Hi, sorry to reply so late, but have just returned back from a weeks holiday.
On Tue, 3 Oct 2006, Chris Hellyar wrote: > Bearing in mind also that the biggest real issue for me is the monthly > running cost rather than the capital outlay it's probably a slightly > academic exercise, but one worth the effort I feel. > > Given that the original post was for a 150 user installation, I would have thought the biggest and most crucial issue is reliability. Don't get me wrong though - the purchase cost is important. Let me explain some concerns, and my basis for expressing them. I have been to all three conferences run by the German Unix User Group on open source telephony - it had major sponsorship from Sangoma, and several firms who were commercially installing asterisk. https://www.guug.de/veranstaltungen/telephony-summit-2005/conference.html http://www.voxgratia.org/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=23 I took notes - lots. Other parts of my links to telephony include giving two talks at http://www.cluecon.com/ If you want the asterisk compatible T1 card they gave me, contact me off list. If you have a problem with your asterisk install - it crashes etc, or does not interoperate with your sip phone, you will (most probably) be told to update your astersk install, and get the latest CVS code. This is fine for those 1-2 user sites, but hard to justify for a 150 seat operation. Will the upgrade to the new CVS code break other things? In my view, it probably will - it is CVS level code. There are lots of people out there who will tell you how good Asterisk is. Some will "beat their chests", and say with much confidence, how good it is. Others, who have installed it on a comercial basis, now won't touch it. I met a Europeon who sponsored the first GUUG conference with heaps of Euros - he no longer installs it commercially. Honest objectivity is hard to find on the net. Very hard. Asterisk clearly works well for the home user, or for when there are a couple of phone lines. One person I met managed to scale it to run 400 active lines on a PBX. He used a Sangoma card(s), tweaked the config, disabled some modules, removed the database from that box, and a couple of other things. Others have had less success. You will find links to reports about terrible code quality in asterisk. Indeed, with a little delving, you can find some convolulted pieces of spaghetti. I spent months working through the IAX code section, and wrote a working C++ MPL replacement, that is in the pwlib/opal library at www.voxgratia.org. There is a method in asterisk that is 1300+ lines of code, and it is verifiable spaghetti. Such discussions on code quality are interesting, but suggest maintainability issues. There are other options to asterisk (in alphabetical order), bayonne freeswitch openpbx yate with varying degrees of readiness. The big thing in * favour is that it is a "ready to go" solution. Suck it down, install and it will work. The ready to go config solutions are a help. You will have fun in the asterisk community. Some lists exhibit a deplorable attitude - others are a fine example of open source in action. The NZ asterisk user group is very helpful. Derek. -- Derek Smithies Ph.D. IndraNet Technologies Ltd. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ph +64 3 365 6485 Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
