChangeLog

  Download via GIT:

   # git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio
   # cd kamailio
   # git checkout -b 5.4 origin/5.4

  Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.4.8/

  Modules’ documentation:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.4.x/

  What is new in 5.4.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.4.0:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-4-0-release-notes/

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post Kamailio v5.4.8 Released first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.

March 08, 2022

• Digium The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications

  Val wakes up in the morning and goes downstairs to her work from home setup, or decides to go into work that day. Either way, she gets to her computer, which is connected to a unified communication system. Because of that there are various ways for her to communicate to other employees or partners / customers. She has the following options:

  • A physical phone with a business phone number. This is still the number one way businesses communicate with their customers. Voicemail still happens , and this can be “readâ€� either through listening from the phone, the computer, or via a text to speech functionality that is part of the UC system.
  • A smartphone, that can either make or receive phone calls utilizing that business phone number because a UC client has been downloaded to it
  • A desktop client, that can either make or receive phone calls utilizing that business phone number, because a UC client has been downloaded to it, or it uses a web interface
  • Email
  • A voice conferencing server that is accessible through a separate phone number she has to call
  • A video conferencing option that can be utilized through a different application. This is becoming de facto within the business for employees to communicate internally with each other.
  • A collaboration / instant messaging / chat option that can also be utilized through yet another application
  • Possibly some specialized applications to work in concert with the unified communication systems
  • A fax option (if required) that can be utilized through yet another application
  • A separate contact center set of applications, especially for customer service or departmental needs to talk to the outside world

  This is a dizzying array of applications to manage, for both Val and for the company IT department, or person, or part of a person, depending on the size of Val’s business. She and the company have to navigate through all kinds of applications from different companies. What can be done about this? We’ll explore this in next week’s blog.

  The post The Allure of Integrated Cloud Communications appeared first on Sangoma.

• Jitsi Jitsi is back at Google Summer of Code

  Hey there Fellow Jitsters!

  We’ve got some great news to share: Jitsi has been selected to participate in Google Summer of Code 2022!

  We had a several year hiatus, but we are thrilled to be back. GSoC has been a very successful program for us, thanks to it we got tons of new features and several projects, and even some new colleagues!

  There is plenty of time to apply as a student, if you are so inclined. Take a quick look at the getting stated guide from Google, pick an idea from our ideas list (or propose your own!) and apply!

  Our community is always a great place to discuss project ideas before applying, we’ll welcome you all with open arms.

  Let’s make GSoC 2022 our most successful one yet!

  Last, but not least, huge thanks to Google for selecting Jitsi to participate in the GSoC program.

  

  The post Jitsi is back at Google Summer of Code appeared first on Jitsi.

• ng-voice Celebrating IWD 2022 with our colleagues Johanna & Vividha

  March 8th marks a special day in the yearly calendar around the world. International Women’s Day (IWD 2022) is celebrated across the world this Tuesday. IWD is a global holiday celebrated on March 8 to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. It plays an important role in the women’s right movement across the world to place the spotlight on matters like gender equality and violence against women.  You can learn more about IWD 2022  here.

   

  Last year we announced our partnership with Women in DevOps to strive and promote gender equality in the tech industry. Women in DevOps have created a unique platform that became a global movement not only to amplify the voices of women but of all minority groups within DevOps, breaking down the barriers and driving positive change. 

   

  We at ng-voice believe in fostering diverse and international talents. We not only appreciate our individual differences but we also celebrate them, because we believe diversity and inclusion are the pillars to build a company culture that contributes to our core values of trust and ownership. To celebrate IWD2022, our amazing colleagues Johanna Lämmel and Vividha Singh shared their experience working as team leads in the telecommunication industry. They touch upon the early experiences of their careers, tips for upcoming female developers, and their leadership roles ng-voice. Watch their inspiring interview on the link below:

  Interested in joining ng-voice? we are actively looking for talented people to join our team. Please visit our careers page here to apply.

  Share this article via:

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  Khaled Amirian

  WS Content Marketing

  Publisher Bio

  During his academic and professional career, his curiosity to learn different business functions such as HR and marketing allowed him to gain valuable insights. Khaled aims to provide unique perspectives on topics in digital marketing and HRM. His interests in the digital world helped him become a key community member among Esports player.

March 07, 2022

• FreeSWITCH Test

  Test

• Jitsi Introducing the Jitsi Meet React SDK

  Today we are releasing an often requested feature / package from the Jitsi community. We’re happy to announce the availability of the Jitsi Meet React SDK. This new SDK simplifies the integration of the Jitsi Meet External API with applications using React. It features simple React components that allow one to embed the Jitsi Meet experience onto a React based application, with full customization capabilities.

  Let’s explore how to use it!

  Installation

  First we’ll create a new project using create-react-app, but you can start with an application you’re already working on, just make sure it’s using React 16 or higher.

  create-react-app showcase-jitsi-react-sdk

  Next let’s install the SDK as a dependency to access its modules.

  npm install @jitsi/react-sdk

  JitsiMeeting

  In App.js (in the created project) let’s import the first module:

  import { JitsiMeeting } from '@jitsi/react-sdk';

  We’ll instantiate the JitsiMeeting React component that requires the roomName prop, but keep in mind that you can use other props as well to get more control and enhance your client’s experience.

  Let’s use the component in our application.

  <JitsiMeeting
      roomName = { 'YOUR_CUSTOM_ROOM_NAME } // make sure it's a good one!
  />

  The result in your browser should look something like this:

  

  Let’s tweak the styling a bit:

  <JitsiMeeting
      roomName = { 'YOUR_CUSTOM_ROOM_NAME' }
      getIFrameRef = { node => node.style.height = '800px' }
  />

  

  Now we’re cooking! Next we could add some config overwrites. Let’s say we’d like our participants to join the meeting with muted audio and make sure of it by hiding the corresponding pre-meeting button as well:

  <JitsiMeeting
      configOverwrite = {{
          startWithAudioMuted: true,
          hiddenPremeetingButtons: ['microphone']
      }}
      roomName = { 'YOUR_CUSTOM_ROOM_NAME' }
      getIFrameRef = { node => node.style.height = '800px' }
  />

  

  Done! You can override the same options as you can with the external API, that is, most of these. We also made it possible to add event listeners easily, be sure to checkout the project’s README or our handbook.

