Firefly Softphone

Firefly is Freshtel's IAX-based softphone for Windows, which works with Freshtel's VoIP service. It is based on Virbiage's Cubix softphone platform. Firefly is available from the Freshtel website, http://www.freshtel.net/firefly/download/.

Firefly is known to work under Wine on Linux, although changes to font settings and/or the installation of additional fonts may be required.

Firefly Features

• VoIP Protocols: SIP, IAX
• Codecs: μlaw, Alaw, iLBC, Speex, GSM, G.729 (via DLL)
• Music on Hold
• Skinnable Interface
• Instant Messaging, Presence, and Contact Lists (IAX2 only, implemented via extensions to the IAX2 text message field)

Dialling methods

• 123 - dials Freshtel virtual number *123
• +123 - dials geographical number 123 (note: not necessarily a full E.164 number — the plus is just an escape character)

Third party version

Virbiage offer the Cubix softphone for theming and licensing by third parties. Firefly is an example of such a retargeted softphone, as is Tesco Internet Phone.

Commercial enquiries should be directed to http://www.virbiage.com/cubix.php Virbiage. If you need a version which works with 3rd party IAX & SIP networks, then use http://razametal.is-a-geek.org/asterisk/Softphones/Windows/firefly/firefly-thirdparty.exe

Enabling G.729 support

Added by 'msg' SIP:9202@cybertheque.org on 05-22-2005
— building the g729.dll using open source tools --
— thanks to the developers for the opportunity to evaluate G.729 on firefly --

  (We don't have MS VC (but we do have a working MS Win32 version of 'lib.exe')
  The build host was Win2k Server sp3/Cygwin 1.3.22/gcc 3.2;

    1. create a target directory for the build and create a subdirectory under it called  'ms-obj.dir' 
    2. download 'g729.zip' from http://www.virbiage.com/firefly/download/g729.zip;
        download 'G729.zip' (be sure to not clobber the previous download) from
        http://www.voiceage.com/codecsite/media/G729.zip
        and unzip them into the target directory
    
  *** build the library ***
     — at a 'cmd.exe' shell:
    3. cd to the target directory
    4. lib /NOLOGO /LIST .\va_g729.lib > lib.lst
     — at a 'bash' shell:
    5. sed 's+\\+\\\\+g' < lib.lst > lib.list
    6. cd ms-obj.dir
    7. while read name
        do
        lib /NOLOGO /EXTRACT:$name ../va_g729.lib
        done < ../lib.list
    8. (convert all uc filenames to lc ; eg. use the following script:)
        ls | while read fname
        do
        lowname=`echo $fname | tr "A-Z" "a-z"`
        mv $fname $lowname
        done
    9. ar r ../libg729.a *

  *** compile and link ***
   10. cd ..
   11. mv G729.C g729.c
   12. gcc -mno-cygwin -shared -I ./ -c -o g729.o g729.c
   13. gcc -mno-cygwin -shared -I ./ -L ./ -shared -o foo.dll g729.o -lg729
         — (ignore the many messages: Warning: .drectve '%.*s' unrecognized)
         — output filename cannot be 'g729.dll' or linking fails with message: './/g729.dll file not recognized: file truncated'
   14. mv foo.dll g729.dll

The dll worked well when tested with the third-party firefly/SIP on a P166/64MB/Win2k laptop with USB headset; I am quite
impressed with the performance of firefly (especially on this older platform) as it eliminates unresolvable echo and
chopping problems we had with X-Ten lite. The G.729 codec is wonderful over dial-up.

You can download the dll from: http://razametal.is-a-geek.org/asterisk/Softphones/Windows/firefly/g729.dll

See also

• Freshtel

Howtos

• Howto on connecting firefly to Asterisk

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VOIP Phones | Virbiage Phones