Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 01:09:36AM -0400, Al Baker wrote: Not sure if this is the best place to ask this or not...but since it was mentioned.. Is SwitchVox a alternative to * ? Were they a competitor to *, and DIGIUM bought them and so DIGIUM has 2 Totally Different PBX software packages ? Think of Asterisk not as a PBX but as a PBX toolkit. Various people in this list build their PBX from this toolkit directly. Some of them do it for their home or company. Others resell it. Yet others use Asterisk as a part of a larger PBX. SwitchVox is one example of such a PBX. FreePBX is another. Druid is a third one. Digium also have hteir AsteriskNOW which is a very light-weight one. All of those packages are not an alternative to Asterisk (the PBX toolkit). They are an alternative to a home-grown PBX built on top of Asterisk. There are various pros and cons to both sides and various good and bad examples for both sides. -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:59:08AM -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
At the risk of inflaming a lot of passions, including those of
hard-working developers, I must say that where Asterisk may be
production-worthy, the entire constellation of things (like Zaptel) of
which its PSTN hardware interface capabilities comprise is absolutely
not, if my experience is at all telling. Of course, that's not all
Zaptel's or Digium's fault; much of it is just the buggy, flaky, and
very inconsistent nature of PC hardware, the kernel, ${insert true
culprit here}.
Nevertheless, my only truly solid experiences with Asterisk have come in
situations where it is used as a purely SIP agent. FXO interface
hardware, PRI cards (Sangoma, Digium, Rhino, etc.) all have bugs,
strange interop problems I've never seen before with big iron TDM
switches or newer telco softswitches that generate those circuits,
bizarre apparent interpretations of certain ISDN messages, and can cause
system instability, lockups, etc. (Whether they are the true cause of it
or whether that's just a consequence of their interoperation with the PC
is unknown to me, and somewhat beside the point.)
They've come a long way, I think. When I first used Digium T1 cards,
little, basic things like B channels not being hung up properly were
still a major and frequent theme. For low-capacity installs involving
at most one or two PRIs, I think one may be all right at this point.
But I still think it's experimental and avant garde from a production
standpoint; I find myself frequently stressing to my clients how much
better off they'd be just getting SIP termination and origination
elsewhere and breathe easier. Sangoma seems quite all right. Rhino is
OK, although as far as their multiport FXO interfaces go, it suffices to
say there is a difference between making it work and making it work
well. Their free support does go a long way toward that end. Your
mileage may vary. Caveat emptor.
Yeah, right. And we have no SIP compatibility issues at all. It is also
funny that you reflect the quality of old PRI card of one company and
yet ignore all the past mishaps of SIP devices.
I have stared long enough in both PRI traces and SIP traces. Both
protocols are complex. I've seen very strange things happening with SIP.
Also in this list. With Zaptel at least you have full ontrol of the
device
(disclaimer: I work for a Zaptel hardware vendor)
In general, though, almost any installation with any TDM trunking of
nontrivial volume is something in which I've ended up deploying
dedicated ISDN VoIP gateways, most recently Cisco AS5300s and 5400s. In
general, this is what I would advise to anyone thinking about
terminating more than a handful of PRIs, let alone DS3s worth of
traffic. Get proven, reliable hardware (even if it is expensive) from
vendors for whom TDM and carrier-grade telephony is a core competency.
I've seen far too many people try to take the cheap way out with a bunch
of Asterisk-oriented TDM hardware and not get quite what they were
expecting. Don't do it. There's something gravely perturbing about
running T1s into a PC anyway, although I know it's been done in certain
esoteric commercial telephony applications for eons.
Now please be specific about what is wrong with running a T1 into a PC.
I heard some people run Gigabit-ethernet into a standard PC. But maybe
that also takes a dedicated cisco gateway.
Pre.S.: while writing this I wanted to link to Jim Dixon's article The
History of the Zapata Telephony Project as it relates to the Asterisk
PBX. But it seems to have vanished off the face of the internet.
Anybody has a copy?
--
Tzafrir Cohen
icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir
___
-- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
asterisk-users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Excellent topic and points brought up by all! On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Think of Asterisk not as a PBX but as a PBX toolkit. Various people in That's always been the way I saw asterisk. I wondered why people sometimes try to interface it with legacy pbx hardware, but over the years it became obvious that if you can get that working, it adds features to a reliable workhorse people are happy with. My small business has used asterisk built on hardware from the closet, a drive here, a mobo there, half a gig, two FXO cards and one TDM400P, 12 SIP or IAX providers, three phones and every SIP phone I can afford to mess with. It works very reliably until I try to do something to the dialplan I don't understand fully. Once I get that figured out and leave it alone, the box runs half a year before I reboot it on principle, or recently to replace the CPU fan. Bottom line, definitely ready for prime time for small operations IMO and a godsend! I'm currently playing with Digium's appliance and I hope to retire the old PC when we move in a few months. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Yeah, right. And we have no SIP compatibility issues at all. It is also funny that you reflect the quality of old PRI card of one company and yet ignore all the past mishaps of SIP devices. Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that. There are plenty of SIP interop problems with Asterisk as well. I was actually just debugging a really recondite one yesterday with MetaSwitch. But nothing quite so dramatically abysmal as the TDM stuff. Of course, that could just be my particularly unfortunate experiences or shortcomings; I make no claim as to the universality of what I am saying. I have stared long enough in both PRI traces and SIP traces. Both protocols are complex. I've seen very strange things happening with SIP. Agreed, most certainly. In fact, it's funny how often I've heard that SIP is a simple protocol. Oh, you know, it's like HTTP, basically. Um, no, simple it is not. Now please be specific about what is wrong with running a T1 into a PC. I don't have a lot of specific objections, as I am not a hardware expert. I was just commenting on what seems to work well and what doesn't. If I had to speculate, there are backplane/bus throughput and timing differences between dedicated, embedded TDM hardware chassis with T1 interfaces and PC motherboards with offboard cards. One surely must be more imprecise, inconsistent and replete with compatibility problems than the other. I could be very wrong. I heard some people run Gigabit-ethernet into a standard PC. But maybe that also takes a dedicated cisco gateway. Ethernet is a data animal, not a synchronous voice animal. But then, a goat is not a synchronous voice animal either. -- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel: (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (706) 338-8599 ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:38:23 -0500, Bill Andersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? /me raises hand. This said, if I did acquire sufficient knowledge of the system to be able to sell Asterisk-based solutions, I would probably do just that. -- Godwin Stewart - Horwich IT services ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? I'm responsible (development, maintenance, support) for an Asterisk based VoIP platform providing a replacement for residential PSTN lines. So I'm technically just a user ;-) I've literally got _thousands_ of users and Asterisk is rock solid for us. -- Andreas Sikkema ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 06:45:14AM -0400, Alex Balashov wrote: Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Yeah, right. And we have no SIP compatibility issues at all. It is also funny that you reflect the quality of old PRI card of one company and yet ignore all the past mishaps of SIP devices. Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that. There are plenty of SIP interop problems with Asterisk as well. I was actually just debugging a really recondite one yesterday with MetaSwitch. But nothing quite so dramatically abysmal as the TDM stuff. Of course, that could just be my particularly unfortunate experiences or shortcomings; I make no claim as to the universality of what I am saying. I have stared long enough in both PRI traces and SIP traces. Both protocols are complex. I've seen very strange things happening with SIP. Agreed, most certainly. In fact, it's funny how often I've heard that SIP is a simple protocol. Oh, you know, it's like HTTP, basically. Um, no, simple it is not. Now please be specific about what is wrong with running a T1 into a PC. I don't have a lot of specific objections, as I am not a hardware expert. I was just commenting on what seems to work well and what doesn't. If I had to speculate, there are backplane/bus throughput and timing differences between dedicated, embedded TDM hardware chassis with T1 interfaces and PC motherboards with offboard cards. One surely must be more imprecise, inconsistent and replete with compatibility problems than the other. I could be very wrong. PC hardware is produced in mass quantities. Hence you get hardware that is much more powerful. PCs today have hardware that has basically all the required CPU to handle quite some traffic. PCI (and even USB...) has been shown to be good enough to pass T1-s. Even with the unoptimized high interrupt rate of Zaptel. There's plenty of room for improvements in Zaptel. But people live with it right now because the CPUs we have are powerful enough. I heard some people run Gigabit-ethernet into a standard PC. But maybe that also takes a dedicated cisco gateway. Ethernet is a data animal, not a synchronous voice animal. But then, a goat is not a synchronous voice animal either. One main application is getting that synchronous voice over to voip. For that applicaiton we can easily afford adding a few delays. Now what happens when you actualyl want synchronous voice? Faxes? Modems? You could choose to of-load all of that to the dedicated gateway. But why? -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Andreas Sikkema wrote: I've literally got _thousands_ of users and Asterisk is rock solid for us. I think most of the instabilities are from the use of queues and mixmonitor/chanspy. I don't use either and have no real issues. I still restart the Asterisk service once a week though, but these scripts have been in place since the pre-1.0 age. Doug -- Ben Franklin quote: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Appologies for top-posting. This is the most interesting thread in a
long time. Alex, yours is the most well considered opinion I've seen in
a long while. I exactlt reflects my own, moerw limited experience.
Thank you for chiming in.
Two weeks ago on the VOIP Users Conference weekly call we had as our
guest Pika Technologies who are a Canadian company that make T-1/E-1
and FXO/FXS cards for Asterisk. One of their statements was the fact
that they don't rely on Zaptel for their driver. They have their own
driver which is unrelated to Zaptel.
Does anyone here have any experience with this? Is it markedly better,
or just more obscure and so harder to support?
Michael
On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:59:08 -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
Very interesting thread!
My general sense, being both a person of heavy UNIX systems programming
and modest telco background, and as an Asterisk enthusiast, is that
Asterisk itself is quite production-worthy as such. Experience suggests
that what is controversial about it from a business standpoint, in terms
of total cost of ownership, support, and dependability, are many things
rather ancillary to it that contribute to the overall experience of an
Asterisk-based system as a product. Some of these pitfalls have already
been pointed out with regard to the shortcomings of consumer-grade PC
hardware, hard drives, power supplies, etc.
In other words, it seems to me that you can't just throw up an Asterisk
box as such and have it perform to your expectations. My experience
with the few Asterisk based IP PBX appliances that claim to be thusly
turn-key has been very poor, although, in their defense, it's been a
while and I'm sure those platforms have come a long way. But overall,
the domain of expertise required to make Asterisk work well in an
environment demanding of high availability is of a scope considerably
beyond Asterisk itself, and amounts to a fairly broad nexus of network
engineering, *nix systems administration, and so on. Most generalised
-- and, to some extent, highly specialised -- IT savvy is required, as
can be true with anything open-source and not packaged as part of some
immaculate, embedded black box culturally or technically.
Asterisk works well if deployed in a manner that brings quite an array
of skills to the table in a rather comprehensive way. In and of itself,
it assures little. This conclusion is supported by the differences in
my effort expended to support and (re)engineer third-party Asterisk
installations of varying quality and sophistication. And of course,
what I am saying here applies to most other things as well. It is
possible to set up Apache or MySQL or Linux itself naively, from the
heart, as well, as many do, or to do it in a nuanced, refined manner
that is attentive to the specificity of tight production requirements
and capitalises upon considerable expertise.
All Asterisk setups in which I have been involved have generally
involved a from-scratch custom compile of Asterisk, zaptel (if
necessary), and very frequently - especially if the latter is required -
a hand-compiled kernel as well. I do not use Trixbox, any Asterisk
administration front-ends, IP PBX appliances, and so on. I can't really
comment on their respective merits, but even if I could, I feel strongly
compelled to point out that this would be more of a referendum on
particular vendors or integrators who have packaged Asterisk a certain
way than about Asterisk in principle, which is something several people
have already said. If all of the nuances of a hand-maintained Asterisk
configuration are observed, I think it's a pretty solid product in any
event, but it does increase total cost of ownership for my clients as
they have to find someone like myself or other Asterisk consultants on
this list with the knowledge and experience to do that sort of thing.
