Asterisk... Linux... You get what you pay for. And it's free :P On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 15:21, Dave Alan Caruana wrote: > 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
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