For anyone in the telecom and VoIP world that has not been living under a rock, you are probably familiar with the FreeSwitch project. But for the sake of any hermit crabs reading this, FreeSwitch is a modular open source carrier grade softswitch capable of routing millions of calls. It is stable and extensible to a fault.
One related project that is a little bit lesser known is FusionPBX. Built by developer Mark Crane since about 2010, FusionPBX is a nice multi-tenant capable web front-end that will help you:
Mark’s decade of experience in VoIP really shows in his attention to his product. I suggest you get your hands on this software and put it to use; while you’re still learning, I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to take the class.
The purpose of the beginner class is to take you from zero to hero in three days, and it does just that for under a thousand clams. Usually, the class takes place in a hotel or via live webinar. In our class alone we had people tuning in from the U.S., U.K., Russia, and Israel.
Each day, you tackle how to setup and configure all kinds of features to get your PBX or carrier switch fully up and running. You also get to play with several kinds of VoIP phones from Yealink, Grandstream, Cisco, and Polycom.
Mark was a great instructor, and was very open to answering all sorts of questions from his classroom. In addition, in my class there was a nice hardware discussion where we talked about Raspberry Pi, Odroid, and Edgemax as possible low-cost embedded FusionPBX installations. FreePBX contributor Richard Neese got FusionPBX up and running on a $59 Odroid U3 terminating 200 simultaneous calls with no latency or jitter!
One related project that is a little bit lesser known is FusionPBX. Built by developer Mark Crane since about 2010, FusionPBX is a nice multi-tenant capable web front-end that will help you:
- Provision phones,
- Secure your VoIP network,
- Set up extensions,
- Launch an inbound call center,
- Scale your install,
- and much, much more.
Mark’s decade of experience in VoIP really shows in his attention to his product. I suggest you get your hands on this software and put it to use; while you’re still learning, I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to take the class.
The purpose of the beginner class is to take you from zero to hero in three days, and it does just that for under a thousand clams. Usually, the class takes place in a hotel or via live webinar. In our class alone we had people tuning in from the U.S., U.K., Russia, and Israel.
Each day, you tackle how to setup and configure all kinds of features to get your PBX or carrier switch fully up and running. You also get to play with several kinds of VoIP phones from Yealink, Grandstream, Cisco, and Polycom.
Mark was a great instructor, and was very open to answering all sorts of questions from his classroom. In addition, in my class there was a nice hardware discussion where we talked about Raspberry Pi, Odroid, and Edgemax as possible low-cost embedded FusionPBX installations. FreePBX contributor Richard Neese got FusionPBX up and running on a $59 Odroid U3 terminating 200 simultaneous calls with no latency or jitter!
The Top 5 Reasons to Attend the FusionPBX Class
1. Learn How to Use FusionPBX
The FusionPBX project is MASSIVE. There are a ton of features in FusionPBX, and any features that are lacking can be created in the interface using dialplan logic, regular expressions, and Lua. You will learn how to use all the baked-in features and the above strategies to implement your own custom features. In addition to this, we covered some emerging technologies like WebRTC and HTML5 for screen pops. We also looked at a softphone / instant messaging client called Jitsi, and learned that it also has the capability to do screen pops and click-to-call.
2. Become a better FreeSwitch user.
That’s not a typo; FusionPBX lets you get as deep as you want to. All the field names and sections are named just like they are in FreeSwitch. The dialplans and logic work pretty much the same as well. You can read the FreeSwitch book before attending if you like, and you will have more AHA! moments in three days than you have had in the last year.
3. Learn how to secure your PBX and VoIP network.
There is a great security portion of the class. We discussed all the different exploits people use on VoIP systems and how to mitigate them with built-in features of FusionPBX. We also saw someone trying a new exploit on the system and watched Mark implement a new feature which stopped it pretty effectively. You *NEED* to get a handle on this: one exploit on your switch or endpoints and you can drum up a million dollar bill over a weekend easily. This one conversation can be worth 1,000 times the cost of entry.
4. Learn how to scale FusionPBX.
Everyone’s favorite topic, right? Well, it’s covered in some pretty serious detail. We covered high availability setups, sharing config files in the database, and using the built-in memcached feature to keep live config files in memory.
5. Connect with other members of the FusionPBX Community.
The importance of this cannot be understated. I met two FusionPBX developers in addition to the class being taught by the creator and lead developer. You also learn how to connect to the #FusionPBX channel on freenode and how to get support through the website when you need help fast.
If you are considering using FusionPBX or even just FreeSwitch in any capacity other than as a hobbyist, I highly recommend this class. And if you can’t make it, please consider donating to the project.