[Freeswitch-users] FreeSwitch the Right Tool?

[David Knell]

Hi Bill,
> I'm looking at FreeSwitch as a platform for an area where we're 
> expanding our business.  I was wondering if I could get your guidance 
> on whether it's the Right Tool for what I need.  I realize this is 
> potentially a Troll, and I apologize, but this seems so far to be a 
> small, positive group and I thought I'd just come out and ask.
>
> First some background.  I have several clients who want various 
> value-added phone services.  Basically, they want IVR systems with 
> some bells and whistles such as recording calls, integration with 
> their websites, and "follow me" services.  My company has done similar 
> work for clients on the GIS (mapping) side, and I have personally 
> worked with Asterisk as a true smart PBX solution, so we are 
> considering adding this to our offerings.
A few bits of feedback from our use of FreeSWITCH so far, which has covered:
- a calling card product
- a call recording product
- a "pay for this web service using a premium rate call" product
- a conference calling thing

We've done our development in Perl, using the socket/event interface.  
At the time we started, there was no support for sockets in FreeSWITCH's 
Javascript implementation (there's a module now) - with Perl, we got all 
of CPAN.  Which is great.  We have had a certain amount of pain (and 
we're not completely through with it yet) - the Perl event handlers, 
built on the supplied FreeSWITCH::Client.pm module, occasionally turn up 
their toes in a way which Perl's docs suggest they shouldn't and I don't 
know why yet.

Sound quality - in a SIP-only environment, no TDM - is excellent.  We're 
using G.711 for the calling card, and the call profile (average 
duration, etc.) is unchanged from the same service on TDM, which implies 
the same quality.

Lastly, I did a bit of work to add some custom tone/grunt detection to 
FreeSWITCH (which I *will* contribute back once I'm happy with it) and 
it, whilst not being trivial, was as straightforward as could be.  I had 
been rapidly losing my hair trying to dig through the Asterisk source to 
work out where and how to add the same functionality, and FreeSWITCH's 
is utterly different.

Really finally, the support from the FreeSWITCH community has been first 
class for me.  I'd idly speculate that this is because most people who 
participate write code - it's currently the sort of project where it's 
maybe a bit impenetrable if you don't - and you're unlikely to be asked 
to buy a Digium card to sort out a software issue..!

--Dave

-- 
David Knell, Director, 3C Limited
T: 020 8114 8901  F: 020 8692 0677  M: 07773 800623
http://www.3c.co.uk