Note: There’s an intro, the DDA response, and Fred’s response in this article. Jump to the end to read Fred’s response.

A few months back, we posted a nice little article on using Asterisk to get Parking Space Availability from Ann Arbor garages. The response from the VoIP community was fantastic! We received great comments and feedback from people like Jason Goecke, Dug Song, Dave Michels, Evan Cooke, and more! People not only responded, they even showed different ways of providing access to this information. And everyone shared their work in an open forum — truly a great example of open source coding inspiring innovation (albeit with Parking Spaces).

Even better was the local response in Ann Arbor. Edward Vielmetti and Fred Posner were interviewed in the local papers, appeared on a radio show, and even rode the teeter totter. Everyone loved the idea of being able to check on parking space availability… everyone except for the DDA (insert scary music).

The DDA (Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority), funded by tax dollars,  “provides a diversity of transportation and parking options to meet downtown’s [Ann Arbor’s] ever-changing needs.” The DDA does not like us making information of parking spaces available to the public via phone. Instead, the DDA wants to control this information. Seriously, they want to control parking space availability information.

Tyler Erickson helped Edward Vielmetti and Fred make this project even more fascinating by tracking parking space availability over time. The plan was to provide predictability of availability. For example, “We’re sorry, the lot at 4th and Washington is currently filled, we predict the parking lot will be available in 7 minutes. Press 1 to be notified…”

Wouldn’t that be neat? We thought so… The DDA’s response was to block Tyler’s access. Of course, since it was using Google Apps, it blocked Google, but that’s another story. We inquired as to why this blockage occurred and… well enter Susan Pollay. Susan Pollay is Executive Director of the DDA. She told us (and remember, this is a tax funded organization):

“Hi all.   Over the last day or so I have talked about your project with a few DDA members and what arose from these conversations was a shared concern that because the project was not an initiative created by/run by the DDA there are no controls in place for this at present.  For instance, there is no DDA policy about how to allow /or even if it should allow an outside group to use the DDA’s parking data for a private enterprise.  There is a concern about how unsecure/secure the DDA website is made when sharing this data.   And finally, a concern that if the project had value to parking patrons, that the DDA itself should consider providing this service as an extension of what it is already doing on-line.”

Interesting… but the story doesn’t stop there. Due to real-life concerns of all of us, we kind of let this project move to the back burner. But then, two days ago Edward Vielmetti noticed the DDA website was no longer publishing real-time parking information. The response from Susan Polly follows:

From: Susan Pollay
Subject: RE: DDA real time parking data via web is not working // was Fwd: parking app busted again
Date: March 12, 2009 11:36:56 AM GMT-04:00
To: Sabra Briere, Edward Vielmetti
Cc: Margie Teall, Christopher TaylorC, Carsten Hohnke, Fred Posner, Tyler Erickson

Many thanks for this and other emails.  The DDA became aware of Mr. Vielmetti’s project after reading about it in the press.   Immediately a number of concerns were expressed including 1) no permission from the DDA was granted before this project got underway, 2) this project hopes to sell this software to other communities and thereby make a profit and is using DDA-generated information to accomplish this, 3) the DDA has no control over what is done with this information yet this information is attributed to the DDA, 4) persons interested in finding out about parking structure vacancies must make a toll-call out of state.

The DDA Operations Committee met and discussed these concerns.  Their resolve was to provide information by phone to interested members of the public using real human beings answering phones at the Republic Parking office.

There are several benefits to the public with this arrangement.  1) Republic Parking staff members can provide the follow up information that an automated system can’t.  e.g. You call to find out if there are vacancies at 4th & Washington – and if there are no vacancies or very few, Republic Parking staff can suggest a nearby convenient alternative parking location.  They can give directions to the parking structure.  They can provide information like yes, they do take credit cards.    The automated system only tells you there are 0 spaces available.      2) Republic Parking staff members can keep track of how many people are calling, what structures they call about most often, the follow up questions, etc.   This way if we ever decide to acquire an automated phone system we know how to prioritize and provide the information most sought after by patrons.  The DDA would have retrieved none of this information from Mr. Vielmetti.       And finally 3) a call to Republic Parking is not a toll call.  It is a local office, staffed 24 hours a day, 6 days a week (Sundays all facilities are open and unlikely there are vacancy concerns).

