Slipper FAQ


What is a VirtualPABX?

Traditional PABX's have all components in a single physical box - the Call Control Unit, the Trunk cards, and the extension cards, all connected by an internal system bus. With a VirtualPABX, the system bus is replaced by your network and the components are scattered around the network, even encompassing multiple sites with the one virtual PABX. In this environment, Slipper provides the Call Control/Signalling functionality, replacing the CPU of the traditional PABX.

Why SIP?

SIP is an Internet standard so you can mix-and-match components of your virtual PABX to met requirements. You can have softphones (software phones running on a PC, such as Windows Messenger) and hardphones (real physical phones) from multiple vendors, no longer tying you to a single vendor as many traditional PABX vendors do. This gives you greater leverage in negotiating pricing and maintenance.

Do I purchase Slipper as hardware or software?

You can purchase Slipper either as software with a country-wide, per-organisation license for unlimited users and unlimited installed servers, or you can purchase a SlipperPABX bundle with includes "black-box" appliance hardware to run Slipper on. Multiple appliances can be purchased for clustering.

What platforms does Slipper run on?

Slipper is written in Perl, so any platform that has a Perl interpreter can run Slipper. Non-POSIX systems (those without "fork") will be unable to run media services such as Music on Hold and VoiceMail.

What is a SlipperPABX?

It is a high-reliability, no-moving-parts PC (flash disk, no CPU fan, etc) with FreeBSD and Slipper pre-installed.