  JaaS customer? We got you! Introducing JaaSMeeting

  This is another component provided by the SDK that’s preconfigured to work with JaaS. You’ll need to generate a JWT and pass an appId, and you’re off to the races. Make sure you read the JaaS console guide too! Here is a simple example:

  <JaaSMeeting
      appId = { 'YOUR_APP_ID' }
      jwt = { JWT }
      roomName = { 'YOUR_CUSTOM_ROOM_NAME' }
  />

  Wrapping up

  With this SDK integrating meetings in React applications should be as simple as it gets! If you happen to come across any issues you can reach out to us in the GitHub issue tracker or our community.

  , Your personal Meetings team.

  The post Introducing the Jitsi Meet React SDK appeared first on Jitsi.

March 03, 2022

• Digium Quick Guide to Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policies

  The concept behind cybersecurity and digital privacy policy has been around for decades, tracing its origin to the 1974 U.S. Privacy Act. This legislation – which was directed at government agencies storing private citizen data – provided a framework for the informational privacy practices of today’s modern enterprise and SMB.

  Related: Hybrid Communications & The Benefits of Choosing an All-Inclusive Provider

  Since that time, many of the nuances concerning information cybersecurity have evolved to keep pace with the new technological developments and tactics employed by malicious actors. With the rapid proliferation of informational hacks and other types of cybercrime in the past 10-20 years, organizations of virtually every size have fallen victim to unauthorized access, theft and misuse of sensitive information, affecting billions of consumers around the world.

  Related: Tips For Upgrading Your Team Collaboration Platform

  One of the more glaring examples is Yahoo.

  Over the course of several years, Yahoo’s servers were breached several times, resulting in the exposure of the account information of approximately three billion users. These hacks included the theft of personal information such as usernames, email addresses, telephone numbers, security questions and answers, dates of birth and hashed passwords.

  With these and other attacks in mind, today’s organization has little choice but to prioritize data security with sound cybersecurity practices and privacy policies.

  What Makes a Sound Cybersecurity & Privacy Policy?

  The creation of an official organizational privacy policy – aside from satisfying regulatory mandates – serves to foster transparency and honesty, alleviate concern and promote trust with users. Sound privacy rules should include detailed information regarding what data is collected, as well as other details regarding the manner in which personal information is culled, used, stored and collected.

  Commonly recommended measures to promote sound privacy policy tends to include:

  • Promoting data security and privacy awareness in your organization.
  • Employing security tools, such as those built-in to communications infrastructure.
  • Surveying one’s network for suspicious activity, such as spyware installations and phishing.
  • Implementing a “Zero Trust” model for continuous monitoring of all internal and external users.
  • Employing multi-factor authentication and conducting frequent data backups.

  Secure Critical Data with Connected Workspace and DaaS

  Critical to such policy is the adoption of software-based tools to detect and thwart informational breaches prior to – and even during – an attack.

  Sangoma’s Connected Workspace and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) solution provides cloud-based security to keep customer info securely available only to credentialed users. The product is designed to streamline operations and end-user tools, integrating one’s own unique office workspace with UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) features for increasing remote productivity. The DaaS offering leverages elements such as multi-factor authentication, encryption, and context-based access controls to keep one’s desktop and data safe, regardless of access point location.

  These features are designed to reduce instances of intrusion and security breach, while simultaneously providing access to centrally secured apps and desktops in order to eliminate VPN (virtual private network) holes.

  Conclusion

  While the practice of staying ahead of attackers to secure personal customer data is daunting, it has become absolutely essential to running a business with any form of online commerce. That is where products such as Connected Workspace and DaaS come in.

  Related: 4 Reasons Why Businesses Are Moving To Connected Workspaces

  The establishment of proper cybersecurity and digital privacy practices by one’s staff is crucial, with complete transparency between executives, employees and customers alike guiding the way to best remain safe from devastating informational breaches.

  The post Quick Guide to Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policies appeared first on Sangoma.

March 01, 2022

• Digium SmartOffice™, an Innovative Approach to Bringing the Power of Advanced Access Control to the SMB

  How does someone get into the office? Do you have a key card for that? Is there an intercom that visitors talk to when they approach your building, and where or who does that go?   And what do you have to touch to get in – a lock? The fob reader? A door handle? Do you even want to touch something, especially now, that you don’t know who has touched most recently?

  Why not use an app on a smartphone to get in? Look, we use it for everything else these days, right? And the less we can touch these days, the better. Deciding on who is allowed entry to an office building is similar to who can use your business phone system. Efficiencies can be had if one ties the administration of access to the building to the administration of the business phone system.  

  And that’s where Sangoma comes in and why we have a product called  SmartOffice. We’re leveraging our business communication systems and cloud expertise, bringing the power of advanced Access Control to your smartphone. Many businesses, from small to medium, lack any advanced access control. There might be a physical key, or a key fob, to get into the building.   Why not have an affordable advanced access control system, all managed by a smartphone everyone in the office carries all the time? And because you are using the Wi-Fi or cellular connection from your smartphone to communicate with the access control system to physically open locks, there is less to touch. And therefore, it’s safer for all of us.  

  SmartOffice is integrated with the Sangoma UC system. The user directory information can be accessed, simplifying the management of users, groups, and permissions for office access and the PBX from one location.   It’s also very secure. Partly because it uses your mobile device, which is already password protected, but also because it uses the Sangoma Cloud service, which authenticates every user and every action done with SmartOffice, ensuring a certified person has access to the premises.

