Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
On Saturday 29 October 2005 18:06, Bart Fisher wrote: I'm trying to install two TE410P's in one box. Would like to get 3 total. I can always get one card to work. You are adjusting the 'ident' rotary switch on the others, right? -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
Yep - that was easy part :) and these are T1 (D4, AMI, SF, and EM Wink) BTW Bart - Original Message - From: Andrew Kohlsmith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 3:09 PM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 18:06, Bart Fisher wrote: I'm trying to install two TE410P's in one box. Would like to get 3 total. I can always get one card to work. You are adjusting the 'ident' rotary switch on the others, right? -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
On Saturday 29 October 2005 18:19, Bart Fisher wrote: Yep - that was easy part :) and these are T1 (D4, AMI, SF, and EM Wink) BTW Ok, well I'll go for the obvious question: have you contacted Digium technical assistance? You have paid for support within the price of the card. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. :) Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. Bart - Original Message - From: Andrew Kohlsmith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 3:35 PM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 18:19, Bart Fisher wrote: Yep - that was easy part :) and these are T1 (D4, AMI, SF, and EM Wink) BTW Ok, well I'll go for the obvious question: have you contacted Digium technical assistance? You have paid for support within the price of the card. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
Why don't you call their support? I've called and only had a good experience. Tech Support via email is always kind of weak no matter where you go. Call them, and go through their tech support department, they have some really intelligent and knowledgeable techs down there and I'm sure they'll be able to fix this problem. -- Tom On 10/29/05, Bart Fisher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. :) Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. Bart - Original Message - From: Andrew Kohlsmith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 3:35 PM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 18:19, Bart Fisher wrote: Yep - that was easy part :) and these are T1 (D4, AMI, SF, and EM Wink) BTW Ok, well I'll go for the obvious question: have you contacted Digium technical assistance? You have paid for support within the price of the card. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
On Saturday 29 October 2005 19:30, Bart Fisher wrote: Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. Actually my support from them has been great... Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. allowed linux to remove the missing cards ?? what distro are you using? Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Again, what distro, what version of asterisk and whatnot? Is this [EMAIL PROTECTED] Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. It sounds like your system is what's flaky here... Linux doesn't need to remove the cards... Definitely something nonstandard from my point of view. I am glad it's working for you though. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
My 2 cents: If you are running kudzu on RH or FC, new and remove hardware should be detected...in most cases. I assume other distros have something similar...? If 2 of 8 T1s are not coming up - sounds like you may have a wiring issue. Can you swap cables from a bad circuit to a good circuit? Are all of the circuits the same configuration from the carrier? As far as support, Digium's email support has ALWAYS been helpful to me - from basic questions to systematic issues. They have always been helpful and responsive. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Kohlsmith Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:50 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 19:30, Bart Fisher wrote: Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. Actually my support from them has been great... Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. allowed linux to remove the missing cards ?? what distro are you using? Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Again, what distro, what version of asterisk and whatnot? Is this [EMAIL PROTECTED] Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. It sounds like your system is what's flaky here... Linux doesn't need to remove the cards... Definitely something nonstandard from my point of view. I am glad it's working for you though. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
Yep, it CentOS 4.0 (RH) - Kudzu - also seems to be the root of my problem. I later rebooted and now back to some ports working again. I'm using a Loop-Back plug to test with - no real T1 attached until I can fix this. Swapping card does not seem to follow issues. Maybe I'll give support another :) Bart - Original Message - From: Jason Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 5:09 PM Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P My 2 cents: If you are running kudzu on RH or FC, new and remove hardware should be detected...in most cases. I assume other distros have something similar...? If 2 of 8 T1s are not coming up - sounds like you may have a wiring issue. Can you swap cables from a bad circuit to a good circuit? Are all of the circuits the same configuration from the carrier? As far as support, Digium's email support has ALWAYS been helpful to me - from basic questions to systematic issues. They have always been helpful and responsive. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Kohlsmith Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:50 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 19:30, Bart Fisher wrote: Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. Actually my support from them has been great... Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. allowed linux to remove the missing cards ?? what distro are you using? Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Again, what distro, what version of asterisk and whatnot? Is this [EMAIL PROTECTED] Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. It sounds like your system is what's flaky here... Linux doesn't need to remove the cards... Definitely something nonstandard from my point of view. I am glad it's working for you though. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P
