PreViking Telephony Switching System / News: Recent posts

The billing interface has been moved to use UDP and has implemented the Open Telecomms Real Time Billing Specification. The PreViking routing server interface has been updated to follow a protocol that is compatible with the billing protocol. Also, a number server has been added that tells PreViking which service to run based on cid and dnis information.

The announcement service has been updated to use the billing server for authentication.... read more

There have been major changes in PreViking due to the fact that it has been some time since the last release. Changes include a Dynamic Routing Server interface, better calling card functionality and a new ringback service and carrier testing service.

The biggest change is the introduction of the a UDP based routing server interface that allows routes to be dynamically changed based on different criteria. For example, the route can be changed based on the destination number, the time of day, the access number, the CLI and the account ID. All of the placeCall functionality has been re-written to make use of the routing server. However, the old XML file used for configuring routes has been kept so that it can be used for a backup in case the routing server crashes.... read more

PreViking has now started to log all cdr records to a BayonneDB server rather than logging to a file on the switch's local filesystem. This allows multiple PreViking switches to store cdr records in a central repository. The protocol
that BayonneDB uses allows for multicast and broadcast so BayonneDB servers can be replicated and so its not dependent on a single point of failure.

PreViking also now has a Call Centre service that provides a queueing system for customers waiting to connect to a callcentre. Customers are given the chance to leave a message instead of waiting. The message is loaded to a given URL by HTTP PUT. The callcentre can be configured to have opening
and closing times and days of the week when it is not opened.... read more

PreViking 0.4.7 has been released with a new real-time monitoring facility that allows system administrators to view information about the running system. The information available includes the number of active sessions, the dialled number and the calling number of each session and the start time of each session. The monitor service is currently available through a named-pipe but will also be available in later releases from a TCP port.... read more

PreViking 0.4.6 has been released to introduce a few minor new features that were needed before the upcoming release of 0.5.

The calling card service has been updated to add new prompts that are played after a PIN is entered. Also, if the billing server does not recognise a number being dialled the user is informed. Finally, a prompt is played to the customer during the call if their credit is about to run out.... read more

PreViking 0.4.5 has been released. The new release contains many new prompt functions for playing sentence, numbers and dates. There is also the addition of some code for dynamically creating voice prompt menus in a generic way.

The 0.4.x code base has now been frozen. Any future 0.4.x releases will be bug fixes only. PreViking 0.5 will be released in the next few days which will contain the start of the new distributed architecture of PreViking communicating through CORBA interfaces.

A new version of PreViking has been added with the addition of two new services.

An announcement service allowing an administrator to record a new announcement
for the public to listen to has been added. The start of an answer phone
service have been added. Some problems with the autoconf scripts have been
fixed. Also, the prompt files have been moved out of the source tree and
will now be distributed seperately.

PreViking is now considered Beta quality with the lastest release 0.4.3. This release has been heavily tested on our telephony hardware and has proven to be stable.

Also in this relase, a bug in the PreViking event queue functions that was causing a core dump has been fixed. Also fixed, is another bug in the functions that reload the routes configuration from the XML file when sent a SIGHUP. Plus a few other minor bug fixes. ... read more

This version of PreViking fixes a bug that was causing PreViking to hang under heavy load.

There is also a fix for the prompt playing functions in calling card and callback.

The autoconf scripts have been fixed to do better checking for the support libraries required to run PreViking. Also, an option has been added to allow the NMS driver to be disabled.

The cvs for PreViking has been moved from its old server to s/f. This is to allow more people to gain access to the source and to keep track of day to day developments.

This version introduces code that allows the services to be customised differently for different agents. The service map functions have been moved from the billing server to the services' XML configuration file. There are also numerous minor bug fixes.

This new version includes a call-back service and the introduction of routing code. Plus many bug fixes and a general code clean up.

This is the first public release of the source code for PreViking. It includes the completion of the driver abstraction layer so that it is easy for support to be added for different hardware. Currently the only driver included is a NMS driver but more will be added in future releases.