  Use your Smartphone while you are walking up to the building to open the specific door you are walking towards. It can connect via the cellular network or building Wi-Fi if you are close enough. And IT will know exactly who and when the door opened. Sangoma SmartOffice uses advanced wireless IoT technologies to communicate with many existing door strikes and mag locks as well. And there are no expensive card readers or traditional access control systems to install because you’ll leverage the existing local network infrastructure.  

  For example, I travel quite a bit to different Sangoma locations. I have multiple different key cards and fobs for the various buildings. I’d have to dig through my backpack to find the right one, if I had it at all. Now, I go to my phone, open the app, find the location I’m at, and open the door. Easy! And easy to onboard and exit people as well.

  At Sangoma, we have a growing suite of cloud Communications as a Service (CaaS) solutions. Adding Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) to our existing Unified Communications (UCaaS), Communications Platform (CPaaS), Video Meetings (MaaS), SIP trunking (TaaS), Fax (FaaS), and Device (DaaS) and leveraging our cloud expertise also made sense.

  The office environment has evolved from a single brick and mortar facility to be virtual and accessible at all times, from anywhere. Bringing other SME communications forms to the UC platform, such as Access Control, is natural, and Sangoma is leading the way. Go ahead, walk up to your building, unlock the door while you are walking towards it, and get into your building without touching anything.

  To read more about SmartOffice, please go to www.sangoma.com/access-control.

  The post SmartOffice™, an Innovative Approach to Bringing the Power of Advanced Access Control to the SMB appeared first on Sangoma.

February 25, 2022

• Enable Security Commentary: security fixes in PJSIP, Zyxel, BIG-IP, Vicidial and others
  Welcome to the February edition of the RTCSec Newsletter! Please do reply and tell me what you think - this will help us make future editions better. In this edition, we cover: The SIPVicious PRO workshop, adapted for security teams Ribbon’s EdgeMarc SBCs used to launch DDoS attacks (news from November) RTC @Scale security talks Release of a new SIP tool called sipexer Vulnerabilities in various critical software, including PJSIP Smart Probes by Intuitive Labs RTCSec newsletter is a free periodic newsletter bringing you commentary and news around VoIP and WebRTC security.

February 24, 2022

• Digium Hybrid Communications and the Benefits of Choosing an All-Inclusive Provider

  How are your communications hosted? In today’s business world, organizations are constantly looking for that next advantage, often based on the answer to that question. Whether you employ a traditional on-premise system, an all-inclusive cloud environment or something in between, the need abounds to be able to exchange information in the most efficient and effective way possible.

  Related: At Your Service: Your “as-a-Service” Guide to Sangoma’s Portfolio

  While the benefits of turning to a cloud-hosted service provider have been well documented, less emphasis is usually placed on the hybrid architecture and those companies that support cloud or on-premise communications. Providers offering a complete selection of tools and options to accomplish this task can support whatever your needs may be. So — what are the benefits of a hybrid implementation, versus its alternatives? How can its selection help your organization to accomplish more? And, ultimately, why should you select a provider that best supports this decision?

  Benefits of Hybrid Communications

  In many cases, choosing a hybrid cloud service can be the correct choice. Hybrid allows its users to incorporate some of the more promising aspects of the aforementioned alternatives. Organizations can rely on proprietary software to foster communications capabilities, yet do so across a virtually limitless number of options and services.

  Potential benefits include:

  • Adaptivity: Allowing employees to shift workloads between cloud options, or take them entirely offline, as necessary.
  • Cost Effectiveness: Helping respond to price fluctuations by migrating software and information to the most-affordable options. Also, a pay-per-use scale allows the hybrid architecture to better manage costs.
  • Customizability: Improving control over and manipulation of communications data, including information residing on a local cloud or your own data center.
  • Power: Accessing multiple resources, including computational, from a single interface.
  • Info Integrity: Fostering geo-redundancy, through which data is backed up across multiple, disparate geographic locations, limiting disruption or data loss.

  For these and so many other reasons, today’s businesses can benefit from selecting a service provider that offers support for hybrid options.

  Other Cloud Deployments

  In today’s communications-first world, cloud-based interactions are still the preference of many. Whether your organization is seeking to reduce hardware investment or cost, streamline management or increase agility, cloud communications is helpful in eliminating physical space, streamlining deployment and bolstering agility.

  Related: Remote Work Adoption Challenges & Solutions with UCaaS and Connected Workspace

  Organizations do not have to retain their own physical investments, instead essentially renting capacity on a pay-per-use basis that limits cost. This factor also means that further investment – beyond paying for expanded capacity – is not necessary as the company grows. Businesses do not have to invest considerable time or energy in installing, personalizing or managing their assets. Likewise, given that UCaaS and other similar options are virtual, they are accessible regardless of the in-house system or other logistical obstacles. All that is needed is a stable, reliable internet connection, making it especially useful for organizations with expansive remote- or hybrid-work practices.

  Related: Evolution of Email: Best Practices for Embracing Team Collaboration Software

  In contrast, many businesses that tend not to rely on the internet turn to traditional on-premise communications. The most logical reason to adopt this type of infrastructure is physical security, most often in cases where sensitive information is exchanged that needs to be kept strictly in-house. In a world where cybersecurity has become an increasing concern, on-premise communications options tend to alleviate collaboration security pressures because they keep this data offline and accessible only to those with access to the physical, in-house server.

  Related: Migrating Safety Services from Traditional to Packet-based Phone Networks

  On-premise deployments also offer benefits regarding accessibility and manageability. Information is accessible, even during times of internet outage. Likewise, hardware and files are more easily manipulated, as their oversight is not bound by the rules and restrictions of a remote server. Of course, the balance is that your business risks disruption or data loss in the event of disaster. If reducing or even eschewing internet connectivity is a goal, however, then on-premise is the way to go.