I understand the loopback scenario. Have you swapped the loops between circuits? Are circuits on some of your T1s but loops on others? Can you swap them to see if the green leds follow the cabling? I have kudzu enabled and do not have any issues...although I do not put more than one card in a server. When you say some of the ports are working again, can you expand on that? How about an IRQ issue? Too many for your server? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bart Fisher Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 5:26 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P Yep, it CentOS 4.0 (RH) - Kudzu - also seems to be the root of my problem. I later rebooted and now back to some ports working again. I'm using a Loop-Back plug to test with - no real T1 attached until I can fix this. Swapping card does not seem to follow issues. Maybe I'll give support another :) Bart - Original Message - From: Jason Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 5:09 PM Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P My 2 cents: If you are running kudzu on RH or FC, new and remove hardware should be detected...in most cases. I assume other distros have something similar...? If 2 of 8 T1s are not coming up - sounds like you may have a wiring issue. Can you swap cables from a bad circuit to a good circuit? Are all of the circuits the same configuration from the carrier? As far as support, Digium's email support has ALWAYS been helpful to me - from basic questions to systematic issues. They have always been helpful and responsive. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Kohlsmith Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 4:50 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up - Help with TE410P On Saturday 29 October 2005 19:30, Bart Fisher wrote: Well, have you ever tried their support? They assume we are all dummies... A bunch of canned email messages to remind you to plug in the power cable. Actually my support from them has been great... Ok, in a disparate act (and this might help someone body someday) I removed all the Digium card and emptied the zap*.conf files from the box and rebooted. I allowed Linux to remove the missing cards - this of course installs ztdummy. allowed linux to remove the missing cards ?? what distro are you using? Next I shutdown and added all the cards at one time. - Booted and let Linux discover cards and allowed configuration. Copied back my zap*.conf files rebooted. This time it comes up 6 spans with green lights and 2 on first card with flashing red. I shutdown, and swap the two TE410P. Rebooted - all light green now. Again, what distro, what version of asterisk and whatnot? Is this [EMAIL PROTECTED] Since it's working, I'm done - but only go to show you these cards are flaky. It sounds like your system is what's flaky here... Linux doesn't need to remove the cards... Definitely something nonstandard from my point of view. I am glad it's working for you though. -A. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
Hi, At 09:31 16-10-2003 -0500, you wrote: testing before implementing initially and again for any changes. I am very wary of CVS updates now... Quite a few people are making a concerted effort to make documentation better and I think this will help quite a bit. I think a proper schema to do CVS release tagging/labelling will help alot too :-) Florian ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
This is a traumatic story. Maybe you can help the rest of us who are making business decisions using *. Will you or client be looking at any other SIP alternatives? Do you think any problems were with the phone sets themselves? Again, sorry to hear of your troubles. -- Original Message -- From: Dave Alan Caruana [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:21:02 +0200 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 -- Costas Menico Meezon Software Corp 201-224-8111 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
costas wrote: This is a traumatic story. Maybe you can help the rest of us who are making business decisions using *. Will you or client be looking at any other SIP alternatives? Do you think any problems were with the phone sets themselves? I would say a couple of issues were related to the phones, eg the consultative transfer.. Again, sorry to hear of your troubles. -- Original Message -- From: Dave Alan Caruana [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:21:02 +0200 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 -- Costas Menico Meezon Software Corp 201-224-8111 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Dave Alan Caruana wrote: 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 agree entirely, this is a particularly awful part of using the GrandStream BudgeTone phones, but the general view seems to be that you need to buy an expensive phone for the reception and then things should be okay (Snom200 was suggested). Michael ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
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 ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
Dave, I sympathize greatly with your plight. I just had a similar experience myself, although I managed to salvage it before I was asked to remove it from the building. I was using Pingtel phones that were supposed to work great with Asterisk but instead crashed all the time. Then I got the Sip bug that caused * to stop responding when doing a cvs update for work arounds for the phones. I ended up pulling the Pingtel phones and replacing with Smartalk analog phones. Everyone seems to be fairly happy right now, but it has been a huge nightmare and a huge learning experience. One thing I learned is that Asterisk is very capable even in production, but if your going to implement it you had better make sure that you can do full blown testing before implementing initially and again for any changes. I am very wary of CVS updates now... Quite a few people are making a concerted effort to make documentation better and I think this will help quite a bit. Sincerely, Andy Hester Consero -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dave Alan Caruana Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 8:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!! 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 ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
I have multiple installs, and while I would say I have experienced some of the same problems, thankfully our results were'nt close to yours. Perhaps the real problem was you did not do any lab work, we tested about 6 months before we did our first install. One thing we did wrong was started changing too many variables too quickly, i.e. we used the tdm400p prototype boards instead of equipment we had labbed it all on. If you lab it all at your house first and really beat the crap out of it while you are labbing it you will really improve your chances of success. Second, do not change anything or deviate from the agreed upon proposal regardless of how much pressue the customers puts you under (as long as you properly set expectations up front). After the install and you have hit all of the goals you and your customer agreed on (and all of those goals have been successfully labbed at your house before you agreed to them) bill them, then start adding features and making changed on an hourly rate. The first install we had went pretty badly (we were using the prototype versions of the wcfxs boards). The grandstream phones are also really really crappy phones (echo is going to be damned difficult to get rid of on those). I have only had asterisk crash on me a handful of times and I think we have narrowed that down to leaving the console with debug on IAX and Zap up remotely via ssh over a 24 hour period. I hope you do try again, we have a growing customer base and once our clients started to see the power of asterisk over their existing systems (we still get the rare and strange problem) we usually get them to be pretty loyal. Besides it is people like us who are going to start getting rid of the extremly f-ed up Bell System. Were on a mission, not just to provide cool phone systems but to make voice communications monopoly free! - Original Message - From: WipeOut [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 10:04 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!! costas wrote: This is a traumatic story. Maybe you can help the rest of us who are making business decisions using *. Will you or client be looking at any other SIP alternatives? Do you think any problems were with the phone sets themselves? I would say a couple of issues were related to the phones, eg the consultative transfer.. Again, sorry to hear of your troubles. -- Original Message -- From: Dave Alan Caruana [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:21:02 +0200 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