It's the same sort of dilemma that arises between investing a lot of
faith in a stock CentOS or Fedora install by someone who kind of knows
a bit about Linux vs. hiring a really knowledgeable Linux sysadmin,
where the limitations of the distribution don't really matter because
they're going to know what to do with it on a highly detailed level.
The latter obviously gets vastly superior results, but costs a lot more
money and time.
At the risk of inflaming a lot of passions, including those of
hard-working developers, I must say that where Asterisk may be
production-worthy, the entire constellation of things (like Zaptel) of
which its PSTN hardware interface capabilities comprise is absolutely
not, if my experience is at all telling. Of course, that's not all
Zaptel's or Digium's fault; much of it is just the buggy, flaky, and
very inconsistent nature of PC hardware, the kernel, ${insert true
culprit here}.
Nevertheless, my only truly solid experiences with Asterisk have come in
situations where it is used as a purely SIP agent. FXO interface
hardware, PRI
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I reboot every evening :) Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk process on that box that's been up for 193 days? I too restart the asterisk process every night as part of the cron process. Many people here seem to be under the impression that restarting the application every day is a bad thing. Having worked with carrier grade systems for 20+ years, I can tell you that even these systems restart the application during the days slow period. Granted these are usually two separate systems for redundancy but the typical method is to: 1) Unsync the two systems 2) Run system testing on the inactive side 3) Restart the inactive side 4) Resync the data between the systems 5) Switch the active and inactive processors 6) Repeat steps 1-4 on the newly inactive side Now don't think that smaller PBX or key systems are all that different. I know that the Meridian systems go through a similar process each day. On the SL1 systems there is a garbage daemon that runs every day. This daemon restarts the application to clean up RAM allocation. The Norstar key systems do this as well although the reset only takes about 2 seconds. Since everything is stored in flash memory, it is a quick way to make sure any glitches in RAM are cleaned up. Interestingly, the restart of Asterisk on my system only takes 3-4 seconds. Actual call processing is probably only affected for less that 2 seconds. Done during our night time activities no one ever notices. I've had some argue that a restart shouldn't be done because of the possibility that the system might not come back up. While this is potentially true, it will be because a file was changed without restarting or reloading asterisk. Yes this can happen though the likelihood is very small. At least it should be on a production system. One other thing to point out, if you are the type to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest, you can expect to have issues. Once you get the system on a stable setup, the only reason for upgrading is if the new version fixes some problem that you have. Again some argue that security vulnerabilities would require the upgrade but that isn't always the case. If your system is a closed network, for example, your connection to the outside world is strictly analog and your network isn't shared with your computers, none of the security concerns would every matter. Now think back to that key system you revered for just working, did it have any outside connections that a hacker could exploit? Not likely. I have one system that we installed nearly a year ago. The only time it has been down was due construction workers cutting the main power feed to the building, between the building and the generator. It took them 10 hours to fix it and the UPS lasted over 4 hours. That was 200 days ago however asterisk was restarted about 8 minutes after midnight. As they say, your mileage may vary, but I don't think restarting asterisk is a bad thing. John ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? I actually work as a software engineer for a big telecom manufacturer to remain unnamed. I use Asterisk at home and I built a system for my aunt's real estate office mainly because she was quoted $83K+ over 5 years for a 12 station Toshiba key system. I now get calls to build more of them mainly for real estate offices that have seen other systems I have built. I probably should become a full blown reseller but I don't see me making enough money to walk away from my daytime gig anytime soon. On second thought, I guess if I were charging $83 large per customer maybe I could! John ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 09:31:03AM -0500, John Faubion wrote: I reboot every evening :) Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk process on that box that's been up for 193 days? I too restart the asterisk process every night as part of the cron process. Many people here seem to be under the impression that restarting the application every day is a bad thing. It is a bad thing when people consider it a magic bullet. It cures slow resource leaks. But faster resource drains will still be able to crash Asterisk. Strange races will still happen once in a million. And people have actually suggested recently in this list a scheduled reboot as a cure for deadlock issues. And what happens if at the time of the shutdown there was a ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. I've also found that I can't get ztdummy working on anything less than 2.6.23.11. Previous versions seem to have a broken RTC. Norman Franke Answering Service for Directors, Inc. www.myasd.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Mar 19, 2008, at 5:56 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anyone? Just a user? I'm just a user, although I also develop things for internal use. Norman Franke Answering Service for Directors, Inc. www.myasd.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I was running Trixbox 2.2 up until about 2 months ago, and had persistent interrupt issues. I upgraded to 2.4, with the updated kernel, and its been complete smooth sailing ever since. _ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Norman Franke Sent: 20 March 2008 05:10 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time? On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. I've also found that I can't get ztdummy working on anything less than 2.6.23.11. Previous versions seem to have a broken RTC. Norman Franke Answering Service for Directors, Inc. www.myasd.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:10:21AM -0400, Norman Franke wrote: On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. I've also found that I can't get ztdummy working on anything less than 2.6.23.11. Previous versions seem to have a broken RTC. RTC? on kernel 2.6.23? It should not be used in kernel = 2.6.22 if CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS is enabled. Also note that on kernel 2.6.9 you have HZ=1000 and thus ztdummy works quite differently. This is not the same issue as interrupts of PCI devices. (not to mention that hotplug on CentOS 4 is strange. And earlier CentOS4 versions had a plain broken USB stack). -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
