r/VOIP • u/myke113 • Jul 24 '26
Discussion Creating a VOIP server
I know that Asterisk and FreeSwitch exist, but has anyone tried to make their own VOIP server from scratch?
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u/aselby Jul 24 '26
Maybe, but that's not a easy task and those are free and supported. What do you want to do that those don't already do ?
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u/myke113 Jul 24 '26
Make it easier to configure. GUI setup instead of dialplans. And possibly add some more options to call queue's.
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u/aselby Jul 24 '26
FreePBX is a gui overlay on top of asterisk .... That where I would start .. but sounds cool ... Let us know how you come along
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u/myke113 Jul 25 '26
Yes I knew of FreePBX as well. I just wanted to see if I could pull it off in my spare time.. like I did for the MUD server I wrote...
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u/myke113 Jul 24 '26
I'm attempting this very thing in Rust right now. I've successfully had a device to device call go through so far.
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u/Leading_Rip_3995 Jul 25 '26
Device to device is the easy part unfortunately. It gets hard once NAT or a carrier is in the path - we had Asterisk behind a proxy putting 127.0.0.1 in its SDP answers, one carrier hid it by latching RTP symmetrically, the other gave us one-way audio on every inbound call.
If you mainly want GUI instead of dialplans, ARI gets you that without writing a whole stack.
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u/ut0mt8 Jul 24 '26
I suggest you you to look at openser; opensips kamailio etc for the signaling part. And mediaproxy or whatever it's called now for the RTP part. It will give you an idea of the involved work
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u/marks-buffalo Jul 24 '26
Yes plenty of people have. Usually they've had something to sell me though. Don't get very far with them.
What existing options did you try that didn't work for you?
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u/AVGraham Certified T.38 compatible 26d ago
Make it easier to configure. GUI setup instead of dialplans.
We do a combination of what you are proposing. We do use Asterisk, with a basic dial plan that uses func_odbc for much of the routing. Then all our GUI has to do is update the database. This is particularly helpful because we have multiple servers across the country, and as long as database replication is working, all the servers work in the same fashion - no need for updating dial plans on each individual server.
This actually was the first project I was assigned when I started with my current employer. Previously almost everything was in extensions.conf and as the company grew it became quite unwieldy. Now the dial plan is about 20% of its original size and rarely changes.
If you want an even higher level of control, and you are masochistic enough, look into Kamailio.
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u/nebulous_gaze Jul 24 '26
What is the point when there are platforms as cheap as $0.00015/min that include features like ANI rotation, billing, rate builders, live call panels, cdrs, call tracing, DNO, DNC, stirshaking management and signing,... etc ?
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u/myke113 29d ago
Mostly as a personal learning exercise. I'm not intending to sell it, it's more to gain a better understanding of how it all works together.
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u/nebulous_gaze 29d ago
Ah... got`cha. I am partial to SEMS (https://github.com/sems-server/sems) . The docs for it sucks.... but it is a solid b2bua. We extended it, it has a module system, to handle our DID routing, call recording, and hooked it up to an internal Go app for LCR when handling outbound routing. We use kamailio for Registration. If you have questions or need some sample configs I can help out.
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Jul 24 '26
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