20 Mar Restcomm Media Server 8.0.0 Released!

What’s new ?

Support for JDK 8

Restcomm Media Server officially supports JDK 8 so users can take advantage of its enhancements and features. From now on, it is expected for the Media Server to stay up-to-date with JDK releases.

Asynchronous Log4j2 Logging

Restcomm Media Server has migrated it’s logging engine to Log4j 2.

Most noteworthy, Media Server takes advantage of Log4j2 asynchronous logging feature by default, which allows for higher peak throughput and lower logging response time latency.

User-friendly Configuration

Restcomm Media Server now exposes a YAML configuration file, thus deprecating the old, verbose XML file.

Not only the format is much more user-friendly, overriding the Media Server configuration has never been easier: simply edit media-extra.yml file to overwrite the configuration parameters you need.

Due to the simplicity of the new configuration mechanism, the shell-based auto-configuration scripts were deprecated and removed from the project. This reduces the number of dependencies required to start the Media Server.

Pluggable Architecture

Restcomm Media Server now features a pluggable architecture, which allows users to build Media solutions that are modular, customizable and easily extensible.

In practice, the Feature implementations have been decoupled from the Core of the project, in the form of plugins.

This brings several benefits to both developers and customers.

On one hand, the core of the project that powers both Community and Commercial branches is now unique and completely open sourced. This means that we have a bigger audience testing the same code base and contributing back to it. These contributions may come in the form of issue reporting, patches, security fixes or even enhancements.

This is a very meaningful step towards a “release early, release often” philosophy which translates into an ever evolving effort of delivering a robust piece of software that will power any media-related services or products that arise from it.

On the other hand, plug-in development allows users to focus exclusively on feature development without having to be concerned about the complexity of the core. This means that features can be implemented and incorporated very quickly. Moreover, users are free to customize existing features or contribute with new ones very easily.

How does this add value to customers?

The new pluggable architecture of the Media Server allows for a new model to add substantial value to customers, as it can easily enable commercial-only features or provide commercial plugins that are more robust than their community counterpart.

Moreover, because plugins are separate modules with well-defined interfaces, problems can be quickly isolated and solved, thus resulting in faster response times to customer tickets.

Some examples of commercial only features can be:

• High Definition Codecs
• Enhanced Voice Activity Detection algorithms
• Access to exclusive 3rd party providers (Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text, etc)
• Advanced caching features.
• Customer sponsored features, exclusive to specific customer under special agreement.

Last but not least, commercial plugins are developed, tested and maintained by a team of world-class developers that ensure the quality standards set by TeleStax.

Community

Help us improve the project by asking questions, reporting bugs and contributing back. Telestax highly appreciates user feedback!

Become part of the Open Source GitHub Restcomm project family by contributing with patches, documentation or tests. Read our Open Source Playbook to get started and check the Media Server Roadmap for open issues marked as “Help Wanted”.

Top contributors will be given the opportunity to apply for a job at TeleStax!

Join our vibrant community and download the latest stable build NOW!