Making Use of Wideband Voice Right Now!: SIP Sorcery

Here are a few relevant screen shots of the GUI. In each case you can click on the image to see a full sized version in a separate window.

The SIP Accounts Menu

The SIP Providers Menu

The List of Dialplans

The Console Display

The Call Data Records Menu

Dialplan Script Types

One of the more interesting aspects of SIP Sorcery is that dialplan logic can be expressed in one of two ways;  “extension” or as Ruby script. I’m not really certain what constitutes “extension” but  the user forums are full of nice examples of Ruby script that seem pretty approachable. The SIP Sorcery blog also has some interesting reading for the technically inclined.

The following example is a Ruby script that establishes outbound dialing by SIP URI, which was the very first thing that I got working.

# ****************************************
# if a full sip dial, dial here and quit.
# skip to number dial if sipsorcery host
# ****************************************
if sys.GetCanonicalDomain(req.URI.Host.to_s) == "sipsorcery.com"
sys.Dial("local")if req.URI.User =~ /[a-zA-Z]/ # if dialled sipsorcery name not number
sys.Respond(480, "failed sip dial.") if req.URI.User =~ /[a-zA-Z]/ # A failed sip dial, quit dial plan
else
sys.Log("Sip Number in #{req.URI.User}@#{req.URI.Host}")
sys.Dial("#{req.URI.User}@" << "#{req.URI.Host}".downcase) # dial full sip address entered
sys.Respond(480, "failed sip dial.")  # A failed sip dial, quit dial plan
end
# end of sip dial.

Using the above bit of logic I was able to use Eyebeam to call the ZipDX wideband demo at sip:wbdemo@conf.zipdx.com. The bridge reported that I was connected in wideband, confirming that SIP Sorcery doesn’t make any distinction about such things.

This is my first exposure to Ruby. It seems similar to things that I already know. While I’m definitely not a developer Ruby seems like something that I could learn given a real application. So I’m soon going to embark on a little project using SIP Sorcery to overcome some issues that have kept me from properly evaluating the Panasonic KX-TGP550 phone system that I’ve had on loan for several months.

It’s easy to see how someone could open a SIP Sorcery account and provision a number of phones for their extended family around the globe. Family could call each other for free, but share a common set of termination providers, getting the best rates possible in each country.

Of course, all the calls that were IP end-to-end could be in glorious HDVoice given suitable hardware or software.

That brings me to the end of this little outing. SIP Sorcery is the sixth service that I’ve profiled as a way to achieve wideband telephony right now. It’s a powerful, open source, SIP switching engine, freely available on an experimental basis. I look forward to speaking with it’s founder, Aaron Clauson, when he makes a guest appearance on a VoIP Users Conference call some time later this summer.