  So — Which Cloud Communications Deployment Is Best?

  That decision depends on your organization and its needs. Companies already adept at relying on the internet for other aspects of their communications and operations will find comfort and certainly cost-savings in the cloud, while businesses that can exist largely without connectivity may find an on-premise model is most effective.

  Related: Desktop as a Service “in the real world”

  For many organizations, however, the hybrid option may provide the perfect blend of the two. By relying on a provider that can support this type of communication deployment, many of the hassles related to maintenance, scaling and cost go unnoticed, while improved customizability and manageability is retained. And in a world where every company’s operations are different, this choice may make all the difference.

  Choosing a Cloud Provider

  Ultimately, when it comes to making a choice for your communications system, you want to have as many options available to you as possible. A provider that can support all of the above deployments offers the greatest amount of flexibility and support, ensuring your business is set up for success no matter what you choose. This also allows you to pivot and change your communications system more easily if you decide a different model will work better for changing needs. In today’s fast-paced, constantly changing work landscape, that level of agility can be a game changer for how companies manage their communications.

  Interested in seeing how Sangoma can help to fill your communications needs? Visit www.sangoma.com.

  The post Hybrid Communications and the Benefits of Choosing an All-Inclusive Provider appeared first on Sangoma.

February 22, 2022

• Digium Desktop as a Service “in the real world”

  Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is the concept of bringing a virtual desktop to the cloud. In other words, think about your desktop now, and instead of having many of your applications downloaded to your computer, access to these applications occurs through the cloud. Some organizations love the approach since from an IT perspective, it makes managing employee applications easier. A thin-client can be used as well (saving laptops costs) and employees can be onboarded and offboarded very easily. And it is also more secure from a few perspectives – such as organization data is not stored on individual laptops, and IT security is also “outsourced” to the DaaS provider.

  Sangoma’s DaaS solution is also unique since it includes support for our unified communication clients, including our video meeting solution Sangoma Meet, not just the standard desktop applications.
  As mentioned above, user data is stored in the DaaS provider data center. But what happens if there is a security issue at the DaaS data center? A regional title company, who is a customer of West Michigan Technology Services (one of Sangoma’s partners), found themselves in just this situation. Their DaaS provider was hacked, and the title company approached West Michigan Technology Services for help.

  And help they did. Sangoma was able to provide our DaaS solution to the customer, and get the customer up and running within a couple of days. The customer liked the fact that Sangoma’s DaaS solution utilized built-in ransomware and malware protection, so that every file opened on each user’s virtual desktop is scanned (via virus definitions that are updated every 2 hours). Additionally, proprietary policies, procedures, and processes also alert the system upon access attempts to unauthorized files, and if a breach occurs Sangoma’s DaaS solution will automatically react to restore accounts back to a safe state.

  Please find more about this customer and Sangoma’s DaaS solution Connected Workspace.

  The post Desktop as a Service “in the real world” appeared first on Sangoma.

• WebRTC Hacks Optimizing WebRTC Power Consumption (Markus Handell)

  The performance of WebRTC in Chrome as well as other RTC applications needed to be improved a lot during the pandemic when more people with a more diverse set of machines and network connections started to rely on video conferencing. Markus Handell is a team lead at Google who cares a lot about performance of […]

  The post Optimizing WebRTC Power Consumption (Markus Handell) appeared first on webrtcHacks.

February 17, 2022

• FreeSWITCH The World’s Fastest AI Supercomputer – Coming 2022

  The Metaverse might not fully exist yet (and we don’t even know when it will) – but Meta is developing the world’s fastest AI supercomputer, which is slated to be finished in mid-2022. 

  We’ve all heard about the Metaverse in the last several months: a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection, accessed by VR or AR goggles. In 2021 Facebook renamed itself “Meta Platforms” and declared itself devoted to developing the Metaverse. It’s thought that this virtual reality will be the next iteration of the internet. Though when, specifically, is a mystery. 

  Meta actually started its AI research ten years ago, with the Facebook AI Research lab. The lab developed chatbot design, AI systems to forget unnecessary information, and even synthetic skin that gives robots the ability to have a sense of touch. In 2017, Meta launched its first AI supercomputer, which leveraged open source and publicly available data sets. The new supercomputer, named AI Research SuperCluster – or RSC – will use its powerful hardware to train large computer vision and natural language processing models. Real time voice translation will be one of the main highlights for RSC, so that people all over the world will be able to chat in the Metaverse in real time, all speaking different languages and seamlessly communicating with one another.

  In a blog post, Meta explains what the AI can already do, which includes translating languages and identifying harmful content. Upon completion, RSC should be able to accomplish building entirely new AI systems to power real time voice translation for huge groups of people, combining computer vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition. According to Mark Zuckerberg, RSC is already the fifth fastest computer in the world. Built from thousands of processors and currently hiding away in an undisclosed location, it is already operational, but will be launched later this year. The current computational infrastructure will need to improve a thousandfold to power the metaverse.  

  It makes sense that in order to fuel the Metaverse, RSC will require an immense amount of rapid computational power. There’s a ton of different ways to describe the computational power at play here – quintillions of operations per second, petaflops (one thousand teraflops) of computing in less than a millisecond, 5 exaflops of mixed precision computing at its peak, trillions of parameters in the neural networks. The natural language processor GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters alone. The current limit to RSC’s growth is the time it takes to train a neural network, which can take weeks of computing for large networks. New neural networks need to be built quickly in order to accomplish real time voice translations at the desired scale for the Metaverse. 

  The old system used 22,000 Nvidia V100 GPUs, and currently uses 6,080 Nvidia A100 GPUs. By later this year, when RSC is ready to be launched, it will be using 16,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs. RSC will train models with more than a trillion parameters on data sets as large as an exabyte, or 36,000 years of high-quality video. By connecting to 16,000 GPUs, the cache and storage will have a capacity of 1 exabyte, or 1 billion billion bytes, serving 16 terabytes per second of data to the system.  