RE: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
I was about to ring the same sentament. I've been working with * for a few months now and wouldn't even think of selling a service esecially on phones that are still being worked on. I do have a couple GS phones and they work great, for me. But when you put it in place where the peoples knowledge of turning on a computer is questionable, all sorts of things can go wrong. Things we take for granted or quirks with things are easily overlooked and seem to be mountains to others when we consider them mole hills. Just my .02 Joe -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 10:25 AM To: Asterisk Users Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!! 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 ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
Asterisk... Linux... You get what you pay for. And it's free :P Thats true but free (cost) doesn't have to mean cheap (quality). Maybe what we need is to collect business requirements and build a configuration for a typical system. (hardware spec. and actual config files) What Dave has listed is a good start. Then folks will have a starting point. If cost is the driving factor then obviously there has to be a compromise in functionality. Knowing what a specific functionality costs to implement would help people quoting installations. (example the transfer situation that GS phones don't handle but seem to work with one of the more expensive phones and the rest as GS). While I don't have the hardware or even Asterisk knowledge (yet) to do this, I'll be glad to document results in a set of webpages (or maybe we should use one of the already existing sites). Robert ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
On Thursday 16 October 2003 09:21, Dave Alan Caruana wrote: 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 I suggest people download and install dameontools http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html and have asterisk as a supervised service. If it fails, supervise will restart it after 5 seconds. Regards...Martin -- Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them continues to pay for it. -- Peggy Joyce ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
You went about this all backwards. In any mission critical system FIRST you design, build and test the system extensively THEN and only then. do you deploy it. OK, maybe it's just because I'm in the aerospace bussinees I'm used to a high level of quality assurance and testing What you find in CVS is NOT a product. You need to build a working product, debug it, build a support system for it (decent user manuals and training material) test the heck out of your configuration. Design a failure recovery plan (what happens if a power suply smokes?) and only then go knocking on people's doors. The idea is that you drop off a turn key system and not do development in the costomer's office. I've paid to have a phone system installed and we wrote up the deal that after it worked we'd pay for it and any problems in the first 90 days were to be fixed at no cost to us. Most people expect phone to just work. --- Dave Alan Caruana [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 = Chris Albertson Home: 310-376-1029 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 310-990-7550 Office: 310-336-5189 [EMAIL PROTECTED] KG6OMK __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
What you say is absolutely true. We must not forget that asterisk is a work in progress changing constantly. All the rules of development and deployment apply. I don't think that the industry even applies. I am in Telecomm. Just like the aerospace industry, lives depend on things working in the real world. Try deploying in a call center that takes medical emergency callers. I am dealing with this little stress additive as we speak. Sure, you can deploy an alpha or beta system into an environment but you had better be sure to set the expectations of everyone in advance. You should also have clear procedures laid out when things go awry. People are extremely forgiving when they realize what that they have all the facts and are able to make the decisions in an intelligent way. Some people even think this is fun. grin Have fun! -Nicholas [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Chris Albertson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:47 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!! You went about this all backwards. In any mission critical system FIRST you design, build and test the system extensively THEN and only then. do you deploy it. OK, maybe it's just because I'm in the aerospace bussinees I'm used to a high level of quality assurance and testing What you find in CVS is NOT a product. You need to build a working product, debug it, build a support system for it (decent user manuals and training material) test the heck out of your configuration. Design a failure recovery plan (what happens if a power suply smokes?) and only then go knocking on people's doors. The idea is that you drop off a turn key system and not do development in the costomer's office. I've paid to have a phone system installed and we wrote up the deal that after it worked we'd pay for it and any problems in the first 90 days were to be fixed at no cost to us. Most people expect phone to just work. ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote: Asterisk... Linux... You get what you pay for. And it's free Part of the price is the work you have to do yourself or pay a contractor to do. Open Source is not shrink-wrap. Trying to grasp the problem report, it seems like a lot of problems derives from the system as a total, not from the particular pieces. The SIP device market is still fairly young, with interoperability problems and functionality being implemented in many different ways (transfer, dmtf ...). We need to collaborate and document the differences, agree on best practise and work with suppliers to get it working so that you can combine proxies, phones and other pieces of the SIP puzzle together without these problems. - * - * - And yes, documentation is a problem for Asterisk. More people are welcome to add to the Asterisk wiki, to collect various bits and pieces. http://www.voip-info.org But all of you already knew that, didn't you :-) /O ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!
To try to summarize and turn this discussion into advice for newcomers, I've wrote up a rollout-advice page in the Wiki, inspired by all your messages in this thread. Thank you for participating, even if you weren't aware of it... http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+rollout+tips What can we add, what did I misinterpret? /O ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