John Faubion wrote: Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? I actually work as a software engineer for a big telecom manufacturer to remain unnamed. I use Asterisk at home and I built a system for my aunt's real estate office mainly because she was quoted $83K+ over 5 years for a 12 station Toshiba key system. What on earth does that system do? open the office, make coffee, sweep the floors and ??? For such a small system there is no earthly reason for it to be 10 percent of that, even on a 5 year lease. Unless there are contract reasons she shouldn't even consider a lease either. I know that EVERYTHING is big in Texas, but that is nothing more than highway robbery. An NEC DSX with CF voicemail and e-mail integration wholesales for well under 3K, double that and add cabling . . . Well, you get the idea. John Novack -- Dog is my co-pilot ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
For such a small system there is no earthly reason for it to be 10 percent of that, even on a 5 year lease. I know that EVERYTHING is big in Texas, but that is nothing more than highway robbery. I fully agreed, that's why we built her an Asterisk based system. Splitting this up they wanted $724 per month for the hardware and maintenance. This did include a special kind of lease where they could upgrade as necessary even if it required them to change out the system to do the upgrade. I'm not sure what that is worth but I'm fairly sure it shouldn't cost this much. The monthly contract for the Integrated PRI was another $675 per month. My aunt couldn't see how she was going to afford that so she called me for advice. I originally steered her toward a key system until I realized she would eventually need 35-40 stations. So we rolled our own asterisk based system. John ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
No, I meant if I leave this office, what to do when the cpu fan or power supply breaks on our current * box :) They might just be so worried that they'd *want* something like the 3Com V3000 :) Steve Totaro wrote: Call your dealer as I am sure you would have a support contract. Haven't really seen one break yet though. VxWorks is what runs satellites and junk ;-) Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:18 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. Interesting :) When I (the tech guy) leave this office, they just *could* be asking me what to do when it breaks? lol :) ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Am Donnerstag, den 20.03.2008, 16:59 +0200 schrieb Tzafrir Cohen: And what happens if at the time of the shutdown there was a ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- ROTFL Trafrir, you made my day. (BTW: I think that is why restart when convenient exists) Anselm ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On March 20, 2008 02:33:52 pm Anselm Martin Hoffmeister wrote: Am Donnerstag, den 20.03.2008, 16:59 +0200 schrieb Tzafrir Cohen: And what happens if at the time of the shutdown there was a ROTFL Trafrir, you made my day. Oh god, I didn't realize that wasn't a typo until you wrote that... Very well done, Tzafir. Professionally executed. -A. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 3:01 PM, RE Kushner List Account [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Al Baker wrote: Quote This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace I said DID numbers, they point to a PRI trunk group to a T400P, then the calls go IAX2 to other boxes for processing based on NPA/NXX. IE: exten=_906586,1,Dial,IAX2/un:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL PROTECTED] And if anything comes in for something not configured this catches it exten = _NX,1,Dial,sip/sipdebug/s If you figure standard telco usage patters, 92 channels @ 25:1 ratio, I have quite a bit of headroom. -Ron You don't run into choppy audio with IAX that way? I see that alot and the simple solution is to switch to SIP, almost always solves the problem right away. Thanks, Steve Totaro ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Steve Totaro wrote: On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 3:01 PM, RE Kushner List Account [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Al Baker wrote: Quote This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace I said DID numbers, they point to a PRI trunk group to a T400P, then the calls go IAX2 to other boxes for processing based on NPA/NXX. IE: exten=_906586,1,Dial,IAX2/un:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL PROTECTED] And if anything comes in for something not configured this catches it exten = _NX,1,Dial,sip/sipdebug/s If you figure standard telco usage patters, 92 channels @ 25:1 ratio, I have quite a bit of headroom. -Ron You don't run into choppy audio with IAX that way? I see that alot and the simple solution is to switch to SIP, almost always solves the problem right away. Not really, but both ends have zaptel hardware. I'm really surprised IAX2 connects and functions to these 1.4 and 1.6 beta servers from a Pre 1.0 machine. -Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Al Baker wrote: Quote This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace I said DID numbers, they point to a PRI trunk group to a T400P, then the calls go IAX2 to other boxes for processing based on NPA/NXX. IE: exten=_906586,1,Dial,IAX2/un:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL PROTECTED] And if anything comes in for something not configured this catches it exten = _NX,1,Dial,sip/sipdebug/s If you figure standard telco usage patters, 92 channels @ 25:1 ratio, I have quite a bit of headroom. -Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thu, 20 Mar 2008, Norman Franke wrote: On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. I've also found that I can't get ztdummy working on anything less than 2.6.23.11. Previous versions seem to have a broken RTC. It works fine... # uname -a Linux dsx 2.6.18DSX1-CN #8 PREEMPT Fri May 18 16:13:30 BST 2007 i686 GNU/Linux # lsmod Module Size Used by zttranscode 6408 0 ztdummy 2632 0 zaptel182788 4 zttranscode,ztdummy # zttest -v Opened pseudo zap interface, measuring accuracy... 8192 samples in 8192 sample intervals 100.00% 8192 samples in 8184 sample intervals 99.902344% 8192 samples in 8192 sample intervals 100.00% 8192 samples in 8184 sample intervals 99.902344% 8192 samples in 8192 sample intervals 100.00% 8192 samples in 8192 sample intervals 100.00% 8192 samples in 8184 sample intervals 99.902344% 8192 samples in 8192 sample intervals 100.00% 8192 samples in 8184 sample intervals 99.902344% --- Results after 9 passes --- Best: 100.00 -- Worst: 99.902344 -- Average: 99.956597 This is running on a 1GHz VIA C3 processor - no RTC, custom compiled kernel and zaptel compiled from source... Gordon ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
That probably includes 5 years of support but still expensive. John Faubion wrote: Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? I actually work as a software engineer for a big telecom manufacturer to remain unnamed. I use Asterisk at home and I built a system for my aunt's real estate office mainly because she was quoted $83K+ over 5 years for a 12 station Toshiba key system. What on earth does that system do? open the office, make coffee, sweep the floors and ??? For such a small system there is no earthly reason for it to be 10 percent of that, even on a 5 year lease. Unless there are contract reasons she shouldn't even consider a lease either. I know that EVERYTHING is big in Texas, but that is nothing more than highway robbery. An NEC DSX with CF voicemail and e-mail integration wholesales for well under 3K, double that and add cabling . . . Well, you get the idea. John Novack -- Dog is my co-pilot ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill For those of us who have spent many a year in telephony, I tend to agree with you. Asterisk is NOT ready for prime time Total cost of ownership for a supply house system ( Comdial, now Vertical, with a Keyvoice DOS based VM ) or an NEC DX series with VM on a CF card) in a small to medium sized office simply hangs on the wall and