  With this impressive computational power, RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples. But where, exactly, will these examples come from? Unlike its predecessor,  RSC will train machine learning models on data sourced from the social media owned by Meta – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others. And this might make you raise your eyebrows. What about security, and data privacy? Well, according to Meta, RSC has been designed from its infancy with privacy and security in mind, with the supercomputer being isolated from the internet, and having no inbound or outbound connections. Traffic will flow only from Meta’s production data centers and the entire data path is encrypted.  

  The COVID-19 pandemic has caused some setbacks on the project, just as it has for all industries. Supply chain constraints and other issues made it difficult to get necessary materials to build RSC, like chips and GPUs, and even basic construction materials. But if all goes according to plan, 2022 will be a big year for AI becoming faster, smarter, and more powerful than ever. 

• Digium Tips for Upgrading Your Team Collaboration Platform

  Team Collaboration software can be a vital part of your organization’s success. As companies face more instances of employees working from remote locales, they also find themselves in need of applications that can effectively unite—and assist—their workers from across the miles. This type of cloud-based software can foster work productivity, communications and collaboration, allowing staff to better exchange ideas, delegate tasks and edit and share documents.

  Related: 4 Reasons Why Businesses Are Moving To Connected Workspaces

  Ultimately, your choice for a Team Collaboration environment is an important decision that can impact the company bottom line for years to come. The impact of the considerations that go into that decision must be underscored.

  Team Collaboration Software Considerations

  How do you choose the right upgrade for your collaboration needs? Which is the correct provider? What features are most important? And are add-ons really necessary when so many options abound?

  Regardless of your answers to these questions – and every organization’s responses may vary – the importance of addressing YOUR needs is crucial.

  Related: At Your Service: An As-a-Service Guide to Sangoma’s Portfolio

  The business world has shifted so much, even from two years ago. Today’s companies more often find themselves geographically dispersed, with a work environment that falls somewhere between at-home, in-office or some combination of the two.

  Related: Introducing Sangoma Meet Virtual Backgrounds

  At the same time, this expanded work surface exposes today’s companies to previously unforeseen threats. A growing number of malicious, bad actors find it easier to target businesses that operate across a widened area. They prey upon the unique vulnerabilities of the at-home worker whose networks are often not as intensely monitored. For that reason, security also needs to be a focus.

  Regardless of the ways in which a company’s individual landscape shifts, however, it is incumbent to consider how to best implement, mix and use team collaboration tools to maintain operation workflows.

  Team Collaboration Key Features & Benefits

  Most team-based collaboration tools include basic elements such as:

  • Messaging: Supports real-time exchanges, presence availability and group, channel and tag-based chats. This function helps to decrease reliance on traditional email and phone usage in cases where a quick, real-time exchange—without having to archive the info—is needed.
  • Doc Management: Helps upload, collaborate on, simultaneously edit and control access to (permission-sharing) critical files.
  • Videoconferencing: Promotes one-on-one or group discussions with an emphasis on interactivity.
  • Project Management: Assists planning, tracking changes and attribution notes.
  • Reporting: Monitors staff activity and progress. This function also allows admins to generate reports and share data.

  Customize Your Team Experience Tools

  Your software set should be able to optimize and streamline worker / group productivity, supporting interactions to create a remote environment that parallels collaborating with a person just across the room.

  Related: Evolution of Email: Best Practices for Embracing Team Collaboration Software

  There are, however, many other considerations when choosing your team collaboration tool:

  • Availability: Is the software browser-based? Is it available for the major platforms? Is it accessible over most internet-connected devices?
  • Security: How are critical documents and exchanges protected, especially from an unsecure location? Are files encrypted? Is password sharing discouraged? Are two-factor authentication and other verification methods employed?
  • Customizability: Does the application offer standard or a la carte features that meet your specific needs?
  • Manageability: Are there options to control user and group settings, document access, call functions and more?
  • Accessibility: Is information accessible using a search function? How are files organized and stored?
  • Contact Governance: Can it juggle personal and professional contact information?
  • Scalability and Integration: Are on-demand cloud-based storage and other elements easily added?

  The ultimate goal is to best support ongoing projects, making collaboration as pain-free and seamless as possible. Special focus, of course, should go toward software that allows users to connect via messaging, conferencing and over shared docs. At the same time, users should be able to maintain projects using notes, embedded workflow tools, support for attachments and drag-and-drop options. Information accessibility is also key, thus having a modern and intuitive search tool is also important.

  How do you go about upgrading to the best Team Collaboration solution for your business? The simplest answer to this complex question is to examine your needs, then follow suit.

  The post Tips for Upgrading Your Team Collaboration Platform appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice ng-voice is sponsoring the Open5GS project

  Collaboration is one of ng-voice’s core values and part of our DNA. Our company strongly believes in the power of open-source to foment innovation – and therefore we keep actively contributing to the open-source community. And one way in which we do it is by sponsoring key projects, such as the Open5GS project.

   

  The Open5GS is an open-source project that focuses on the implementation of a 5G mobile core network, implementing 5GC and EPC using C-language. Its main goal is to implement the 5G Core network which was defined by 3GPP (Release 16) and support it by enabling 5G Core network functions (SMF, UPF, PCF, NRF, BSF, UDM, UDR, AMF) and Evolved Packet Core network functions (HSS, PCRF, etc.). 

   

  “As we are beneficiaries of various open-source projects, supporting such projects is a no-brainer for us. Open-Source enables us to quickly implement new technologies and new features into our product, so after following the Open5GS project and the people behind it for a long period, it was clear, that we should support it” said our CTO & Founder, Carsten Bock, who is a member of the Kamailio (OpenSER) management team and has also contributed to various other projects in open-source communications, such as OpenSIPS and FreeSwitch.

