You may have never known it, but chances are that Asterisk or OpenSIPS may be dutifully working in the background on your phone, in case you placed or received a VoIP call or configured an internet-based telephone system. Both these high-powered open-source VoIP platforms are popular among businesses, developers and telecom companies as a means of establishing a scalable and flexible communication network.

As a newbie or a tech-savvy person, you can make a better decision concerning what VoIP to choose, having knowledge of the most important characteristics of Asterisk and OpenSIPS. This is about the top 10 features of the two, and in a simple and easy to follow manner.

Let us jump into it!

1. Free to Use, Open Source Open Source

Both Asterisk and OpenSIPS are open source VoIP server platforms and this implies that you can download them, alter them and use it without the costly licensing expense. It is such a massive developer and small businesses win as far as affordable services are concerned.

2. Asterisk: Total PBX

Asterisk is usually termed as a traditional open-source PBX. It is filled with:

Call routing

Call recording

Voicemail

Auto-attendant (IVR)

Conferencing support

These open source Asterisk PBX features are best suited to put together business phone systems involving minimal or no hardware system.

3. OpenSIPS: The SIP signaling Champion

OpenSIPS is very good in SIP signaling, and session management, which makes it suitable when large number of calls are to be handled. It is a SIP-server or proxy that contributes to increasing and balancing traffic.

Ideal to VoIP solution providers and telecom infrastructure.

4. Scripting This allows end users to easily customize.

The high degree of customization is one of the reasons why developers decide to work with either Asterisk or OpenSIPS. The two systems allow you to specify the behavior of the calls, security policies, and routing information and so on via their own scripting languages.

5. Great Security Highlights

VoIP threats must have security. Asterisk and OpenSIPS support:

Encryption methods TLS and SRTP

Whitelist and blacklist of IPs

SIP authentication

Anti-fraud protections

They will aid in protecting your system against intrusion by an unknown user or VoIP attacks.

6. OpenSIPS Feature: Load Balancing (OpenSIPS Feature)

OpenSIPS VoIP server is one of the best because of the feature of load balancing. You may manage SIP traffic among several servers, which means improved uptime as well as accelerated call establishing and system credibility, which is a necessity of the service providers.

7. Call Routing and Number Translation

Both systems are able to do dynamic call routing. Asterisk allows the use of dial plans. The advanced routing logic such as number translation, user location, or even the least-cost routing can be applied with OpenSIPS.

8. Simple connectivity with other systems

Asterisk and OpenSIPS combine favorably with:

CRM systems

Software in call centers

WebRTC softphones

Billing platforms

This qualifies them to work well to provide custom-made VoIP systems to your businesses.

9. Scalability

It is best suited to smaller-to-medium sized systems whereas OpenSIPS is used on a massive SIP traffic. The main differences between Asterisk and OpenSIPS are now in your knowledge, and it allows you to scale intelligently: leave media handling to Asterisk and put it under the control of OpenSIPS in terms of signaling.

10. Community & Support

Both the tools have a strong developer community. It is online, where you can look through documentation, forums, modules and tutorials, so there is an opportunity to learn and develop in the platform.

Final Thoughts: Which One To Choose?

When you would like to create a feature-rich PBX with voice, voicemail and IVR, use Asterisk.

Select OpenSIPS in case you require a high performance SIP router or load balancer within a dense call network.

Most developers combine the two - Asterisk is used to process the media, OpenSIPS used to handle the signaling.

Thus, if you are constructing a bespoke phone system; inserting a VoIP service; or have an interest in trying out the realm of open-source telephony; these tools will be central to creativity.