works, for years and years, and has many more features than most offices need or use. Last month I replaced a 20 year old system that finally failed, I have other systems installed and working in excess of 10 years, and seldom have any service issues. Mostly are user reeducation on mailboxes and the like when people leave and no one knows a password. Square Hybrid Key systems ( Shared Line Appearance ) have worked flawlessly for 20 years, and a host of other features that Asterisk is still struggling to get working. Many of these systems are more affordable than Asterisk at either the wholesale or retail level as well. The current fad is IP or VOIP and regrettably many businesses jump into the deep end of that pool without the faintest idea of where they will land. That said, there is also a place for Asterisk or a like system, and many of the users on this list have them in place and doing the job, but the system is not hang it on the wall and forget it. PC based systems in general from a hardware perspective are NOT as reliable, nor is the operating system or the application. They DO need to be restarted from time to time. In fact in my experience the system should have an automatic reboot once a week at a quiet time. Many versions of Asterisk can get insane and be cured by a simple reboot that seems to give the real Linux experts the heebiejeebies. A reboot should not be considered blasphemy, though I have only seen one hang on the wall system that needed that in 20 years, and that was strictly due to a timing issue with short term power outages. Too many select the equipment and system they know, rather than what is right for the customer. I am in a group of antique telephone equipment collectors that use Asterisk as an interface to a world wide private network of switches, with a great deal
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
John Novack wrote: Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill For those of us who have spent many a year in telephony, I tend to agree with you. Asterisk is NOT ready for prime time Total cost of ownership for a supply house system ( Comdial, now Vertical, with a Keyvoice DOS based VM ) or an NEC DX series with VM on a CF card) in a small to medium sized office simply hangs on the wall and works, for years and years, and has many more features than most offices need or use. Last month I replaced a 20 year old system that finally failed, I have other systems installed and working in excess of 10 years, and seldom have any service issues. Mostly are user reeducation on mailboxes and the like when people leave and no one knows a password. Square Hybrid Key systems ( Shared Line Appearance ) have worked flawlessly for 20 years, and a host of other features that Asterisk is still struggling to get working. Many of these systems are more affordable than Asterisk at either the wholesale or retail level as well. The current fad is IP or VOIP and regrettably many businesses jump into the deep end of that pool without the faintest idea of where they will land. That said, there is also a place for Asterisk or a like system, and many of the users on this list have them in place and doing the job, but the system is not hang it on the wall and forget it. PC based systems in general from a hardware perspective are NOT as reliable, nor is the operating system or the application. They DO need to be restarted from time to time. In fact in my experience the system should have an automatic reboot once a week at a quiet time. Many versions of Asterisk can get insane and be cured by a simple reboot that seems to give the real Linux experts the heebiejeebies. A reboot should not be considered blasphemy, though I have only seen one hang on the wall system that needed that in 20 years, and that was strictly due to a timing issue with short term power outages. Too many select the equipment and system they know, rather than what is right for the customer. I am in a group of antique telephone equipment collectors that use Asterisk as an interface to a world
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On March 19, 2008 12:43:21 pm Bill Andersen wrote: I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. If you're continuously restarting Asterisk, there is something wrong with your setup: hardware, software or both. I have many installs out there on commodity hardware (either pure-voip or digital (PRI) only with Polycom handsets) and none of them need to be restarted. Now we're not using queues; straight extensions with voicemail, some paging and followme, a little CTI (click to dial), and a 24h page the poor shlub wearing the pager this week for emergency support. You know, pretty standard systems; the kind of thing I'd think any small business would have. None of these are PoE, have separate switches or special VLANs or anything like that. Think of what a small 5-50 person office would have the money for. I hear this complaint from time to time, but I've never really sat down and thought about what could be causing it. Which version(s) are you running? Whose hardware, what linux distro, are you running FreePBX or straight-from-sources Asterisk? I'll take you on your word that you're not trolling. Let's dig in a little. -A. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:43:21AM -0500, Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? It depends. As they say, Your Mileage May Vary You have gone with a pre-built asterisk based solution rather than rolling your own with 'plain' asterisk system. So without knowing your particular environment, it's obviously difficult to comment. By the sound of it, your experience of asterisk has been based on one particular integrator's build of it. One or two versions of asterisk out there were lemons and were best avoided. And then there are some modules which are less stable than others. I have found that most of the core asterisk stuff to be reasonably stable and well behaved, but there are a few modules that either have problems, or have had problems in the past, which have now been fixed. chan_agent was a good example of something that worked on a small scale but certain bits of it were just broken. Other problems may be down to operating system, memory, hardware or driver issues. Here, I am using exclusively SIP devices, SIP media gateways (rather than PC hardware) with asterisk voicemail module and seems pretty stable. (We had to reboot the box 9 weeks ago for a kernel security update.) pink*CLI show uptime System uptime: 9 weeks, 4 days, 23 hours, 44 minutes, 22 seconds We have about 77 SIP devices and these are a mixture of hard and soft phones, with four media gateways. Spread over 9 sites. There are a few ongoing intermittent issues, but haven't had any spontaneous crashes so far. 