A new feature went into mod_sofia, proxy in-dialog calls sip notify and info similar to proxy hold.
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
New features that were added:
Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:
The following bugs were squashed:
Low latency is critical for interactive live streaming.
Microsoft acquired last week Beam, a company focused on a gamer interactive live streaming service.
According to CrunchBase, Beam has been around for almost 2 years before getting plucked by Microsoft. The investment in them has been smaller than 0.5M USD.
For some reason unknown to me, there are people who love watching other people play games. I guess it is similar to some extent to people sitting down to watch a soccer game. Another thing I can’t really understand. It is the reason why Twitch was acquire by Amazon for almost a billion dollar – a month prior to Beam’s founding.
What Beam worked on was a way to enable viewers to be a part of the game and up their engagement. You do this by allowing viewers to push feedback to the gamers – add challenges to them, buy virtual goods for them, etc. From Beam’s website:
We make it possible for streamers to involve viewers in their gameplay, no matter what game they’re playing.
Want to let your viewers choose your weapon, make quests for you, or even fly a drone around your room? You can do that, all in realtime. Our SDK allows developers to create interactive experiences for existing games with as few as 25 lines of code.
In the console world, there are two major players – Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation. With the acquisition of Beam, Microsoft is trying to build an ecosystem of viewers around the gamers and games offered in Xbox. Will they share the SDK and platform with Sony? It is too soon to tell, especially now that Microsoft is opening up and trying to build large ecosystem around its services as opposed to its operating systems. It might just be that Microsoft is trying to become a big player in gaming in general – not just console ones but also mobile.
Back to Beam and video streaming.
To enable higher and richer interactions between viewers and gamers, and offer the kind of that, latency higher than a second are detrimental. This makes HLS and MPEG-DASH protocols irrelevant. Flash is on its way out the window. The only other technology that can get to a sub-second latency for real time video streaming then is WebRTC.
WebRTC is exactly what Beam has been using in their “protocol” dubbed FTL. It used WebRTC to stream video to the viewers instead of the more traditional mechanism of Flash.
I have been a believer in WebRTC for live streaming and broadcast for over a year now. It is just another place where WebRTC makes a lot of sense, but it will take time for us to get there. The main reason for that is that current implementations are too focused on video chat scenarios – trying to leverage the WebRTC implementation found in Chrome and hooking it up to backend media servers that are again geared towards video chat use cases.
There are 4 different techniques that WebRTC can be leveraged in interactive live streaming (or streaming at all):
Options (1) and (2) require knowledge of networking.
Option (2) requires knowledge of P2P networks.
Option (3) requires WebRTC knowledge at its basic level.
Option (4) means you practically implement a WebRTC stack of your own with a focus on live streaming.
My guess is that with time, we will see vendors implementing options (2) and (4) which will be the winning architectures for live streaming.
Option (2) will be deployed to support today’s use cases, while option (4) will be deployed to support future use cases, where interactivity between viewer and broadcaster are important.
Beam took the right challenge on itself. It got it acquired in a short timespan and in a way redefine live streaming and low latency.
For Microsoft, this is yet another acquisition in the WebRTC space, and another area in which it now relies on this technology – even without supporting it on IE.
Planning on introducing WebRTC to your existing service? Schedule your free strategy session with me now.
The post Microsoft Acquires Beam, Showing the Value of WebRTC to Interactive Live Streaming appeared first on BlogGeek.me.
I was meaning to write something about Skype, Linux and WebRTC. But never got around to it. Until now.
The reason why I decided to write about it eventually? This tweet by Alex:
IMTC (Microsoft, Cisco, polycom, unify, sonus, …) to provide free (no cost) and free (do what you want) webrtc plugin for I.E. And Safari.
— Dr. Alex. Gouaillard (@agouaillard) August 3, 2016
Hmm. The IMTC is planning to offer a FREE plugin for IE and Safari.
Sounds like Temasys, and from the person who worked at Temasys at the time of releasing their plugin – now a commercial one rather than a free offering.
While some like this plugin, others don’t. They tried it and decided that the warning messages it pops up when being installed aren’t worth the effort.
The Electron WebRTC app approachWhat did catch my eye was the Skype for Linux announcement. This is an alpha release of the Skype app for Linux – something that Microsoft have been neglecting for quite some time now.
The interesting bit isn’t that Microsoft is actively investing in a Linux version for Skype and acknowledging this part of the user base, but rather how they did that and the stance they have.
Here are a few lines from the announcement on the Skype community site:
The new version of Skype for Linux is a brand new client using WebRTC, the launch of which ensures we can continue to support our Linux users in the years to come.
[…] you’ll be using the latest, fastest and most responsive Skype UI, so you can share files, photos, videos and a whole new range of new emoticons with your friends.The highlighted text is my own addition.
