Multiple PRI (ISDN) cards on a single FreeSWITCH box

Where the number simultaneous calls are increasing many of you would like to scale up your FreeSWITCH/Asterisk system by increasing number of PRI/BRI lines to your system and for that, you would like to run more than one telephony card. 

I have successfully tested 3 cards on a single FreeSWITCH machine.

Here is a simple tutorial on how to achieve that (With reference to DAHDI. ofcourse you can use sangoma or any other manufacturer’s cards).

1. Insert the card into your PCIe slot (as most of the cards today are PCIe compatible)
2. Load the driver module specific for the cards.
   Now this step should be taken care of. Suppose you are using DAHDI as the driver interface, you have to find the name of the specific driver module for the particular card e.g. for digium 8-span card it’s “wct4xxp”, for single span “wcte12xp” . Now load the module(This step could be different for different OS platforms).
   Now if you are using different type of cards (of same manufacturer as I used) e.g. 8-span and 4-span, you will have to load modules for both the cards.
3. After modules are loaded properly the cards can be detected by the system.
4. Configure cards in system.conf (wrt dahdi). 
   If you are using 8+4 span card for example, configure 1-12 spans in system.conf and run dahdi configuration utility and the lines will be up if connected properly.
5. Now the last step is to configure mod_freetdm. Configure 12 spans in the configuration files of mod_freetdm(refer wiki) and if done properly the system will be up and running.

If you find any issues reach me at gautamashish09[at]gmail.com 

Cloud Telephony- the telephony 2.0

Think about this :-

A web application which interacts with users, calls them, get their input through their mobile’s keypad, records their voice, SMS them etc. Now what if the developers of this web application did not have any knowledge about how the Telephony or such applications work? Seems absurd? How is it possible? The one and only answer to all these questions is “Cloud Telephony”.

Now what is Cloud Telephony? Put simply, this term means you do not have to worry about how telephony things work, how outgoing calls are made, conference, call transfer, PRI lines all these terms may prove to be a headache for a developer who wants to develop advanced telephony applications but does not have the expertise on the part of telephony isn’t it? And this is where Cloud Telephony comes into play. Cloud telephony service providers simply provide you all these basic telephony functionalities like making a call through simple methods which are available today. Say you just have to call an API or send information through VXML (Voice XML, a standard format) and all done. Isn’t that simple? Cloud Telephony has made it all possible.

Times are changing and so is the technology. Today is the time of convergence of Internet and Telephony. And when these two are combined, Cloud Telephony is born. Things like choosing a PRI provider, buying a server or datacenter, Telephony software development and deployment and headache about all this stuff is now outdated! Cloud Telephony has open up the door where developers can now just leave all these woes to the Cloud Telephony service providers. In other words Cloud Telephony has emerged as the second generation Telephony. It becomes so simple for the developers to develop highly sophisticated telephony applications because of the same.

It is well said if there are fumes, there must be some fire. Why this term “Cloud Telephony” has become so much popular in such a short time? Obviously there are clear reasons behind that. Now businesses can host the their call centre on cloud, Develop highly sophisticated, innovative telephony applications and IVRS in very short time, No worries about system uptime and maintenance, lowered set-up costs, freedom to develop your own services are some of the benefits out of countless number. You just pay on monthly basis or as per actual usage basis and become free of all the worries. In a simple language, Cloud Telephony is nothing but your personal Telephony system hosted by the service providers. As far as the market need is concerned, its huge as we all know when it comes to telephony.

In India there are 10 percent internet users as compared to more than 70 percent mobile or telephone users. Everybody almost from a young teenager to an old person in his late 70s uses mobile or phone. So there is no doubt that Telephony has a great potential when it comes to market and Cloud Telephony for sure will help businesses to utilize the power of telephony to reach the masses. And this is why it catching up so much popularity today. In future we can expect some great innovative work from developers making use of the power of Cloud Telephony as it has opened up altogether a new world for them.