Citywide Voice and Video Using Asterisk and OpenSource

Citywide Voice and Video Using Asterisk and Open-Source Embedded Hardware Kelvin Chua Chief Technology Officer NEXTix Inc. Astricon 2009

Taguig City, Philippines High monthly recurring telecommunication costs Legacy EOL PABX Non-resilient single point of failure Flexibility issues No contact-center features No cdr reports and call statistics No centralized dial plan Highly dependent on PSTN infrastructure

Project Advantages Virtually unlimited phone lines/numbers Centralized communications 24/7 Inquiry and emergency hotline service Security and reliability Scalability and Extensibility Faster deployment Ease of operation

Project Design and Implications Less interconnection with the PSTN Network and application layer redundancy QOS on all data nodes Remote site contact-center integrated Network monitoring system Disaster resiliency And most importantly, least cost : )

Network Diagram

Project Implementation: Data Network Choice of technology: 802. 16 e Wi. Max Multiple Star Topology QOS on both the client and central nodes VLAN tagging across the wired and wireless network

Project Implementation: Telephone Network Initially 2 ISDN PRI from 2 different providers as the main PSTN interface and an ITSP link via SIP 2 Digium 24 port for interim connectivity to legacy PABX A minimal number of landlines were maintained for redundancy in far-flung areas. These are connected to embedded asterisk-based appliance.

Project Implementation: Asterisk Servers 4 Asterisk servers in 2 physical locations Clustered dialplan (primary and secondary proxy) Fax dispatch system based on hylafax and iaxmodem Autoprovisioning Mysql backend Support for SIP video endpoints and video conferencing

Project Implementation: Embedded Appliances Based on Blackfin DSPs Fanless, Solid-state open-hardware design Supports FXO, FXS and PRI Embedded firmware with GUI Clustered dialplan

Project Implementation: Network Monitoring System Based on Cacti open-source graphing solution SIP/IAX peers online/offline as well as concurrent SIP/IAX/Dahdi(Zap) calls System voicemail Heartbeat and threads SNMP Automated triggers and alerts

Project In Action: Sudden ease in remote inter-department calls Unauthorized toll calls were eliminated Government services became more efficient All incoming calls, including death threats, extortion and corruption activities are now monitored Cost savings on monthly recurring telecom charges Proven disaster survivability

September 26, 2009 at the height of tropical storm “Ketsana”. Asterisk saved a lot of casualties, serving thousands of calls a day for the city government's contact center.

Thank You! For more info: kelvin@nextixsystems. com http: //www. nextixsystems. com/citywide-telephony. php http: //www. nextixsystems. com/citywidefactsheet. pdf