Skype cancels Asterisk integration | Hacker News Reader

Skype cancels Asterisk integration

now.eloqua.com

85 pointse1ven20 comments

Skype are probably just dropping support for the Asterisk specific plugin. They still have the standards based Skype for SIP (http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/business/skype-connect/), which Asterisk should also be able to support via its own SIP support.

Other VoIP endpoint vendors have hacked around Skype quite a bit:

http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Mod_skypopen_Skype_Endpoint_...

... which is good until Skype starts trying to detect this kind of stuff.

Anyone else wonder if this has anything to do with Skype's recent acquisition by Microsoft?

The title on Slashdot was "Microsoft Kills Skype For Asterisk", but I thought that was too speculative for HN.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/24/2010222/Microsoft-Ki...

It's the first thing I thought of, and it could be a clue as to where MS may lead Skype. Are they going to come out with some killer VOIP app for Windows 7 mobiles phones that will cause us all to drop our iPhones & 'droids?

I hope they realize that the 'killer app' part of Skype is the amount of people using it. If they kill platforms, they lose people. If they lose people, they kill Skype.

Case in point: If they kill either the Mac client or the iOS client, they will lose me, and thus all my family. I hope they realize that.

Active Directory integration, mayhap?

I'm using Nimbuzz on my Android phone and it's fairly complete, bar Skype-support. I thought this was such a glaring omission, so I emailed them about it, wondering if it would be added.

The response I got was that they previously did have Skype-support, but that Skype had a policy/TOS which banned use trough other/competing IM/VoIP services and that they had sent Nimbuzz a cease and decist letter.

In the email response I got, I also got this link: http://blog.nimbuzz.com/2010/10/25/what-the-skypenimbuzz-bre...

So... If anything, Skype's hostility to open VoIP/SIP-based solutions started long before Microsoft's acquisition.

I wonder if they will see a huge spike in orders over the next 2 months... I am certainly more likely to buy it now, just in case I need it in the next 2 years.

Except you'll probably loose support sometime in the next few years and as soon as they consider it a burden or a threat they'll pull the plug on it. For hobby use it would be really cool for any business I'd stay far away from it.

This seems like as good a place as any to ask: I work at a company that's distributed all across the US and East Asia. We don't really have a coherent phone system. This isn't my area per se, but I'm curious to see what options are out there. What should I look at? Is Skype the way to go or are there better "corporate" options?

Our small company linked free open source Asterisk servers in US, Philippines, and India (10-100 people per location). It's doable, but has a significant learning curve. I'd recommend hiring a professional to help you set it up and train your IT staff.

If you want to pay for a higher end option, Avaya is a common choice. They power many companies (including huge call centers) all over the world.

If you have moderate experience with Linux and can read manpages then you should have no real problem linking Asterisk servers between locations and setting up all common phone functions.

Asterisk (and its derivatives) are really quite powerful and easy to use. We use it everywhere that the commercial systems fail (like having working SIP without paying tens of thousands in licenses)

I have worked with Asterisk and would recommend using FreeSWITCH instead.

I would not. Not yet, anyway. Configuration of Asterisk is significantly easier with the FreePBX GUI. The FreeSWITCH equivalent is 2600hz which, although prettier, is missing a number of features* and is more difficult to use in some ways.

It's very promising, though.

* I don't remember which features specifically, but I do remember being unable to completely replicate a moderately complex Asterisk setup in the 2600hz GUI. It might have been related to the AVR system.

Hi - founder of blue.box, the product from 2600hz you are referring to.

I'd be curious to know which features, but more importantly, have you seen Whistle? It's an API-driven control system for clustered FreeSWITCH. You can probably do whatever you need to in there.

What kind of hardware to you use (besides the boxes themselves)? Is everything a VOIP phone with an RJ-45 jack, or do you also use add-on cards and other telephony goodies?

If you want POTS, you get a telephony card from Digium. If all you want is VOIP, then you can use your box as-is.

Might be outdated, but you TFoT2 is free:

http://astbook.asteriskdocs.org/

I posted something on this a little bit ago. Seems to correlate with Microsoft's decision to revoke free access to their VXML studio product (and thus Skype purchase) - https://studio.tellme.com/

Uh-oh. What's next? The API?

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