2020 was a challenging year for everyone, but here at 3CX, we didn’t let it slow us down. A whole host of interesting features and improvements were introduced that our customers are already enjoying, but there were also changes that were equally important, yet not so obvious. Let’s take a look at what happened behind the scenes:
A Fresh Start for Our SIP Trunk Engine
One of the areas that received a complete overhaul was the SIP Trunk engine. While the old engine provided functionality that covered the majority of our customers' needs, this just wasn’t enough for us.
As a result, with our new SIP Trunk engine, we now have the ability to fully control the DNS lookup process of the Registrars of the providers. This allows us to take advantage of the NAPTR and SRV records and make fail-over between Provider POPs seamless, should one go down.
Additionally, because not all providers utilize NAPTR and SRV entries, we introduced the ability to add an Alternative Proxy address to achieve the same goal for IP based providers.
Preparing for the Future of SIP
If we’re looking towards the future, one thing that cannot be ignored is the importance of IPv6, which will play a vital role in the growth of the IoT and improve the speed of our online communications. Whether we like it or not, IPv6 is here to stay and in 2020 we made sure to 3CX was 100% compatible to support SIP Trunk providers already making the switch.
We also took a fresh look at what protocols our supported providers use. While the majority use UDP, an increasing amount have started using TCP, which is more reliable, and of course, TLS, which ensures that your conversations with your customers remain private.
This led us to implement 2 things, a protocol selection menu that allows us to explicitly select which one will be used, and in the event that TLS is selected, the ability to upload a unique certificate per provider.
Besides these under-the-hood changes, 2020 also included the introduction of 27 new SIP Trunk providers that we now support, as well a lot more that were retested to take advantage of the changes we made.
2020’s Most Wanted: Set Outbound Caller IDs with Outbound Rules
Last but not least, in 2020 we released one of the most anticipated features we have had in years. Yes, that’s right, the ability to set the Outbound Caller ID in your Outbound Rules came to life in 2020!
Gone are the days of creating multiple accounts with your Provider to get your desired number presented to call recipients. Now you have the full flexibility to do so right from inside your 3CX Management Console.
What’s on the Horizon?
This year we plan to further build on these improvements by also taking another look at SRTP and improving audio quality even more, while at the same time reducing the hardware resources needed to process your calls.
In the meantime, if you are enjoying the changes we made in 2020, let us know! Share your feedback in our community forum.
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