Experience with the Skype for Asterisk Beta

Recently Digium was kind enough to include me in the closed Skype for Asterisk Beta. Skype for Asterisk is a new channel driver for Asterisk that connects to the Skype Peer to Peer network. While you could connect Asterisk to Skype in the past, this was all done with a hack to the Skype client, which limited scale and reliability. The new channel driver for Asterisk, actually does away with a client and allows Asterisk to become a peer node in the Skype network. This will be a much more scalable solution, and definitely easier to deploy.

My impression of the implementation so far is good. There is a lot more functionality in the software than I had expected, including support for Skype presence information within Asterisk. Digium posted an update on the client yesterday where they describe what is included here.

I received the software and was up and running within 10 minutes, as the install process was trivial. I have managed to place calls from a SIP client connected to Asterisk to and from users on Skype. The sound quality is good and interoperability with the rest of the Asterisk features works well.

The next step is to begin developing Adhearsion components to take advantage of the Skype for Asterisk channel, allowing developers to immediatey reap the benefits in the merger of the Asterisk world with the Skype world. The hope is to have this available just in time for the public Skype for Asterisk beta. Stay tuned!