FreeSWITCH is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

telephony software for

real-time communication Real-time communication (RTC) is a category of software protocols and communication hardware media that gives real-time guarantees, which is necessary to support real-time guarantees of real-time computing. Real-time communication Protocols (comp ...

protocols using audio, video, text and other forms of media. The software has applications in

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication and ...

voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables Voice call, voice calls to be tran ...

(VoIP), video transcoding, Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) functionality and supports

Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...

(SIP) features. The software runs on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

History

The FreeSWITCH project was initially announced in January 2006 and the first version was officially released in May 2008. The subsequent versions, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, were released in 2012 and 2014 supporting SIP over Websocket and WebRTC. The 1.6 version supported video transcoding and video conferencing and the 1.8 version was released in 2018. The latest release is version 1.10. In 2018, SignalWire Inc. was founded to provide commercial cloud telecommunication services utilizing an elastic FreeSWITCH core, and provide a permanent commercial sponsor for the open source project that was controlled by the founders of FreeSWITCH. It then acquired FreeSWITCH Solutions.

Architecture

FreeSWITCH runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD. It is distributed under the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The MPL is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns of bo ...

(MPL). According to the original designer, Anthony Minessale, FreeSWITCH is intended to be a softswitch that is built around a core library, driven by a state machine, which can be embedded into other projects. FreeSWITCH provides a scalable system around a stable switching core, and a robust interface for developers to add to and control the system. It is a core component in many PBX in a box commercial products and open-source projects. Some of the commercial products are hardware and software bundles, for which the manufacturer supports and releases the software as open source.

Applications

FreeSWITCH is used to build

private branch exchange A business telephone system is a telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing the range of technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX). A business telephone system differs from ...

(PBX), IVR services, videoconferencing with chat and screen sharing, wholesale

least-cost routing In voice telecommunications, least-cost routing (LCR) is the process of selecting the path of outbound communications traffic based on cost. Within a telecoms carrier, an LCR team might periodically (monthly, weekly or even daily) choose between ro ...

Session Border Controller A session border controller (SBC) is a network element deployed to protect SIP based voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks. Early deployments of SBCs were focused on the borders between two service provider networks in a peering environme ...

(SBC) and embedded communication appliances. It also has support for

encryption In Cryptography law, cryptography, encryption (more specifically, Code, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the inf ...

ZRTP ZRTP (composed of Z and Real-time Transport Protocol) is a cryptographic key-agreement protocol to negotiate the keys for encryption between two end points in a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone telephony call based on the Real-time Transport Protocol ...

DTLS Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is a communications protocol providing security to datagram-based applications by allowing them to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery. The DTLS protocol ...

. Projects such as BigBlueButton are built on top of FreeSWITCH and FusionPBX is an add-on to FreeSWITCH that provides a web management interface. In June 2007, FreeSWITCH was selected by Truphone for use, and in August 2007, Gaboogie announced that it selected FreeSWITCH as its conferencing platform. It has also partnered with Five9, Plivo, Samsung, Waeve and Twilio for its usage. The software is also used by The U.S Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bibliography

* Mastering FreeSWITCH – ISBN 978-1784398880 * FreeSWITCH 1.8 – ISBN 978-1785889134 * FreeSWITCH 1.6 Cookbook – ISBN 978-1785280917

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeswitch Free VoIP software Lua (programming language)-scriptable software Software using the Mozilla Public License