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system We did evaluate a number of other systems before we decided to go down the route of just plain asterisk and rolling our own, as nothing quite did what we wanted. You could look at OpenSER but I'm not convinced you'd find that an easy thing to work with, when you describe what you want to achieve. SipX was also pretty good, but these are SIP only servers rather than asterisk's multi-protocol ability (You also have to provide SIP media gateways rather than talk directly to a card in the back of the machine) http://www.sipfoundry.org/sipX SIPx is the open source release of Pingtel's SIPEchange product, which I also evaluated. it seemed like a pretty good 'set and forget' solution, and they are also now selling an integrated SIPx appliance: http://www.patton.com/products/pe_products.asp?category=348tab=fb; Which we looked at and was pretty good. Up to 30 users and included automatic handset provisioning, nice GUI for setting things up etc. This is great where you have an environment where running a server is not possible. (our asterisk server is hosted in a nice data air conditioned centre with redundant disks, power, UPS, network.. everything, but no everybody can run an environment for ultra reliable servers, so an Asterisk Appliance might be a way forward and requires no server housing capability and very little knowledge of the operating system etc. It is very difficult to stop thinking 'old PBX', and start thinking What is it we're trying to achieve? If what you want is a PBX, go and buy one. It was a tricky journey from the old PBX system to asterisk VoIP, as there were certain expectations of the old system, and maintaining lots of functionality with the new handsets/asterisk. The system that replaced our PBX doesn't have anything like as many call features as the old PBX did, but then again, most of these features were almost never used. But what we did gain was much more flexibility, choice of handsets/clients, connection to various VoIP networks, the possibility of remote workers, redundancy in the new system, and integration possibilities with existing systems that were completely impossible on the old PBX system. (Or were only possible for lots of money!) Handsets are finally evolving now, trying to put in features that were present on old PBXs with 'traditional' paradigms like key and lamps etc, which users want on VoIP systems, but I believe that will ultimately lead to more proprietary systems and will ultimately fail in favour of Soft Phones, which are much better able to add new features rather than be constrained by a physical handset with buttons and memory limitations etc. In my experience, you can buy a very expensive
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
John You have raised few valid points. Thanks. However, I will say that it is not asterisk but people/company deploying it. Generally speaking after deployment, and as long users are using the system normally, no reboot is required. And yes, running the whole thing from standard PC based desktop will eventually cause issues hence an solid state appliance is a way to go :) Agreed. The simple fact of the matter is that most key systems and hybrids that hang on the wall and just work are mostly or completely solid state. I've been in the PBX/Key/Hybrid business since 1994 and my experience is, I'm sure, similar to most phone system veterans: keep your solid state stuff clean and cool and it pretty much never breaks; the stuff that breaks almost always seems to involve moving parts and/or the power supply. (Power = heat = eventual breakage.) Like John, I've pulled out systems that have worked for 10-15 years and never broke, they just got old. One other salient point is that the operating system and resident hardware are factors that must be taken into consideration when running a computer-based phone system. Great software running on a great OS running on crappy hardware will lead to problems. Crappy software running on a great OS running on rock solid hardware will lead to problems. (You get the idea.) To get back to the OP's question about Asterisk being ready for prime-time: it all depends. Your experience with the small systems working great but the larger one having issues isn't uncommon. I would suggest asking around on list to find out what kind of hardware is being used by those who've had lots of success, especially if you're connecting to the PSTN, because that adds yet another layer of complexity. BTW, if you're asking for my opinion, I'll give it: no, I personally don't think Asterisk is ready for prime-time in a mission-critical application. I don't use it for anything mission-critical. (For those who feel I've just blasphemed, please direct my opinion to /dev/null.) -MC That is my experience. Regards, Senad ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill I don't think you are expecting too much. We have:- 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 (Power was removed to switch to new UPS) asterisk*CLI show version Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on 2007-09-08 17:17:07 UTC asterisk*CLI show uptime System uptime: 63 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds (Asterisk was restarted after queue config changes) We had a single power supply and single drive fail in one incident in Feb 2007 (one drive of RAID 1). System stayed up but was taken down for 15 minutes to swap the drive. PS was hot-swapped when it arrived later. regards, Drew -- Drew Gibson Systems Administrator OANDA Corporation www.oanda.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Senad Jordanovic wrote: And yes, running the whole thing from standard PC based desktop will eventually cause issues hence an solid state appliance is a way to go :) My gripe is that I think people try to put too much into a system, don't have a server build and operation head, and are basically OK with rebooting because maybe that's what they're used to... And maybe they just don't have enough customers that whinge loudly enough when things stop working :) Personally I don't think an appliance ought to be running SQL. I don't think it should have it's own billing platform either (Although make the call logs available by all means!), nor should it have a built-in CRM solution. Don't use agi, external scripts where dialplan will do, and so on. I can see why it's attractive to put all those in, but maybe I'm just an old unix hacker at heart with the make it do one thing well type of mentality... (I did put Perl FOP in my units recently, but only under protest and after lots of requests from a reseller!) As for prime-time? I think the answer is yes, but... You need reliable hardware, customised software, not generic (Cuscom compiled Linux kernel, distribution, asterisk, etc.), don't run anything that's not 100% necessary, turn off motherboard hardware that's not being used, and so on. Good build practices (anti-static mats, etc.) and soaktesting helps too - I had a duff memory stick recently which was found with a few sweeps of memtest86+ ... I think you also need a professional installation. I see lots of asterisk inna box solutions being sold by mail-order, but I'm not really convinced it's the way forward - maybe for a small techno type of company, but your average SME just wants to get a man in to make it work IME ... Based on that, I generally have systems that just work, although none might be as particularly busy as some out there - busiest right now is handling about 100 calls an hour - purely VoIP, no BRI/PRI) next is about 80 an hour on 6 BRI ports. I've yet to have a box stop working for reasons I didn't know about (filling the ramdisk with log-files doesn't help!) I see far more problems with phones than the boxes themselves, but maybe I've just been lucky! Cheers, Gordon ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 here is one more running multi tenant Hosted PBXes: saul ~ # uptime 18:59:11 up 263 days, 23:50, 1 user, load average: 0.96, 0.49, 0.35 saul ~ # Senad ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 06:54:46PM +, Gordon Henderson wrote: On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Senad Jordanovic wrote: And yes, running the whole thing from standard PC based desktop will eventually cause issues hence an solid state appliance is a way to go :) My gripe is that I think people try to put too much into a system, don't have a server build and operation head, and are basically OK with rebooting because maybe that's what they're used to... And maybe they just don't have enough customers that whinge loudly enough when things stop working :) Personally I don't think an appliance ought to be running SQL. I don't think it should have it's own billing platform either (Although make the call logs available by all means!), nor should it have a built-in CRM solution. Don't use agi, external scripts where dialplan will do, and so on. Right. And mysql is the thing that will cause Asterisk to crash? As for prime-time? I think the answer is yes, but... You need reliable hardware, customised software, not generic (Cuscom compiled Linux kernel, distribution, asterisk, etc.), Actually distros do a relatively good job with kernels. While there is a room for improvments, there is also where to go badly downhill. What customizations do you set to a custom kernel? I've seen strange things being done by (most typically) Gentoo users. If not every release of Asterisk is solid enough and you must use a custom build just to get a stable (read: non-crashing) system, then I would agree with the OP that Asterisk is not ready for prime-time. This is because the support costs are too high. -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