   

  In this blog post, we are discussing the Open5GS project, its implementation of 5GC and EPC (that is the core network of VoNR & VoLTE network). We are also going to take a look at how it supports mix and match, and how we actively use Open5GS in our testing Lab environment for IMS system tests.

  Open5GS For Voice over New Radio (VoNR)

  Voice over New Radio (VoNR) is entirely an IP Multimedia System (IMS) based voice calling services over 5G access and 5G Core Network. To deliver the Voice/Video services over 5G NR, a fully 3GPP compliant 5G Standalone Core Network is essential. In this regard, Open5Gs 5GC provides the crucial components that enable VoNR, which are the following:

   

   

  Session Management Function (SMF):

   

  The Open5Gs SMF keeps trace of PDU sessions and QoS Flows in the 5GC for UEs and makes sure their states and status are in sync with Network Functions in Control and User Planes. It also receives PCC (Policy and Charging Control) Rules from PCF (Policy Charging Function) and converts PCC Rules into SDF Templates, QoS Profiles, and QoS Rules for UPF, gNB, and UE respectively for QoS Flows establishment, modification, and release.

   

  User Plane Function(UPF):

   

  The Open5GS UPF plays the most critical role in the process of data transfer. It provides the interconnect point between the mobile infrastructure and the Application Function (AF) such as IMS, i.e. encapsulation and decapsulation of GTP-U.

   

  Policy Control Function(PCF):

   

  The Open5GS PCF performs the same function as the PCRF in 4G networks by providing policy rules for control plane functions. This includes network slicing, roaming, and mobility management. Accesses subscription information for policy decisions taken by the UDR. It also supports the new 5G QoS policy, charging control functions and extends SBI interfaces towards the P-CSCF.

   

  Network Repository Function(NRF):

   

  The Open5GS NRF supports the service discovery feature, which receives NF discovery requests from NF instances and provides information about the discovered NF instance (discovered) to another NF instance. The registration information also includes NF type, address, service list, and many others.

   

  Binding Support Function (BSF):

   

  The Open5GS BSF also offers services to PCFs to register and deregister information about data sessions, and services to other applications to query the BSF which PCF that serves a specific data session

   

  Unified data management (UDM) and User data repository (UDR):

   

  The Open5GS UDM is a key node in authenticating and authorizing user access to the network and roaming access using subscription data fetched from open5gs UDR, and in providing smooth and seamless session continuity

   

  Access and Mobility Management Function(AMF):

   

  The Open5GS AMF terminates the control plane of different access networks onto the 5G Core Network (5GC) and control which UEs can access the 5GC to exchange traffic with DNS. It also manages the mobility of UEs when they roam from one gNB to another for session continuity, whenever possible.

   

  Using Open5GS to support for Mix and Match

  Open5GS can support both testing and live environments depending on the scale of your deployment. It comes with a ready-to-use Docker setup which takes a 4G/5G core into the cloud with very little effort. This way it allows mix and match of 4G/5G components with Open5GS components and brings new players to the market who would usually have to mock or buy other vendors’ core components in order to harden their own implementations. 

   

  On the other hand, Open5GS provides an overview of Diameter and N-interface call flows in core networks, which usually require a deep understanding of the 3GPP specifications. In fact in conjunction with projects like srsRAN today it is already possible to deploy a complete own and OpenSource-based private core network, giving you the freedom to install it on your hardware stack of choice. Open5GS is not just another proof of concept, it is used in private deployments worldwide already as a mobile packet core application. Especially in Cloud environments, an Amazon research project shows that it can be used as an Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service. 

   

  

  Using Open5GS in our testing Lab at ng-voice

  In addition to integrating with commercial EPC solutions, we also further test with open-source solutions such as Open5GS. At ng-voice, our developers use Open5GS in their test environments for system testing with any UE. Using Open5GS under these circumstances provides us with several advantages. The rich suite of Open5GS components, on the one hand, gives developers the full power of an automatically deployed test setup, on the other, they can choose between 4G and 5G components, depending on the scope of the implementation. Ultimately, Open5GS is not only bound to one machine by license, so multiple differently configured test environments can be deployed in parallel, which cuts both development and testing time dramatically.

   

  We at ng-voice offer a VoLTE/VoNR solution that is truly cloud-native and fully containerized. ng-voice’s cloud-native IMS core is the first 100% containerized and Kubernetes-based fully-fledged IMS solution on the market, allowing deployment on bare metal (private), public, and hybrid cloud environments. Following the best practices in CI/CD and bringing a DevOps approach to telecommunications software, ng-voice’s IMS core has a high level of automation across the whole development, deployment, and operation processes. With a minimal resource footprint, it reduces voice production costs and optimizes the entire life-cycle management of the application.

   

  Made-in-Germany, ng-voice’s solutions adhere to the highest security and data protection standards. To learn more about our solutions, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com

   

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  Supreeth Herle

  Software Engineer

  Publisher Bio

  With over a decade of experience as a Wireless System Engineer at Nokia Networks, Safran and others, Supreeth’s expertise includes integrating EPC and eNodeB with IMS, building 5G infrastructure for the Aerospace use case. Now at ng-voice, he uses his knowledge to ensure our cloud-native IMS core is tailored to the needs of the enterprise market.

  

  Lukas Stermann

  Software Engineer

  Publisher Bio

  A software engineer with expertise in object-oriented programming and application development. In 2017, Lukas brought his knowledge in software architecture to ng-voice and has the challenge to enrich and develop new features for ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core as well as implementing RCS, the next-generation mobile messaging.

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.5.4 Released

  Kamailio SIP Server v5.5.4 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.5.3. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

  Kamailio^® v5.5.4 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.5 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.5.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.5 branch.

