VUC – 8 Years

The VoIP Users Conference is celebrating 8 years on the air. The weekly online meetup is going to have its 535th session during a 24 hours voipathon, starting at 12:00pm PDT (20:00 London time) on Thursday, the 2nd of April, 2015. You can find more details about the session, including the options to join via audio, video or irc, at:

• http://www.voipusersconference.org/2015/voipathon-2/

Big credits to Randy Resnick, who started VUC, kept it going every week for the past years and he is still steering its future. Kamailio developers and users are glad to have been part of many sessions, presenting about latest news related to the project or joining sessions to debate hot topics of the real time communications world at the moment.

Prepare yourself to pop up online and join the VUC voipathon even for a bit, say hi and tell shortly what is new in your world of communications!

Randy and many VUC friends will be at Kamailio World Conference 2015, May 27-29, in Berlin, Germany, with VUC Visions session – be sure don’t miss the event where you can meet the people that had a relevant impact in transformation of the real time communications over the past years and work on defining their future!

Update of Keepassx Autotyping on Mac OS X

Back in 2009 I published the article on this blog about doing autotyping in Keepassx for Mac OS X using AppleScript and some other helper application, MoreInternet. That article is available at:

• http://by-miconda.blogspot.de/2009/07/keepassx-mac-os-x-and-auto-typing.html

It is still a popular reading on my blog, however MoreInternet is no longer available for recent releases of Mac OS X. But that's for a better option as now Mac OS X can auto-register URL handlers on first run of an application that advertises the capability.

Lately I am using mainly iTerm2 instead of the classic Terminal.app, therefore I spent a bit of time in upgrading the AppleScript to fit better with my current environment, Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and iTerm2 (as main option).

The AppleScript is available on GitHub, feel free to fork and make pull requests with enhancements:

• https://github.com/miconda/keepassx-autotyping-macosx

With the new version comes few alternatives of specifying the URL schema in order to make it nicer looking inside the Keepassx. The old format with 'kpx' is still available, allowing the variants:

  kpx://proto?username:password@address:port/path
  kpx://proto?username:password:address:port/path

The proto field can be ssh, http or https.

The new variants use kpx-proto for URL schema, getting rid of the strange url with 'proto?' inside it, resulting in something more closer to actual URLs. The new URL format is:

kpx-proto://username:password@address:port/path

Again, the proto can be ssh, http or https. For both formats, old and new, the port and path are optional. For ssh, the path must not be provided. Next are some examples:

kpx-ssh://alice:secret@10.0.0.10 

kpx-https://alice:secret@mywebsite.com/login

It is possible to use the KeePassX self expanding variables such as {USERNAME} or {PASSWORD}.

kpx-https://{USERNAME}:{PASSWORD}@mywebsite.com/login

Installation

Download the kpx.as file from GitHub repository.

Open Script Editor from Applications => Utilities, paste the content of kpx.as into it and export it as 'Application', save it as kpx.app somewhere on your disk.

With a text editor like 'vim', edit kpx.app/Contents/PkgInfo and set the content to "APPLokpx" (no double quotes). Edit kpx.app/Contents/Info.plist and set the bundle signature to the last 4 letters of the value in PkgInfo file and add details about 'kpx' URL handling, you should get to something like this:

    <key>CFBundleSignature</key> <string>okpx</string> <key>CFBundleURLTypes</key> <array> <dict> <key>CFBundleURLName</key> <string>KeePassX</string> <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key> <array> <string>kpx</string> <string>kpx-ssh</string> <string>kpx-http</string> <string>kpx-https</string> </array> </dict> </array>

Note: CFBundleSignature should be there already, just update the string value. CFBundleURLTypes (and the array value) must be added.

Save the files you edited and the execute kpx.app from Finder. This operation is registering the kpx URL handlers. The execution is practically exiting immediately, but afterwards Keepassx will be able to launch it for its registered URL schemes.

Again, if you have an older version of Mac OS X, you may need to install More Internet application to register new URL handlers, for more details see the blog for older version of this script. Read that article if you didn't do it in the past, because it provides other useful hints for testing and using as well as screenshots.

Mentioned before that iTerm2 is preferred terminal, if you prefer the Terminal.all, edit the downloaded kpx.as and replace the line:

set myTerm to "iTerm2"

with:

set myTerm to "Terminal"

Then do the same steps as above for installation.

The terminal application is used for ssh handling. For http/https, the Safari browser is used.

