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that has been performance tested is very much worth taking for a spin if you have the
right skills.
One of the newer of the ARI frameworks, this project benefits from regular updates.
Check it out at https://github.com/daniele77/aricpp.
asterisk-ari-client
Yes, Ruby also has an ARI framework.
You can find it at https://github.com/svoboda-jan/asterisk-ari.
Conclusion
ARI provides a current-generation RESTful API that can be used to develop commu‐
nications applications using popular development languages. Through it, an experi‐
enced developer can harness the power of the most successful PBX platform in
history. This allows next-generation communications applications to interact with
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Chapter 19: Asterisk REST Interface
legacy telecommunications protocols and applications, which could prove very useful
as we are increasingly called to bridge the gap between past, present, and future com‐
munications technologies.
Conclusion
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CHAPTER 20
WebRTC
The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than
the past.
—Tim Berners-Lee
The Browser as a Telephone
There is a new revolution brewing in internet communication, and while it isn’t likely
to make the news the way the open source telecom revolution did, it very definitely
has the potential to quietly replace the heart of every current communication applica‐
tion.
Today, the internet offers a profusion of closed source conferencing applications.
They all do roughly the same thing, and yet most require proprietary software to be
installed before you can use them (which of course will helpfully attempt to remain
loaded in the memory of your computer). Each delivers nothing much different than
the last conferencing application you were forced to install (for some other meeting
you’ve attended). Each of these companies is hoping that it will rise above the others
to dominate the space. Meanwhile, WebRTC is quietly creating a standard that com‐
pellingly eliminates all concepts of proprietary multimedia communications, which
hopefully will eliminate some of this narrow-minded, walled-garden thinking, and
open up communications to some actual innovation.
For as long as there have been web browsers, attempts have been made to integrate
multimedia into the internet experience. This has proven more difficult than
expected, so that today, it is still common for the telephone to be a separate applica‐
tion (or, of course, a separate device altogether).
WebRTC promises to change all that.
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In this chapter, we’re going to get you up and running with Asterisk’s interpretation of
WebRTC. By no means should this be considered a comprehensive introduction; all
we’re going to have time to do is take you through the creation of a bog-standard
video conferencing application, which is essentially the “Hello World” application
that everyone uses to get started with WebRTC. It’s a great way to kick the tires, but
it’s important to understand that WebRTC is going to be so much more.
Preliminary Knowledge
Before diving into WebRTC, there are some underlying technologies that have to
come together.
First and foremost: if you’re serious about getting into WebRTC, you will need access
to a web developer, and ideally somebody who has a deep knowledge of the various
languages, protocols, and technologies that make the internet work. WebRTC is web
development, and it is bleeding-edge technology, and you are going to run into
incompatibilities, browser-specific issues, undiscovered bugs, incomplete documenta‐
tion, and other sorts of challenges inherent in new technology. If you are not a full-
stack developer with solid networking and Linux skills, you’re going to have a very
steep learning curve with WebRTC!
Probably Tsahi Levent-Levi said it best:
WebRTC is a technology that is part VoIP and part Web. ... In order to really be a profes‐
sional WebRTC developer, you need to be able to grasp two very different technical
domains:
1. You need to know how VoIP works. How media runs over the network in real time
(things like RTP, RTCP, Jitter Buffer, and lots of other acronyms).
2. You need to know and understand how to develop for the web—frontend and back‐
end (full stack developer anyone?). JavaScript is a given. Bonus points for Node.js.