  Resources for Kamailio version 5.5.4 Source tarballs are available at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.5.4/src/

  Detailed changelog:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.5.4/ChangeLog

  Download via GIT:

   # git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio
   # cd kamailio
   # git checkout -b 5.5 origin/5.5

  Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.5.4/

  Modules’ documentation:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.5.x/

  What is new in 5.5.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.5.0:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-5-0-release-notes/

  Thanks for flying Kamailio! We wish you a smooth time during this crisis and to stay healthy!

  The post Kamailio v5.5.4 Released first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.

February 15, 2022

• Digium A Hybrid Prem / Cloud UCaaS Deployment May Be Right for Your Business: Part 2

  What might be some benefits to your company if your headquarters office was a prem UC deployment and your satellite offices were a cloud deployment?

  I started writing this, and when I got to the end, I realized everything I wrote about the satellite offices was totally applicable to why a company would go to the cloud in the first place. So at a high level, we’re talking about the benefits of the cloud for the company:

  1. Employees in the satellite office “don’t have to deal with the phone system .”No dealing with updates, dialing plans, etc. Someone in HQ would do that.
  2. Getting DIDs, paying bills, figuring out trunking providers all had to be done from that office for that system. But if the system was a company system, all connected, much of this could be centralized more easily.
  3. When employees visit the different sites, they don’t need to ask how to dial out, etc. It’s the same no matter the location.
  4. Call overflow to other sites is easy. Let’s say the satellite locations also have some support organizations. It would be easy to put routing rules in place to have any type of volume overflow go to a site or a person, or specific types of calls go to a person, no matter the office location.

  One benefit of a hybrid approach for the company is using the same collaboration tools. This might be obvious, but if the company had already decided to have a premise system in HQ and a cloud for everything else, it’s not “obvious” it could all be on the same system. There might be separate sets of tools if there are two different systems. In fact, there probably would be. If everyone in the company is on the same collaboration tools, it makes instant messaging, presence, screen sharing, etc., easy. Yes, you are thinking, I do this already since I’m remote. You are probably on a cloud system already or tied to a premise system, not in some hybrid structure.

  Sangoma can provide this as we have the same software in the premise or cloud deployment.

  The post A Hybrid Prem / Cloud UCaaS Deployment May Be Right for Your Business: Part 2 appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice ng-voice’s IMS is shortlisted for GLOMO Awards at MWC Barcelona 2022

  ng-voice is proud to be shortlisted for GLOMO Awards at MWC Barcelona 2022 for the Best Digital Tech Breakthrough (Companies under $10 million Annual Global Revenue). Our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS is being nominated for the second time consecutively and we are honoured to be part of this list with the industry’s most influential players, showcasing the best and most innovative mobile solutions.

   

  From the 28th of February to the 3rd of March the GSMA returns with the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2022, both in-person and virtually. The event is considered by many to be one of the world’s biggest connectivity events in the industry. The GLOMO Awards (Global Mobile Awards) ceremony happens during the MWC and celebrates key innovations and achievements which stand out in our industry, being considered by many to be the most prestigious and highly anticipated award ceremony of the year. 

   

  At ng-voice, we are proud of this achievement and have spoken to David Bachmann (CEO of ng-voice) to share his excitement with us. “Once again, we are very excited and proud to be shortlisted for the MWC 2022 GLOMO awards, the industry’s most prestigious awards ceremony. This is a great recognition of all the hard work that we have been investing into developing the most innovative, fully containerized and cloud-native IMS in the market“.

   

  

   

   

  The GLOMO Awards winners will be announced at MWC Barcelona (Spain) on Wednesday 2nd of March (12 pm – 1 pm CET). In the meantime, you can read more on our last year’s experience at MWC Barcelona 2021 here, or get in contact with our team at mwc2022@ng-voice.com to learn more about our IMS solution. 

  
  To know more about the MWC Barcelona 2022 and the awards ceremony, visit www.mwcbarcelona.com

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  Khaled Amirian

  WS Content Marketing

  Publisher Bio

  During his academic and professional career, his curiosity to learn different business functions such as HR and marketing allowed him to gain valuable insights. Khaled aims to provide unique perspectives on topics in digital marketing and HRM. His interests in the digital world helped him become a key community member among Esports player.

February 14, 2022

• Kamailio sipexer – SIP CLI tool

  A new SIP CLI tool has been released to v1.0.0 that can facilitate testing and monitoring of SIP signalling systems. It tries to have a modern approach, with a flexible templating system, supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 with all the common transport layers, respectively UDP, TCP, TLS and WebSocket (for WebRTC).

  The project can be found at:

  • https://github.com/miconda/sipexer

  It is written in Go language for better portability, binaries for Linux, MacOS and Windows are made available for download in the release page:

  • https://github.com/miconda/sipexer/releases/tag/v1.0.0

  Among its features:

  • send OPTIONS request (quick SIP ping to check if server is alive)
  • do registration and un-registration with customized expires value and contact URI
  • authentication with plain or HA1 passwords
  • set custom SIP headers
  • template system for building SIP requests
  • fields in the templates can be set via command line parameters or a JSON file
  • variables for setting field values (e.g., random number, data, time, environment variables, uuid, random string, …)
  • simulate SIP calls at signalling layer (INVITE-wait-BYE)
  • respond to requests coming during SIP calls (e.g., OPTIONS keepalives)
  • send instant messages with SIP MESSAGE requests
  • color output mode for easier troubleshooting
  • support for many transport layers: IPv4 and IPv6, UDP, TCP, TLS and WebSocket (for WebRTC)
  • send SIP requests of any type (e.g., INFO, SUBSCRIBE, NOTIFY, …)

  One usage example that could ease the testing of Kamailio is initiating registrations or simulating calls over WebSocket without the need of having a JavaScript soft phone application running in a web browser.

  

  Enjoy!

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post sipexer – SIP CLI tool first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.

February 10, 2022

• Digium At Your Service: An “As-a-Service” Guide to Sangoma’s Portfolio

  Sangoma offers a full set of “as-a-Service” (aaS) offerings designed to meet the needs of the modern business. This family of cloud-based options includes externally hosted software across genres such as unified communications, desktops, communications platforms, contact centers, and team collaboration, among other areas. In this guide, we go over the most popular as-a-Service solutions and their benefits.