Here are my thoughts:
It turns out Microsoft decided to use Electron.
What is Electron? It is a framework around Chromium that can be used to created desktop apps from web apps. And it is the most popular platform for doing it these days.
The irony.
Microsoft. Who owns, develops and promotes IE and Edge. Who was against WebRTC and for ORTC. That Microsoft used Chromium (effectively Chrome) to bring its Linux Skype app to market.
A few years ago, that would have been unheard of. Today? It makes too much sense – it actually increased the value of Microsoft in my eyes. Making the most practical decision of all and putting the ego aside.
Back to a WebRTC PluginSo.
The IMTC is now investing its time and effort in a WebRTC plugin. Call me skeptic, but I can’t see this heading in the right direction.
Here’s why:
I believe it will be hard for the IMTC to maintain such a plugin on their own, and if the idea is to open source it to the larger community so the external community can take it up and continue to work and maintain it for the IMTC then that’s just wishful thinking. Open source projects are not synonymous with community development – they don’t all get picked up, adopted, used and maintained by the masses. The webrtc-everywhere project on github shows that – 2 contributors, a few forks, but not much of a collaboration or community around it.
Since the IMTC is a group of vendors who all seek reaching interoperability of the spec while maintaining a technical advantage on the rest of the vendors (I was there once), I can’t see them cooperating for a long term development of such a thing and putting the resources into it while contributing back to the community.
Furthermore, do we really need a WebRTC plugin?
Yes. I know. Safari. Important. IE. All those poor enterprise guys forced to use it. You can’t live without it and such.
But guess what? That same target market? How receptive do you think it will be for a plugin? What will be the install rate and usage rate for a plugin in such environments?
–
I have a warm place in my heart for the IMTC, but I think it is losing its way when it comes to WebRTC. I can’t see how a free plugin for WebRTC today will make a change. There are better things to focus on.
What to do in 2016 with WebRTC on IE/Safari?There are two use cases here:
The first one can be solved with an installed PC app. A quaint choice maybe, but one which seems to be popular by comms vendors who started from the web. Think Slack or even Whatsapp – they both have a PC app. If you are using a service daily, the idea goes, you might as well just have it somewhere handy in the background of your PC instead of having to have it opened in a browser tab all the time.
The second one is where things get nasty. Asking for a plugin installation for it is just like asking for an app installation for it. Maybe worse if the installer of the plugin comes with a large set of browser warnings (because browsers now hate plugins). So you might just rethink the app option – or just ask the user to come back with a better browser.
My suggestion?
Explore the option of using Electron instead of a plugin.
Planning on introducing WebRTC to your existing service? Schedule your free strategy session with me now.
The post WebRTC Plugin? An Electron WebRTC app is the only viable fallback appeared first on BlogGeek.me.
In this github repo, I put together my knowledge about WWAN cards setup, alongside with all initialization scripts.
Way back in 47 (version that is), Chrome started to mandate the use of HTTPS in conjunction with getUserMedia. To use HTTPS you need a SSL/TLS certificate. Xander Dumaine covered this a bit for us before, but I still see a lot of people out there struggle with it. As it so happens, the certificate for my […]
The post Let’s Encrypt – how get to free SSL for WebRTC appeared first on webrtcHacks.
This week the ability to add and remove video on re-invites was added.
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
New features that were added:
Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:
The following bugs were squashed:
Guess what? Mozilla is removing Hello from Firefox.
It will still be available as an add-on, but it seems to have degraded in its importance to Mozilla, which is understandable.
Goodbye HelloWhat is/was Hello?Hello was Mozilla’s attempt to build a video calling service. Something that is baked right into the browser, but can be used by any browser supporting WebRTC. Think FaceTime or Hangouts but without the app or even a website.
Mozilla partnered for Hello with TokBox (a Telefonica company), which provided the backend to the service – mainly NAT traversal as far as I can tell.
When Hello was announced, I had my doubts and questions about it.
What went wrong?A few things were wrong from the onset in Firefox Hello:
The main issue though is that a free video calling service isn’t that much of a deal these days (if this surprises you – just ask Google).
So Mozilla started by embedding Hello right into the browser. Then making it into a system add-on. And now it is making it into just another add-on. I assume it has a lot to do with the usage they’ve seen over the past year for Hello (and its non-adoption). It makes no sense to continue investing the time and effort in it if no one is using it – and having it officially released with the browser once every few months is a waste. Better throw it out of the browser and simplify the browser releases.
The next step might be to sunset the add-on/service altogether and say goodbye to Hello.
Is this predictive to Google’s Duo app?Google announced Duo and is about to release it. Simplifying things a bit (and dumbing it down), Duo is a FaceTime clone. I covered Allo/Duo a few months back.
