Hello all you experienced VoIP developers out there!
For some background, I am a developer for a small answering service, looking to replace our current legacy messaging/telephony system with a custom solution. On the messaging front, I have no problems and can handle that task fine. For some time now, however, I have been looking for a way to incorporate a telephony solution with as little fuss as possible because I have little experience working with VoIP systems.
Currently, we are doing most of our development in .NET and through much searching, I have come to think that Dialogic most likely has the most well supported and accessible platform with which to launch this sort of endeavor in .NET. The problem I'm having at the moment is the extensive and varied product line, and making sense of exactly what I should be looking for to get set up. So, I'll pose my actual question this way:
I'm a .NET developer with access to a pool of SIP trunks at my disposal. I'm trying to create a custom call-control and messaging system, including designing or implementing the expected support systems (i.e. voicemail, DTMF, etc). What Dialogic products would I need to get setup in order to:
1. Get my calls coming in from my VoIP provider
2. Have programmatic/API access to call control and other audio functions (recording, etc)
If anyone could give me a jump start on this, I would be extremely grateful.
Thank you in advance!
As you are a .Net developer then I'd suggest that you use the Diva SDK, this has a high level interface that enables you to create the type of applications you are describing. The are many samples such as the IVR and conferecning samples that will give you a head start.
Useful SDK training course is here: http://www.dialogic.com/support/training/
For the underlying VoIP stack you can use either SoftIP or HMP. SoftIP is slightly easier to install and setup so probably a good place to start, HMP has slightly richer functionality so you can always change to this later if you need the specific functions. As your app is using the SDK it doesn't matter which of SoftIpor HMP you use so you can switch between them without any issues.
http://www.dialogic.com/products/ip_enabled/Diva_IP_Software_SIP.htm
http://www.dialogic.com/products/ip_enabled/HMPWindows.htm
Both have downloads with trial licences available so you can get started straightaway.
Hope it goes well and please post any additional questions here.
Vic, thank you so much for your reply!
I do have a few questions, if you could clarify a few things for me:
You mentioned that we could start out using SoftIP vs HMP and that SoftIP might be a bit simpler to get set up and running. That sounds very appealing, of course. I thought I read a few months back when I first started researching Dialogic Products (and I think I may have even spoken to a Dialogic rep at one point) who mentioned that SoftIP was deprecated and no longer supported? Is this the case?
Is there a comparison somewhere, or could you perhaps give me a quick breakdown of the primary feature differences between these two stack choices? And what about licenses? Are port/channel licenses used with both or are they separate licenses?
Again, thank you very much for your help, and I am very anxious to start working with the Dialogic platform!
Also, if you get a moment. I'm still trying to figure out any other pieces that I may need to get started.
Once I get SoftIP/HMP installed, how do I go about configuring it to register with my SIP trunk providers to receive calls? Or am I missing a step? I downloaded and took a look at HMP, but couldn't find a configuration for this.
Thanks again.
At one point we did temporarily EOL SoftIP but bought it back by popular demand and its now a fully fledged and supported product. However it is not actively being developed though we do and will add new features if there is sufficient demand.
HMP on the other hand is one of our leading products, under very active development and its fair to say has a more mature SIP stack with many more ports deployed and more interop experience with PBX and SIP providers. We don't really have the feature differences list I'm afraid but broadly speaking HMP will do everything SoftIP does and more, the only significant exception being fax where SoftIP supports V.34 speeds, HMP is only V.17.
HMP and SoftIP are both licensed per channel, SoftIPhas two options, Voice or Voice and Fax.
HMP has much more granularity. You need IPCallControl, RTP and Voice licenses as a minimum to work with the SDK, then you can add conferencing, enhanced RTP (G.729 etc) and CSP (speech rec streaming) if you need them.
But as I said I would worry to much about the differences, best to just download and start using them.
HMP configuration is controlled via a file called dssdk.xml which comes with the Diva SDK.
Config details of dssdk.xml are contained in a PDF included with the SDK called "DivaAPIonHMPQuickInstallGuide.pdf"