Thanks again for contacting me.  I hope to be helpful, so please let me know if I can answer any additional questions about this…..

Best wishes.

Susan

WOW!

Fred’s response follows:

From: Fred Posner
Subject: Re: DDA real time parking data via web is not working // was Fwd: parking app busted again
Date: March 12, 2009 4:13:08 PM GMT-04:00
To: Susan Pollay

Good afternoon,

First, my apologies to Tyler and Carsten. They both wrote exceptional, professionally toned replies. I, however, am so appalled at this email, that I must speak directly to the points mentioned.

Susan, the DDA is funded by tax dollars and parking fees. Perhaps you have forgotten that public money is used to fund the DDA’s mission to serve the public?  Allow me to introduce you to the concepts of open government and “public domain.” I don’t want to waste everyone’s time here, but please read up on these concepts so we can be on the same page.

Lets take your first point:

“No permission from the DDA was granted before this project got underway”

What permission should we have gotten? The DDA publishes parking space availability on the internet and on big, bright signs attached on garages. Do you believe that this is classified information that should be controlled by the government? If I asked someone if they knew how many spaces were available, should they say to me “I’m sorry Fred, I don’t have specific permission from the DDA to release that information.” Should people who release this information be considered enemies of the state and locked in Guantanamo Bay?

The bottom line here is that to horde this information is ridiculous. Let’s forget the tax/government/information aspect for a second. Even if this were private parking, I could never imagine an organization that would say… “Hey, I don’t want people to know that I have spaces available. They might come give money to park here.” An example of this is movie theaters. Movie theaters regularly welcome people announcing availability of shows and times. Why? Because they want to fill the seats. And if the seats are full, they want to let people know so they will plan to come back at a time when there is availability. With this in mind, there are many, many private companies that assist movie theaters with publishing this information on websites and phones.

This translates well to Ann Arbor Parking. I’m sure the citizens that you serve would like access to information. I’m also certain that the businesses would like people to know that parking is available. And, I’m certain they want a lot of access to that information. After all, no one suffers from having too much access to the same information. But the DDA response was completely the opposite. You actively stopped us from getting this information by blocking IP’s (such as google application server) and changing the format of the information.

In regards to needing your permission, I say simply, “You’re wrong. Either the information is public information on the public internet and public signs, or it’s private information that should be properly secured. Your idea that this public information must be secured is wrong. The idea is wrong, the approach is wrong, and the underlying ideology is wrong.”

Let’s look at point number 2:

“this project hopes to sell this software to other communities and thereby make a profit and is using DDA-generated information to accomplish this”

Wrong. Simply wrong. And your saying this is borderline libelous. Ed, Tyler, and I did this project to provide information. No money was thought of, and as a matter of fact, it cost me money to provide phone service for the beta project. Not only did we do this work for FREE, we also published the work, the source, and the methods online. We published the code we wrote and entered it into the public domain.

You know what happened when we did this? Others wrote similar code and also published it online. A discussion of open sharing of information took place with some very big names in the VoIP (voice over Internet) industry. We all shared code and provided public information to our work. Sadly, private companies and individuals are willing to share information, but the public DDA is not… that seems backwards, no?

Take a look at the post written on VoIP Tech Chat and the discussion that followed:

http://www.voiptechchat.com/voip/218/use-asterisk-cepstral-and-perl-to-get-parking-and-weather-updates/

Point number 3:

“the DDA has no control over what is done with this information yet this information is attributed to the DDA”

Ok. When I was in third grade I had to write a report where I researched information and cited my sources. I attributed the information I learned and gave credit to the source so that others could also get that same information. This “marvel” concept of citing sources is still used today.

