WebRTC your FreeSWITCH

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Andrea Mocherman

We harp on about Unified Communications quite a bit. One of the new up-and-coming technologies regarding UC is WebRTC. WebRTC can put click-to-call capabilities within reach of web developers without needing any plugins and instant audio communication within reach of end-users without even needing to take their attention away from your site.

While still in the process of being widely adopted, WebRTC is already supported by several major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera). And for your back-end, WebRTC is now baked into the current active development branch of the open source FreeSWITCH communications platform.

Enabling WebRTC in FreeSWITCH in a supporting version is as straightforward as adding a single line into your relevant internal SIP profile of your FreeSWITCH config (I tacked it onto the end of sip_profiles/internal.xml to make all internal SIP profiles usable via WebRTC). Here is the magic maker:

<param name="ws-binding" value=":5066"/>

So enabling it is a total cinch. Recompiling FreeSWITCH 1.5.12b from scratch, and setting the ws-binding, I was able to get WebRTC calls working like a charm.

Now depending on your usage and comfort with beta software, you can have a WebRTC FreeSWITCH server up and running today. If you’re using FreeSWITCH for your PBX system and click-to-call tickles your fancy, it might be advantageous to start your dabbling now, so when WebRTC support is finalized in a stable release, you’ll be on board already.