An important note is to re-install and run the application every time you change something in the AppleScript file kpx.as, before attempting to use Keepassx with the modifications done in kpx.as.

Hopefully this article will be useful for some people out there!

No effective time to work on at this moment, but it in the future I am thinking to add the option to start mosh instead of ssh and work with other web browsers Chromium/Chrome, Firefox or Opera -- I haven't checked which browsers have support for AppleScript commands. Of course, these or other contributions are welcome!

Roadmap to Kamailio v4.3.0

Next major release of Kamailio is going to be versioned.

The plan to release it was sketched during the last IRC devel meeting back in February, proposing to get it out by beginning of June 2015. Given there has to be at least one month of testing, the next milestones to release date were proposed:

• freezing the development: Wednesday, April 22, 2015
• if testing goes smooth, then branching 4.3 after about one month: During the week starting May 18
• test more in beta phase, prepare packaging, etc. and release after 2-3 weeks: One of the days between June 4 and 11

You can join the discussion with other suggestions or adjustments on Kamailio mailing lists.

Kamailio World 2015 – VoLTE Testbed and Demo

Two months till the start of Kamailio World Conference & Exhibition 2015. Prepare yourself for three days full of interesting presentations and demos during May 27-29 in Berlin, Germany!

With the accelerated propagation of LTE and hot discussions about what 5G is going to be, definitely VoLTE is a top topic these days. Kamailio has a consistent set of IMS extensions, making it one of the most flexible options to consider for rolling out VoLTE platforms, already with live deployments in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

Kamailio World is the place where you can play with VoLTE yourself, FhG Fokus, Core Network Dynamics and NG Voice are preparing a testbed on site with a local LTE network and a Kamailio-based VoLTE platform. Bring your VoLTE capable device (e.g., iPhone 6 or most of the latest models with Android from Samsung, LG, Huaweii …) and experience yourself the technology of your calls in the near future, with high definition voice and proper integration with other IP based services, including WebRTC.

Don’t forget to check the other presentations, workshops and exhibitors, it is going to be one of the best events for real time communications and open source in Europe. Registration is open, be sure you secure your participation before the event is sold out!

Kamailio & Statsd – Best Practices

Eloy Coto Pereiro has published a very interesting article on his blog about using Kamailio and Statsd. Being the developer of the statsd module in Kamailio, he presents more details about the benefits and how to put all pieces together in order to have the statistics exported by Kamailio and graphs build by Graphite.

Next is a screenshot from the article of what you can get as a result:

Enjoy!

New Kamailio Module: TCPOPS

Camille Oudot, from Orange, France, has recently published a new module for Kamailio, collecting a set of configuration file functions for operations on TCP/TLS connections. The module is named tcpops and the documentation is available at:

• http://kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/tcpops.html

The module allows admins to enable/disable keepalives per connection as well as setting custom lifetime for each connection.

Camille has also added new functions to the usrloc module  that gives the admin the ability to close the TCP connection if the registration request that opened it has expired.

TCPOPS will be part of the next release of Kamailio, which is labelled 4.3.

Kamailio 2014 Awards

Here we are, the 8th edition of Kamailio Awards granted for the activity during the previous year, respectively 2014. Continuing the tradition, there are two winners for each category.

The Kamailio project continued to grow in number of contributions and add plenty of new features. The second edition of Kamailio World Conference and the major release of version 4.2.0 are among highlights of 2014.

Next are the categories and the winners!

New Contributions

• statsd - provides native integration with statsd and graphite from Kamailio configuration file, allowing to publish statistics from Kamailio runtime environment and build graphics that makes the monitoring process easier. The module is developed by Eloy Coto Pereiro, from Foehn, UK
• tsilo - provides a mechanism to add new branches to not-yet-answered calls while other branches are still active. For example, in the world dominated more and more by mobile networks, the module enables Kamailio to forward the INVITE to a new endpoint that just registered (e.g., triggered by a push notification) event the INVITE was routed before to a different destination (e.g., desk phone). The module is developed by Federico Cabiddu, from Orange Vallee, France

Developer Remarks

• Lucian Balaceanu - from 1und1 AG - besides the work on the modules published over the time by 1&1,  he has the merits of being interested into the core components, providing several important patches on handling SIP replies via onsend route as well as pushing new features to modules such as acc, siptrace and sipcapture
• Luis Azedo - from 2600hz.com - the main developer for kazoo module, he provided valuable feedback and patches for improvements and new features to many other modules, such as presence, db_text, registrar and usrloc