I must ask, what control of this information is needed? “My goodness, it’s crazy. I can’t believe it… with this parking space availability information… I can unlock the secret to who killed Kennedy!!!! Eureka!”

Sarcasm aside, the thought of government controlling information means the end of freedom. Information is for people and there’s a reason why people need access to information. If you have thoughts of controlling information, please leave government. Also, citing the source of information is not a problem, it’s actually proper, responsible, and good practice.

Point number 4:

“persons interested in finding out about parking structure vacancies must make a toll-call out of state.”

Wrong. At one point, I had this project linked to a 212 number. Why? Because I could support unlimited callers at that number. I did this at a cost of 1.5 cents per minute from my pocket. It took me two weeks, but we received a local Ann Arbor number capable of having more than 2 simultaneous calls. So for a brief 10 day period, you needed to dial 212. Then you could dial 734. We released this information online, over the radio, and to newspapers… So basically, since January 20th, you’re wrong (and we really didn’t make this live until January 10th).

But let’s take this a step further… and say “So what?” Right now the DDA releases this information only online at at the garage. If people want to make this available via SMS, Phone, Twitter, Facebook, Smoke Signal, Tea Leaves, or whatever communicative method one can imagine, it’s simply another way to access the same information. After all, no one suffers from having too much access to the same information.

So, not only is there a local number, it shouldn’t matter if there wasn’t. I truly see implementing a Detroit number, maybe Toledo, Grand Rapids… and more. Could you imagine the possibility of people from another area calling a local number (for them) to visit Ann Arbor? I can… and wow, that would be great.

Benefit number 1:

“Republic Parking staff members can provide the follow up information that an automated system cant.  e.g. You call to find out if there are vacancies at 4th & Washington  and if there are no vacancies or very few, Republic Parking staff can suggest a nearby convenient alternative parking location.  They can give directions to the parking structure.  They can provide information like yes, they do take credit cards.    The automated system only tells you there are 0 spaces available”

Our system not only can do all this, it can do more. Our system can speak many languages. Our system won’t call in sick. Our system doesn’t have attitude, ever. And here’s the best part… Our system doesn’t only say there are “0″ spaces available. Our system actually calls you back when spots are available. Our system will also call you back when there are no more spots available. Are you going to have Republic Parking do that? Our system can give instructions, make recommendations, provide hours, and do much more than a staffed person and it costs you… nothing. No benefits, no salary, no cost, and yet more service.

Benefit number 2:

“Republic Parking staff members can keep track of how many people are calling, what structures they call about most often, the follow up questions, etc.   This way if we ever decide to acquire an automated phone system we know how to prioritize and provide the information most sought after by patrons.  The DDA would have retrieved none of this information from Mr. Vielmetti.”

We keep track of this information. Any time you want it, all you have to do is ask. Unlike the DDA, Mr. Vielmetti, Mr. Posner, and Mr. Erickson have demonstrated an ability and willingness to share information.

Final Benefit number 3:

“a call to Republic Parking is not a toll call.  It is a local office, staffed 24 hours a day, 6 days a week (Sundays all facilities are open and unlikely there are vacancy concerns).”

A call to Republic Parking can be a toll call for many of the users who travel from out of town or are students here in Ann Arbor  but I already addressed that above. Our system is a local call to Ann Arbor right now which you imply otherwise. Also, our system is open 24/7 and yes, you do have some availability problems on Sunday… well at least we could see that when you weren’t blocking access to the information.

Sometimes it helps to have other people look at information, this way we can assist you when you make incorrect statements. Your statement is a PERFECT illustration of why open access to information is needed. Open access to information corrects statements that interpret information incorrectly.

In closing…

Right now I wear two hats. I’m both a Florida Resident and am renting in Pittsfield Township. I also own a small business. After watching these Jeff Daniels’ commercials promoting the benefits of doing business in Michigan, I was very seriously considering moving my business from Florida to Michigan. However, dealing with the DDA has really opened my eyes.

