On Saturday 07 October 2006 20:07, Derek Smithies wrote: > 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.
I wholeheartedly agree. > 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. I'm jealous. They would have been interesting trips. > 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. This is a problem. In reality, it's the same way for many (most?) open source projects, the difference being those other projects aren't running your companies phone system. > 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. Indeed, there does seem to be a lot of 'enthusiasm' surrounding Asterisk. > 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. I can't really comment here as all the installs I have been involved in are for small businesses, for which Asterisk has worked well enough. Just to play devils advocate, there are people using it successfully (of which I'm sure you are aware). Here's one example: http://www.techworld.com/networking/features/index.cfm?featureID=2808&pagtype=samecatsamechan > 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. I'm no C coder, but I have gotten quickly lost when trying to track down bugs a few times :/ I don't doubt your comments there. > 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. OpenPBX looks attractive because it dispenses with the continual license arguments that surround Asterisk. Also, I have been wanting to have a play with freeswitch for a while now, it's looks very interesting and the codebase seems to be expanding a quite a rapid rate. Cheers, hads > 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. -- http://nicegear.co.nz New Zealand's VoIP supplier