  Related: Sangoma Releases New & Improved Solutions, Delivers Enhanced Experience To Partners & Customers

  Traditionally, “as-a-Service” applications offer a form of cloud-based delivery whereby the software or network element is hosted by the provider. Owing largely to the wide coverage net that it casts, as-a-Service products are applicable to many different organizational needs. All of this occurs remotely, on demand and using virtually any device.

  Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

  Sangoma’s Unified Communications-as-a-Service product provides access to traditional, hosted services that represent a fundamental shift in business communications. Unlike traditional voice lines, UCaaS also includes options for remotely hosted video conferencing, faxing and messaging, among other features, without having to manage or provision them. Top benefits include supportive elements for bolstering engagement, productivity, continuity and customer service while also reducing one’s required hardware investment.

  Video Meetings as a Service (MaaS)

  Sangoma’s meetings as a service (Maas) solution, Sangoma Meet, is a secure, meet-from-anywhere video meetings and collaboration platform that you can leverage from any internet-connected device. Sangoma Meet enables file sharing on screen, integrates seamlessly with your calendar, supports PSTN dial-in, offers virtual backgrounds, simplifies attendee management from within and outside of the organization, and many other key features. MaaS allows businesses to maintain an in-office meeting experience while working remotely and including attendees from anywhere, seamlessly.  

  Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

  Desktop-as-a-Service integrates common UCaaS applications with Virtual Apps and Desktop Solutions. This blend provides on-demand access to “critical documents,” software, and communications tools for an in-office user experience while working from anywhere. Other common functions include embedded options for security, vertical customization and tiered context- and user-based access options. Sangoma’s DaaS platform is also a key component of their Connected Workspace solution.

  Related: 4 Reasons Businesses Are Moving To Connected Workspaces

  Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

  Sangoma’s CCaaS products, Contact Center and Service Insight, offer full-scale or internally focused customer service features, plus integration with the Sangoma communications platform. Contact Center is an advanced inbound platform for dedicated call centers. Service Insight focuses on departmental customer engagement needs, by providing customer analytics to help every department provide more informed service to callers. 

  Related: Evolution of Email: Best Practices for Embracing Team Collaboration Software

  Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS)

  The Communication Platform-as-a-Service implementation features integration and customization to support one’s unique workflows. The system provides a common business backbone for remaining connected with users and processes, and extends elements for blending communications with sales, marketing, e-commerce, finance and customer relationship management aspects. Among the service’s main selling points are custom workflows, integrations and development options, as well as support for end-to-end communications and on-demand access to Sangoma professional services.

  Devices as a Service

  Sangoma offers a complete suite of hardware and accessories, including devices such as phones, headsets, network connectivity equipment, and more. The advantage of devices as a service is that customers can get all of the solutions they need, fully integrated from one provider, so they know it will work together effortlessly. Sangoma’s integrated devices also offer additional features designed exclusively for our cloud portfolio, further enhancing the user experience.

  Fax as a Service (FaaS)

  Faxing remains an important communications tool, yet is often neglected by cloud service providers. Sangoma’s Fax as a Service (FaaS) solution, FAXStation, offers reliable, modern faxing for businesses that features a telecom appliance with analog connections. FAXStation also operates in concert with our fax server data center to encrypt and package communications for user peace of mind. Businesses can continue to rely on faxing capabilities without compromising their choice in cloud communications security or systems with FAXStation.

  Access Control as a Service (ACaaS)

  Controlling access to your physical building may seem unrelated to your communications system, but with SmartOffice, our Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) solution, we can tightly integrate your communications and access controls for easier management, wireless access, and better security. Instead of keeping track of keys, fobs, and access cards, SmartOffice allows you to manage access via smartphones and IoT technologies, all controlled by your communications infrastructure and leveraging existing wiring, network, and employee credential infrastructure.

  Trunking as a Service (TaaS)

  SIP trunks allow businesses to continue leveraging their existing communications infrastructure while also upgrading their service to the cloud. Sangoma’s Trunking as a Service (TaaS) solutions deliver internet-based telephony services via the customer’s existing internet connection, helping them save money and elevate their communications with access to our leading UCaaS portfolio.

  Conclusion

  Sangoma’s family of cloud-based as-a-Service products cast a wide net in terms of coverage, encompassing areas such as software, platforms, contact centers, and disaster recovery. Each is designed to streamline use and improve productivity by handling all aspects (and headaches) of owning, provisioning and managing application deployment. 

  Related: The Era of Hybrid Work: Common Trends In The Shift To Flexible Offices

  The beauty of Sangoma’s solution portfolio is that, instead of sourcing and maintaining all of these mission-critical applications separately, Sangoma users enjoy the simplicity of a platform that combines all of these tools in one! Our complete communications platform ensures that your business has all of the tools you need, tightly integrated with supporting endpoints and accessories to maximize your productivity and efficiency. Our as-a-Service model offers the best of traditional communications solutions and modern delivery methods, so that you get the best system for your needs at the best price!

  The post At Your Service: An “As-a-Service” Guide to Sangoma’s Portfolio appeared first on Sangoma.

February 09, 2022

• Kamailio SIP Resources Listing

  A listing of various SIP resources was published on Github at:

  • https://github.com/miconda/sip-resources

  It focuses on open source variants, although there are several freeware and paid options, being build mainly from the perspective of Daniel-Constantin Mierla, one of the Kamailio co-founders.

  

  Books about SIP, softphones or hardphones, SIP cli tools, network sniffing applications, native or java script libraries, SIP servers or PBXes, telephony operator platforms are among the categories included in that directory. Definitely some of them could be useful to use from time to time.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  The post SIP Resources Listing first appeared on The Kamailio SIP Server Project.