You see, I’ve worked for the government. And say what you want about Florida, we take public access to government very seriously in the Sunshine state. We have what is called the Sunshine Law that provides both criminal and civil penalties when public access is restricted. It’s a great law, and perhaps needed here as well. You see, I believe, as many others do, that in a government of the people and by the people, that information belongs to the people. Government agencies, such as the DDA, should help get information to the public, not wish to control it.

The thought of the DDA requiring permission to access public information and / or control information is not only a scary thought; it’s absolutely anti-American. After all, no one suffers from having too much access to the same information.

A personal hero of mine has always been Benjamin Franklin, and I leave you with this:

“Never trust a government that doesn’t trust its own citizens…”

Fred Posner

PS…

Wonder why the phone number can’t tell you the available spaces? We are specifically blocked and forbidden to access their website. Here’s the page we get:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Forbidden</h1>
<p>You don't have permission to access /parking__transportation/available_parking_spots/
on this server.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.4 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 mod_jk/1.2.20 PHP/5.2.1 Server at a2dda.org Port 80</address>
</body></html>

Welcome to the new world order.

Digium’s John Todd announced an amazing little contest — The Asterisk S-Prize. Asterisk, the open source VoIP telephony software from Digium, finds itself in small / medium businesses routinely. But more and more, large businesses and enterprises are switching to Asterisk to fulfill their telecommunication needs. With this in mind, Digium announces the S-Prize — geared at designing a single system capable of processing 10,000 call legs.

Here’s the information, directly from the source:

Asterisk is becoming more and more a choice for larger installations, both in Enterprise as well as Carrier environments.  While SMB (small/medium business) continues to be the heart of the user base, it seems that many of the questions on the minds of the user and developer community have to do with scale, redundancy, and configuration issues which are relevant to larger installations.

To encourage the improvement and testing of larger-scale Asterisk systems, I’d like to repeat here what I mentioned today on the asterisk-dev mailing list:  I’m putting out a semi-official challenge in place.  The first person to get an Asterisk system moving 10,000 G.711 call legs through a single instance on a single machine will get a first-class steak dinner at Astricon.  And a great bottle of wine, if that is your preference.

This isn’t an X-prize, but the concept is the same – think of it as an S-prize.  ”S” means “Steak”.  Or maybe “Salad” if you’re a vegetarian. 

There are some serious hurdles here, for both software and hardware.  Ten thousand channels sounds like a lot, and it is.  But it can be done, and is already done with custom hardware from closed-source vendors.  Open Source Asterisk has not been (to my knowledge) tested at anywhere near that capacity, though attempts have been made in the thousands of channel level ranges with good successes.  However, there are significant “walls” to climb between ~2500 channels and 10000 channels, and this is not merely a linear application of processing power.  Just the throughput for this 10k challenge is pretty impressive: 500k packets per second per direction at 20ms, and 820mbps per direction.  Ethernet trunking/bonding may be required to overcome IRQ issues, or certainly very close administration of a gigabit interface.  Operating system tuning will be required in conjunction with Asterisk tuning (and probably patching.)  Documentation on how you achieve this will help everyone, and this is an “open” challenge.

I know that the Asterisk community is already headed in the direction of making these kinds of advances.  This is merely an incentive to speed up the process, and hopefully get some discussion going as to how people might solve the problems both in the Asterisk implementation as well as on the systems which are required to handle that kind of throughput.  Everyone benefits from the effort, and I think it can be done with some concentration and clever design.

Will there be some other platform that makes it there first, or has someone already reached that number?  Maybe!  I think any work done towards improving VoIP RTP throughput on Linux systems at these high packet-per-second rates will benefit everyone, especially if it’s an Open-Source solution that reaches the goal first.