On face value, there’s no reason why Google Duo won’t meet a similar fate as Mozilla Hello.
That said, there are a few notable differences:
Will this be enough for Google Duo to get the adoption? I don’t know.
Where do we go from here?In 2016 there should be no doubt anymore:
If you plan to monetize a video calling service, you need a serious business plan.
Most services I see launched have no business plan. They attempt to grow to millions of users. There’s a lot of dumb luck involved in it.
I’ve had my doubts about the viability of Wire as a company due to the same reasons. The only progress made by Wire is open sourcing their app – this doesn’t strike me like a business plan or a signal of strength and healthy growth.
Planning on introducing WebRTC to your existing service? Schedule your free strategy session with me now.
The post Surprise: Free Video Calling is no Guarantee for Success (or Adoption) appeared first on BlogGeek.me.
This week we saw the addition of customized video mute banners in mod_conference.
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
New features that were added:
Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:
The following bugs were squashed:
This was a quiet week with a few bug fixes and a minor configuration update.
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:
The following bugs were squashed:
This week we have three great features to announce! First, the addition of mod_sms_flowroute! Second, amplitude estimation in mod_avmd. This particular addition will be neat for those math enthusiasts out there. And finally, mod_dptools got two new API calls.
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
New features that were added:
The following bugs were squashed:
This week was filled with bug fixes and build improvements. This week also marks the one month mark until ClueCon, so be sure to sign up and book a hotel room so you don’t miss out!
Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.
Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:
The following bugs were squashed:
Huawei ME909s-120 is the newest modem of Huawei LTE/UMTS family, and it is sold for around $70 at TechShip.se and at Aliexpress.
The modem is immediately recognized as CDC Ethernet device in Debian 8 kernel, and is visible as usb0 interface. In the scripts below, the ttyUSBx serial ports are aliased to ttyWWANxx, and usb0 is renamed to lte0, in order to avoid any naming conflicts with other devices, and also to avoid possible name changes due to a kernel upgrade.
cat >/etc/udev/rules.d/99-huawei-wwan.rules <<'EOT' SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="15c1", SYMLINK+="ttyWWAN%E{ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM}" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="15c1", NAME="lte0" EOT cat >/etc/chatscripts/sunrise.HUAWEI <<'EOT' ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT ERROR TIMEOUT 10 '' ATZ OK 'AT+CFUN=1' OK 'AT+CMEE=1' OK 'AT\^NDISDUP=1,1,"internet"' OK EOT cat >/etc/chatscripts/gsm_off.HUAWEI <<'EOT' ABORT ERROR TIMEOUT 5 '' AT+CFUN=0 OK EOT cat >/etc/network/interfaces.d/lte0 <<'EOT' allow-hotplug lte0 iface lte0 inet dhcp pre-up /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/sunrise.HUAWEI >/dev/ttyWWAN02 </dev/ttyWWAN02 post-down /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/gsm_off.HUAWEI >/dev/ttyWWAN02 </dev/ttyWWAN02 EOTSometimes there’s a need to reset a GSM module on a Yeastar GSM gateway. For example, SIM cards of one of our providers get into faulty state every few weeks, and only a reset helps.
The GSM module can either be rebooted via Web GUI, or from the Asterisk console. But the Asterisk console can only work on the same host where the asterisk daemon runs, so you need to make an SSH connection into the Yeastar box to do that. Also it’s impossible to save a public SSH key in a Yeastar box, so only password authentication works.
Ansible is a powerful toolset for managing remote hosts, and it appears to be perfectly suitable for managing the GSM gateways.
Ansible 2.x is available for Debian 8 from jessie-backports repository. There are some important differences from version 1.7 that is installed from default repositories, and in particular, ansible_host and ansible_port variables.
After installing Ansible, uncomment host_key_checking = False in /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg , so that the SSH client stops verifying the remote host SSH signatures. Otherwise the host signatures should be listed in your known_hosts file.
The following lines in /etc/ansible/hosts list your GSM gateways:
[yeastar] gsm01 ansible_host=192.168.99.66 ansible_ssh_pass=kljckhjeswvdfesv gsm02 ansible_host=192.168.99.67 ansible_ssh_pass=dmnckjfvrever gsm03 ansible_host=192.168.99.68 ansible_ssh_pass=dcmnkljdfhfe [yeastar:vars] ansible_user=root ansible_port=8022If you use the same root password on all devices, the password variable can be moved to the group variables.
Ansible uses SFTP for ad-hoc commands, and SFTP is not available on Yestar gateways. But the raw module works just fine, and resetting a GSM module can now be done with a simple command from your management server:
ansible gsm03 -m raw -a '/bin/asterisk -rx "gsm power reset 2"'
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Wow, this most certainly is a great a theme.
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