This is a traumatic story. Maybe you can help the rest of us who are making business decisions using *.
Will you or client be looking at any other SIP alternatives? Do you think any problems were with the phone sets themselves? Again, sorry to hear of your troubles. ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: "Dave Alan Caruana" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:21:02 +0200 >i've just lost $2000 dollars or so on my first commercial asterisk >installation .. >i'm running a PIV class server, three Digium Wildcard FXO cards, and >10 Grandstream Budgettone SIP phones. The system was to be a PBX >for a small company. After over 2 months of pissing about, the client has >had his fill of asterisk problems, and asked me to take my equipment >out of the building. Obviously, I haven't been paid for anything. > >The problems I faced were the following : >- initially a problem with asterisk crashing totally when there wasn't an >extension > to ring .. though this was fixed in a subsequent CVS, it was causing >downtime. > the client has no unix knowledge, and a script I put in to kick in the >asterisk > when it shut itself down didn't seem to always work. > > it also reduced the quality of my subsequent callout requests to something >on > the lines of "the phone server is crashed again" regardless of what the >problem was > >- a dialplan problem, where one phone was ringing 10 seconds after the >others, > at the client's request and they were hearing other phones ring and >picking up > a non-ringing phone (ok, I can't really blame that on asterisk ..) > >- echo on the lines .. that after much fiddling around with configurations >went from > terrible to borderline acceptable. To people not used to digital >telephony and > computer stuff, the echo was VERY annoying. They used to avoid the phones > because they said people would not understand them. > >- no consultative transfer. The closest I got was to park the call, call the >other party, > tell him "a voce" which line the call is parked on and then get him to >pick up the call. > This is, in my opinion, a very basic feature that is missing on asterisk. >The park/ > pick up sequence proved too difficult for the clients' secretaries to >grasp. > >- I could not get G729 working properly (license paid up, G729 up and >running). In > the absence of a manual, the fault solving process was something like "ask >a question > on the mailing list, get a few answers, go to the client, try it out, >fail, go back home, > send another question on the mailinglist" with about 48 hours for each >iteration. I was > also appearing a real chimp "expermimenting" stuff at the clients' office. > >At this point I decided to cut my losses, retreive the equipment and call it >a day. >When asterisk is well documented and released in stable releases, I will >willingly >consider it again. I would be willing to pay for a stable, documented >version of >asterisk. It is a lovely software, and to begin with I was very enthusiastic >about it. >I do understand that the support community is helpful, but the current >status of things >limits asterisk to a hobbyist scenario or at least somewhere where there is >an engineer >with lots of linux experience and patience online 24 hours to solve problems >as they >crop up. > >If anyone would like a couple of second hand FXO boards, contact me. I have >already found a home for the grandstreams. > >cheers >Dave > >_______________________________________________ >Asterisk-Users mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > -- Costas Menico Meezon Software Corp 201-224-8111 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