Small print: one winner, even if a group effort – choose amongst yourselves. Group members may get secondary prizes.  Prize dinner will be at the following Astricon, in whatever city that is holds Astricon that year. Equipment must be “off-the-shelf” gear.  Software must be Asterisk from SVN, or patched with code that has been submitted to the bugtracker with a valid submission agreement for inclusion into Asterisk.  MOS of audio channels must be at least 3.2 or better (subjective.)  Calls must be standard G.711 with 20ms or 10ms sample intervals.  All RTP (RX,TX) for all channels must be routed through a single instance of Asterisk.  Methods must be documented and reproducible by other community members or Digium with the same equipment.  Winner will be publicly cheered.  Dinner to be at Mortons, Ruth’s Chris, or comparable venue.  10,000 call legs is equivalent to 5,000 “hairpin” calls, though 10,000 calls to “Echo()” would be acceptable.  Substitutions are possible.  SIP, IAX2, or H.323 are acceptable protocols.

And there you have it. Are you game? A steak dinner at Astricon will certainly not compare to a million dollars, but it does deliver some pretty amazing bragging rights.

What you VoIPing 'bout Willis?

Yes, you guessed it correctly. In today’s article, Diff’rent Strokes will be used as a metaphor for VoIP. Why? The correct question is “Why Not?” And the answer… well that’s simple — Diff’rent Strokes is the perfect metaphor. Take for example these classic lines from the show’s theme song:

Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.

Classic. Pausing for Trivia… do you know which 80’s sitcom star wrote these lyrics? If you said Growing Pains actor and Canadian sensation Alan Thicke, you’d be right… but, as usual, we digress.

Those working within VoIP, and contrary to many medical reports there are people still working in the industry, have many flavors and styles of VoIP products to choose from. Although opinions vary, there really is no “right” or “wrong” product line. Selecting your VoIP implementation is an individual choice that is determined simply by what works best for you.

Asterisk versus FreeSWITCH versus Closed Source

Asterisk, by Digium, provides full PBX (private branch exchange) functionality in a (reasonably) small footprint, software package. Created by Mark Spencer in 1999, Asterisk provides itself to the VoIP community free of charge through the GNU General Public License. Asterisk does not require “per seat” licensing fees, maintains a very active community of developers, and requires no additional hardware for a strict VoIP deployment (although grabbing a Digium hardware card to connect to the PSTN makes this software very versatile).

FreeSWITCH, also an open source telephony software program, was developed after Asterisk, by people actively engaged in the Asterisk community. Much like the Facts of Life spun off from Diff’rent Strokes, FreeSWITCH developers thought that new software would be better for telephony; based on their experiences working with Asterisk. They worked hard and created a system that more suited their needs — and like Digium, they have shared this software with the world. The FreeSWITCH site posts a well-written, detailed explanation of “How does FreeSWITCH compare to Asterisk?” on their website (and keeping with the Facts of Life theme… FreeSWITCH approached the software with a “you take the good, you take the bad” approach).

Closed source systems, such as Broadworks, Cisco Call Manager, and Nortel IP Telephony solutions also provide VoIP software and hardware. Closed source systems pride themselves on providing “carrier” class solutions with dedicated support personnel. They also offer licensing fees, fancy logos, and lots of printed documentation.

So which is the best choice? 

Remember: “The world don’t move to the beat of just one drum.”

Choosing a VoIP solution demands thought. Yes, Virginia, you truly have to warm up the water and boil the brain noodle for a while. Is Asterisk best suited for this deployment? Brian West would say that FreeSWITCH would be better in all situations. Others would say, “Hey, use Cisco in large deployments” (although Sam Houston State University might say otherwise).

There simply is no right or wrong answer. As long as you keep well informed of the products out there, the different tools available, and can approach your needs by selecting from your set of tools, you’ll be making the right choice. Fred uses Asterisk. Why? It works for him, and he’s comfortable with it, and he can deploy solutions quickly. Others use FreeSWITCH for the same reason. And who’s right? Simply put, everyone is.

This same discussion can be applied to coding within the VoIP platform of your choice. Recently, when we discussed using Asterisk, Cepstral, and Perl to Get Parking and Weather Updates, we received many, many comments from people with different approaches.

