Douglas wrote: > I've been working with Asterisk for a little while now, and have been looking recently > at my next career opportunity. It seems from searching the various job sites that the > predominant VOIP technology is not the applications-based open source approach we > took, but Cisco, with a really heavy emphasis on the networking (ie network engineer) > aspect. If you do a job search for (VOIP or Voice-over-IP or "IP telephony") and you > mostly get results for network engineers with lots of Cisco experience.
They are the big player, so their products and tools tend to get the attention. > Because Asterisk is a feature-rich solution, my emphasis has been on providing and > developing features, applications and systems (ie asterisk, Linux), redundancy, > customisation, programming, as well as overall architecture, especially in relation to > SIP (and working around all those Asterisk HA limiations!). There of course has also > been a networking component as well. On a side note, apparently my current employer > tried a Cisco solution before I came along, and I hear all the time how absolute crap > is was. Is that how people who have used Asterisk feel about Cisco? Is Cisco that bad? > Is it lacking in features? I know we investigated a Sylantro solution and I remember > that was pretty nasty. While either approach, application or infrastructure, you will run into issues that cannot be solved in that discipline. I feel that an engineer in this field must be well versed in the infrastructure, and bonus points for being able to develop for the system. I don't mean they have to be able to code native applications, but clever dialplans that solve problems can demonstrate that the understand how the system works. As to the quality of the Cisco product, well it has its place. The management tools are suited to putting them in the hands of front line staff to perform Adds/Moves/Changes without to much anguish. Each release gets a small bit better, like our favorite open source package. The fact that it is possible to offer almost every feature and service with Asterisk that CCM does, speaks volumes for the developers. > Anyway, based on the absolute dominance of Cisco it almost seems like what I have been > doing with Asterisk has been a complete waste of time from a career perspective. I'm > not sure how I can use Asterisk to my advantage over Cisco here. Having moved to a > small city and working for a CLEC makes finding work outside the city even tougher. Not at all. For all the Cisco-isms in a Call Manager environment, there are a lot of parallels. If you know Asterisk inside out, you can learn the Cisco way without too much effort. > I'm wondering if I should have stuck with Unix or SAN admin that was I doing before, > and if my recent work with Asterisk has jeopardised my current experience status with > my previously used skills. All learning is good. If you cannot make money with what you've learned about VoIP while exploring Asterisk, then at least you've added experience that might make the next techology you work with easier to understand, and maybe that one will make you money. > Anyway, just my 2c worth..... other opinions welcome. > Doug. Dan _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
