Matthew, I'm about in the same boat as you are, just on a smaller scale. We have a ton of Nortel telephony gear, but it's time to move out of the 90's and enter this millennium. My Cisco quote was in the same ballpark as yours.
The Cisco stuff is mature, rock solid, meshes very well with their network gear and is actually relatively easy to set up and maintain if you know your way around IOS. I just refuse to pay that kind of money for yet another semi-proprietary solution. After looking at various asterisk distributions, SipX, 3CX and what-have-you, I've come to the conclusion that FreeSWITCH is by far the most advanced platform out there. Its architecture and performance is literally light years ahead of the rest and I have yet to come up with something that it can't do. But all that comes at a price: The learning curve is like scaling a brick wall. The developers and the community are great and available, but just starting out with SIP and voip in general, this may not be the best platform. So let the blasphemy begin :) SipX was a breeze to install (insert CD, boot, next next next...) and looks pretty solid. I believe they actually use FreeSWITCH for their voicemail and conferencing, internally. I just couldn't get my head around their GUI, ACD was too basic and had all kinds of issues getting stuff to "just work". 3CX (Windows Only) was completely painless. It just worked. But I'm still not convinced that I want to run all my voice on a single windows box. Plus it's not free/open/etc and I don't want to lock myself in again. Although it's an asterisk based solution, I found trixbox to be very easy. Setup is automatic and everything "just worked". The GUI is simple and logical enough that I can let somebody else handle the day-to-day phone setup and basic admin. I have my doubts about it scaling to 250 users, though. This may be a completely flawed strategy and I may very well be shooting myself in the foot by doing this, but I plan on piloting a trixbox install with a dozen or so users and see how stable it is. I'll keep a FreeSWITCH box next to it for the more advanced stuff. Once I get more comfortable with the intricacies of SIP and get some time to code a basic GUI for FreeSWITCH, I have a feeling that that trixbox is going to get phased out... Peter -----Original Message----- From: freeswitch-users-boun...@lists.freeswitch.org [mailto:freeswitch-users-boun...@lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of mkitchin.pub...@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 11:10 PM To: freeswitch-users@lists.freeswitch.org Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Newbie trying to setup Cisco 7940 phones Michael Collins wrote: > > > On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:19 PM, mkitchin.pub...@gmail.com > <mailto:mkitchin.pub...@gmail.com> <mkitchin.pub...@gmail.com > <mailto:mkitchin.pub...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > I'm working on an alternative to a $120,000 Cisco phone system that my > > company is looking at. I got Freeswitch installed on CentOS last week > using the Quick and Dirty instructions. That part was painless. We > had a > few 7940s laying around. After some wrestling with it, I got the > latest > SIP firmware installed and what I hoped was a functional config > (attached). X-Lite phones can call each other no problem. 7940s > can call > X-Lite no problem. Anytime I try and call a 7940, it goes straight to > voicemail. I attached a log file that shows the activity when > trying to > call a7940 from X-Lite. > X-Lite is at 10.86.10.58. 7940 is at 10.86.11.50. Freeswitch is > nshplpbx1.unix/10.85.0.53 <http://10.85.0.53>. Everything is on > the same LAN. Different > subnets, but no firewalls. > I didn't see anything that said posting attachments was frowned > upon. I > apologize if it isn't appropriate. I'm guessing this is something > simple > and I'm just clueless on how to diagnose the issue. > I'm not tied to using this model for good, but it is what we had > laying > around. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Next step is > configuring > it to talk to Verizon VOIP over a DS3. > > Thanks, > Matthew Kitchin > > > Matthew, > Welcome to FreeSWITCH! We're glad you're ditching a $120K system. We > think you'll find FS is as powerful as any software out there right now. > > Here's a handy wiki page that will help you get the diagnosing skills > you need: > http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Reporting_Bugs > > I'd say first thing to do is capture the SIP traffic to see if there > are any clues. A "normal temporary failure" doesn't give you a lot of > detail. :) If you're new to SIP debugging then the best thing to do is > to capture the SIP trace and put it in the pastebin. > (http://pastebin.freeswitch.org) > > You can also join the IRC channel #freeswitch on irc.freenode.net > <http://irc.freenode.net> and get some real-time help. There are some > sharp folks in there, not the least of which are the three main > FreeSWITCH developers. > > -MC Thank you. I think I did what you are looking for. I stopped FS and launched this command. TPORT_LOG=1 /usr/local/freeswitch/bin/freeswitch and captured all output to http://pastebin.freeswitch.org/10965 Does this tell you anything? I'm definitely new to SIP and phone system admin in general. I have plenty of network and Linux experience. With that in mind, someone on this mailing list emailed me directly and said SipX would be a better fit for me. Is that blasphemy for me to even mention? I went through the documentation and the provisioning aspect and web interface do look tempting to a novice. I apologize if this is like trying to buy a chevy at a ford dealership. I'm looking to deploy about 150 handsets at a corporate office and then 10 to 12 handsets at 120 remote locations. We are moving from an old key system, so our current features are very limited. We just need a few ACD groups, call history, and the other general basics. I first found Asterisk and read about some of the shortcomings. FS looks like the most robust solution. I have no idea where SipX would fit in. The people here are obviously a very knowledgeable group and I would gladly accept any thoughts, comments, etc. _______________________________________________ FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org _______________________________________________ FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org