Advocating

• Alex Balashov - from evaristesys.com - long time community member and developer of the project, Alex spent consistent resources traveling within and outside of USA for promoting Kamailio, relevant for 2014 would be Cluecon and Kamailio World conferences
• Giacomo Vacca - from rtcsoft.net - sharing a lot of useful information via his blog (like deploying Kamailio with Puppet or within Docker containers), Giacomo had a year very rich in traveling as well, covering Kamailio World, Cluecon and Astricon, presenting about automatic deployments of Kamailio

Technical Support

• Charles Chance - running Sipcentric Ltd, UK - he is an active developer, with many contributions to distributed message queue (dmg) and other components such as htable or registrar, Charles has been helping very often on mailing lists
• Will Ferrer - from switchsoft.com - very active on users mailing list, with good reports and troubleshooting of problems reported by others. He has been helping many to sort out their issues and get their Kamailio running smooth

Blogging

• beingasysadmin.wordpress.com - with blog posts for Kamailio deployment for IM and integration with FreeSwitch. Besides these, the site has couple of articles that are very useful for people managing realtime communication platforms
• loadmultiplier.com - it has a interesting set of blog articles related to Kamailio and IMS. Given that IMS has a complex architecture, any share of knowledge is very useful. As LTE is being deploying world wide as a fast pace, the Kamailio and its IMS extensions can help in deploying the VoLTE service

Related Projects

• Elastix - an open source unified communication server has now a variant targeting large deployments, packaged with Kamailio as SIP routing proxy and Asterisk for PBX telephony services
• Kazoo - an open source, scalable, distributed, cloud-based telephony platform that allows to build powerful telephony applications with a web management interface and a rich set of APIs to extend and integrate with other systems. Its telephony engine is built using Kamailio and FreeSwitch

Business Initiatives

• IT Center Portugal - known also for their deployment of several hundreds of Kamailio-Asterisk pairs offering unified communications services for the Portugal academic network, IT Center has built a VoIP core platform with Kamailio routing the SIP traffic, relying on OpenStack to offer the elasticity to scale based on load demands
• Toky.co - a venture from Carlos Ruiz Diaz with support by Wayra, Telefónica's startup accelerator, Toky is leveraging WebRTC technology for offering communication services without the hassle of installing applications. Kamailio with its websocket module is used for routing signaling between WebRTC endpoints.

Events

• AstriDevCon - somehow attached to AstriCon, the AstriDevCon is actually the top day within that week for developers working with IP telephony technologies. One of the rare moments within an year where you find a high density in the same room of people that have the experience and can find a solution for anything going wrong in real time communications
• KazooCon - the Kazoo project has a fast growing community, fuelling it with an event orgaized by 2600hz.com at the heart of IT industry: San Francisco - Silicon Valley. Embedding Kamailio, Kazoo has become a choice for those willing to start with an out of the box telephony system and enhance it with more features offered by Kamailio.

Friends of Kamailio

Awarded to people not necessarily working directly with Kamailio, but whose activity has a good impact on the project and open source real time communications.

• Matthew Jordan - he became a respected leader of Asterisk project in very short time, creating a new vibe around the development of the project, in a time of consistent refactoring for Asterisk application. The success to transform a big project to cope better with the new models of communications is demonstrating once again that one can rely on open source for long term business and not be afraid of being stuck with unmaintained or old technologies. Irrelevant to say that he supported always the efforts to make Kamailio-Asterisk integration simpler and clarify the role of the applications in real world deployments.  
• Peter Saint-Andre - he is one of the people that bridged (and still does it) the open source communities and standardisation bodies over a very long period of time. Getting involved in standardisation process is something that open source should do more, because it can ensure that their development model is protected and practical specifications are standardized instead of hypothetical and over complicated concepts. With open source being driven a lot by immediate needs and standardisation bodies caught a lot in bureaucratic and theoretic approaches, Peter's activity is really remarkable. Although mostly involved in XMPP, he has worked a lot on the specifications for SIP-XMPP interworking, welcoming always Kamailio when presenting about this topic. 

This is it for 2014. If you want to check the previous turn of awards, visit:

• http://by-miconda.blogspot.com/2014/03/kamailio-2013-awards.html

The activity within Kamailio project during 2015 so far is very rich, check the project web site for announcements on what is new and the plans for the future.

Looking forward to meeting many of you soon in Berlin, during May 27-29, 2015, at the 3rd edition of Kamailio World Conference & Exhibition.