Dug Song commented how Twilio could be used in this situation while Jason Goeke demonstrated how Adhersion could also be used. Within the comments we can see that some coders like jumping into the programming interface (and staying there) whereas Fred likes the “get in, get out” approach and stay in the Asterisk dial plan as much as possible.

So, again, who is right?

We turn once more, to the wise Alan Thicke and Diff’rent Strokes:

Everybody’s got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don’t matter that you got not a lot 
So what,
They’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine.
And together we’ll be fine…
Because it takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

roll credits

Digium's Asterisk was downloaded 1.5 million times in 2008

In the face of economic woes, companies seem to be embracing both VoIP Telephone systems and Open Source software. Asterisk, an Open Source VoIP / PBX telephony system, clearly strikes a chord with many.

Earlier today, Digium (the makers of Asterisk), announced that in 2008 alone, Asterisk received more than 1.5 million downloads (which is 50% more downloads than last year). From the announcement:

Digium’s strong 2008 year highlights the attractiveness of less expensive, easily customizable open source software in the current recession. Asterisk is the world’s dominant open source telephony software. As the economic crisis worsened, Asterisk downloads rose by 32 percent from September through December, compared to a year ago.

For more information, please read the Digium press release.

About Digium
Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX Software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company’s product line includes a wide range of hardware to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey solutions or to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems. More information is available at www.digium.com.

Digium announced today the release of Asterisk versions 1.2.30.3, 1.4.23-rc2, 1.6.0.2, 1.6.1-beta3, as well as Asterisk-Addons versions 1.6.0.1 and 1.6.1-rc2. These releases address includes regression introduced in Asterisk 1.2.30 and Asterisk 1.4.21.2 and has existed in the Asterisk 1.6 branch since release. More details of course can be obtained from the asterisk.org post. As always, you can download the updates free from the asterisk.org website.

Why free? It’s just how Digium rolls. They really take that GPL open source to heart.

Asterisk is free, open source software provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.

For more information, please check out:

• Asterisk.org
• Digium, Inc.

Identifying the strength of Asterisk, the revenue of Switchvox, and the popularity of Astricon, iLocus predicts the next VoIP company to go public will be Digium. Of course, we believe that if you can put 5 hyperlinks in the first sentence, you should just stop and let the hyperlinks do the talking. We have been in a non-stock buying mode, but an IPO from Digium might just change our minds.

• Asterisk is free, open source software provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.
• Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk company, is the original creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the industry’s first open source telephony platform. Digium provides quality hardware and software products, including AsteriskNOW™, the complete open source software appliance; Asterisk Business Edition™, the professional-grade version of Asterisk; the AA50, the Asterisk Appliance™ hardware-based telephony solution; and Switchvox, a complete turn-key IP PBX solution, to enterprises and telecommunications providers worldwide. Digium also offers a full range of professional services, including consulting, technical support, and custom software development. All of Digium’s commercially offered products come with the Exceptional Satisfaction Program™ (ESP), the only 100% customer satisfaction guarantee in the open source telephony world today.
• iLocus conducts Business-to-Business (B2B) market research i.e. market data concerning products/services that are traded between two businesses.

Well, even though it happened back on June 11th, Digium posted on their blog today a recent award the Switchbox SMB 3.5  received from TMC Labs.

With the 2008 Internet Telephony awards, TMC Labs honored products that demonstrated significant contributions towards improving communications. For the past 9 years, awards have been given to products that TMC Labs finds “truly innovating.”

Digium better be building a new trophy case — it’s only the end of June and they’ve already racked some significant bling. Along with the TMC innovation award, Switchvox also was named the 2008 Unified Communication product of the year. Not to mention being named Best of Show for IT East. (Did we mention Switchvox has a free version?)

And let’s not forget Asterisk. So far this year, Asterisk was named 2008’s Best IP PBX by Infoworld as well as a Product Leadership award from Searchnetworking.

Not to be outdone, Voip Tech Chat was recently awarded the Most Likely to get a Restraining Order from Ben Affleck award.