An off-the-shelf 5+ year old MSI MS-6378X-L motherboard, 1.6GHz AMD, 512 RAM, 10 extensions, no more than three concurrent calls: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uptime 11:31:45 up 103 days, 1:00, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 But: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ sudo asterisk -rx 'core show uptime' System uptime: 9 hours, 32 minutes, 25 seconds I reboot every evening :) Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk process on that box that's been up for 193 days? Drew Gibson wrote: Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill I don't think you are expecting too much. We have:- 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 (Power was removed to switch to new UPS) asterisk*CLI show version Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on 2007-09-08 17:17:07 UTC asterisk*CLI show uptime System uptime: 63 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds (Asterisk was restarted after queue config changes) We had a single power supply and single drive fail in one incident in Feb 2007 (one drive of RAID 1). System stayed up but was taken down for 15 minutes to swap the drive. PS was hot-swapped when it arrived later. regards, Drew ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Mar 19, 2008, at 1:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am I expecting too much? Perhaps. I think the hardware on which we run Asterisk can be much more reliable than the software, which is often the case. We have a bunch of HP servers with RAID and have never lost anything. A HD may fail, but the RAID keeps it going until we pop a new drive in there. A server class PC with redundant power supplies and RAID is really quit inexpensive now. If you are running on a $1000 box, you can't expect the reliability of dedicated telco hardware. As for Asterisk, reliability has been a concern. Concurrency issues keep cropping up (read bugs.digium.com), especially with the SIP stack. This is particularly the case with buggy clients (soft phones, and under high volume of calls.) However, in fairness, writing heavily threaded code in C is very hard to get right. I think testing could surely be better, perhaps come code reviews and more guidelines for writing threaded code. We had an old hardware system and it wasn't without some issues. We needed to support around 30 call takers and another 50 hard phones. It took us a while in the 90s to get everything working acceptably. Our transition time with Asterisk has actually been shorter. Since we have a highly customized operation, going with a Avaya or Cisco solution would have cost in excess of $500K. With Asterisk, we spent maybe $50K on hardware (including a Cisco gateway, two Asterisk servers and some Polycom phones.) This cost is trivial compared to how much we pend on our yearly phone bill. The great benefit to Asterisk for us was that everything is open source software and thus we can customize it. We wrote a custom app that plugs into Asterisk that handles all of our custom business rules and provides far more capabilities than our old (and very expensive) hardware solution. Since we already had a custom developed desktop application, we could plug in a SIP stack and further customize things to be just what we wanted. I remember talking to a rep from a large reseller and listing our requirements, and he was amazed we could do all we were going on 90s technologies, since their new (and even more expensive) stuff couldn't without lots of consulting. We had just two developers over 6 months go from zero to a full call center solution. On the other hand, if I were to support a small office with 20 people and simple voice mail for mission-critical telecommunications, I'd likely get a hardware solution. They are reliable and not that expensive. Asterisk, for now, and in my opinion, is always going to require more interaction that other hardware solutions. But, it's cheaper and more flexible. You may not care about cheap and flexible, and if not, maybe it's not what you want. I've not tested products like CallWeaver or others. People claim some of these are more reliable, but Asterisk seems more popular. Norman Franke Answering Service for Directors, Inc. www.myasd.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Senad Jordanovic wrote: 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 here is one more running multi tenant Hosted PBXes: saul ~ # uptime 18:59:11 up 263 days, 23:50, 1 user, load average: 0.96, 0.49, 0.35 saul ~ # Senad I can do that too: [EMAIL PROTECTED] root]# uptime 20:14:40 up 533 days, 2:36, 1 user, load average: 0.11, 0.16, 0.17 but it's meaningless. Machine uptime doesn't say *anything* about user experience of course. I have installed many systems ranging from 3 to 3000 endpoints using asterisk. These systems handled up 180 simultaneous calls for years while using in-machine E1 cards. I have encountered many, many problems with asterisk, libpri, bri-stuff, zaptel, hardware and my own stupidity. My EUR .02 (sorry, dollars are worth even less ;): It's not asterisk that needs to be ready for prime time. It's you. Asterisk is a moving target that is being developed by programmers. Every version fixes problems, but introduces new ones. So you need to be prepared to dive in, try to create a stable distribution for yourself, and thoroughly inspect the changes that go into each new version, to see if they will bite you. Same holds for cards, hardware and everything you change yourself. Asterisk can be ready for primetime. But only if you make it your main source of income. Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 06:54:46PM +, Gordon Henderson wrote: On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Senad Jordanovic wrote: And yes, running the whole thing from standard PC based desktop will eventually cause issues hence an solid state appliance is a way to go :) My gripe is that I think people try to put too much into a system, don't have a server build and operation head, and are basically OK with rebooting because maybe that's what they're used to... And maybe they just don't have enough customers that whinge loudly enough when things stop working :) Personally I don't think an appliance ought to be running SQL. I don't think it should have it's own billing platform either (Although make the call logs available by all means!), nor should it have a built-in CRM solution. Don't use agi, external scripts where dialplan will do, and so on. Right. And mysql is the thing that will cause Asterisk to crash? No. But my point was that appliances don't need it - my aim is to keep them as light and simple as absolutely possible. The less it runs, the less there is to go wrong. I don't need MySQL to support an appliance that can handle 100+ extensions, changes to names, extensions, etc. at random, plus all the usual web based stuff for manipulating call/hunt groups, voicemail, simple queues, parking, etc. so for me it would be an unneccessary burden to the system. (Not to mention an extra 16MB of executables in the flash-card!) As for prime-time? I think the answer is yes, but... You need reliable hardware, customised software, not generic (Cuscom compiled Linux kernel, distribution, asterisk, etc.), Actually distros do a relatively good job with kernels. While there is a room for improvments, there is also where to go badly downhill. What customizations do you set to a custom kernel? I take a stock kernel from kernel.org and compile in only what it needs for the hardware it's running on. I've been doing this since day 1 though (As in Linux day 1 which for me was 1994 ish) - I know it's not for everyone, but again, it's removing stuff that's not needed. The only modules that get loaded are the ones I can't compile into the kernel. If you want my .config for a VIA processor, drop me an email. I've seen strange things being done by (most typically) Gentoo users. I'm purely Debian, but when building my appliances I build up a custom initrd.gz file from a list of executables and libraries on my development server... (The device runs purely from RAM, but boots off flash) If not every release of Asterisk is solid enough and you must use a custom build just to get a stable (read: non-crashing) system, then I would agree with the OP that Asterisk is not ready for prime-time. This is because the support costs are too high. I have to say that I've never had issues with the releases of asterisk I've used - 1.2.x, but I do compile them from scratch - you have to for VIA processors as they lack some MMX instructions... And oddly enough, I've found that some people (mainly corporate type enterprises) get shirty if you don't charge them for support! (Then at the other end of the scale, some SMEs get shirty when you do charge them )-: Gordon ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Senad Jordanovic wrote: However, I will say that it is not asterisk but people/company deploying it. Generally speaking after deployment, and as long users are using the system normally, no reboot is required. I'm thinking part of the problem IS the company deploying the commercial product we purchased. I really like their GUI. I'm an IT guy and I'd say out of the last 10 or so issues we have had with the product, I'm the one that figured out why it wasn't working correctly. They had to fix it, (their code), but I would see the symptoms and say Hey, could it be this?. I had one email from their programmer that said Good catch. Well, thanks for the Kudos, but why the hell am I paying an annual fee to catch your bugs! And yes, running the whole thing from standard PC based desktop will eventually cause issues hence an solid state appliance is a way to go We are on an server class machine and haven't really had any issues I feel were related to hardware. Alghough, I agree good hardware is the key to hardware stability. Thanks for the comments. Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Bill Andersen wrote: a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. I don't think you'll ever find the reliability of those old solid state systems. They have very few features and little to go wrong. I don't judge my asterisk installations against those systems. I judge asterisk against comparable systems, like a cisco voip systems or a Nortel BCM. While I can't say asterisk is more stable than they are, I can say the support is much better. With closed systems I never quite know whats going on and get told to reboot regularly to fix problems (the days of a BCM taking 20 minutes to reboot during business hours of a call center...). Or sometimes told the latest version will fix my problems, assuming I pay for it. With asterisk I can tackle the issues myself and get a continually improving product with no extra charges. The power of open source. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Andrew Kohlsmith (lists) wrote: If you're continuously restarting Asterisk, there is something wrong with your setup: hardware, software or both. I have many installs out there on commodity hardware (either pure-voip or digital (PRI) only with Polycom handsets) and none of them need to be restarted. That is good to hear. The more I read on this thread, the more I think I may have just chosen the wrong commercially available Asterisk. I've thought about just building everything myself, but, as a full time IT guy I simply can't find the time to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk. Some day, I hope to! Now we're not using queues; straight extensions with voicemail, some paging and followme, a little CTI (click to dial), and a 24h page the poor shlub wearing the pager this week for emergency support. You know, pretty standard systems; the kind of thing I'd think any small business would have. None of these are PoE, have separate switches or special VLANs or anything like that. Think of what a small 5-50 person office would have the money for. Exactly my type of setup. Nothing really fancy. I hear this complaint from time to time, but I've never really sat down and thought about what could be causing it. Which version(s) are you running? Whose hardware, what linux distro, are you running FreePBX or straight-from-sources Asterisk? I'll take you on your word that you're not trolling. Let's dig in a little. CentOS release 4.4 (Final) Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp (SMP) Asterisk 1.4.16.2 Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Digium TE120P The GUI is a commercially available product, to remain un-named at this point. No Trolling... I'm not wanting to knock Asterisk. I just want to get feedback from others actually using it in a production environment. I don't know that we have lost any customers over missed calls (BUSY signals during reboots), BUT I have lost some street cred from my Bosses! They think I'm an IT Guru... They keep asking why the heck I can't you make that phone system work reliably now that it is computer based LOL :( Thanks for the comments Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
The box has been up since we upgraded the UPS, time before was for the disk failure in Feb 2007. Asterisk has now been up for 5 hours, 44 minutes (yes, by Murphy's Law, I'm troubleshooting a problem butrestart when convenient does not impact real uptime) but yesterday it had been up for 63+ days (last restart was for queue config changes) This is stock code on stock OS on stock hardware. We don't tweak it, poke at it, fiddle with it, update it unless necessary. We do OS and Asterisk updates on planned maintenance days infrequently) KISS and don't fsck with it! regards, Drew Mojo with Horan Company, LLC wrote: An off-the-shelf 5+ year old MSI MS-6378X-L motherboard, 1.6GHz AMD, 512 RAM, 10 extensions, no more than three concurrent calls: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uptime 11:31:45 up 103 days, 1:00, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 But: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ sudo asterisk -rx 'core show uptime' System uptime: 9 hours, 32 minutes, 25 seconds I reboot every evening :) Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk process on that box that's been up for 193 days? Drew Gibson wrote: Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill I don't think you are expecting too much. We have:- 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 (Power was removed to switch to new UPS) asterisk*CLI show version Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on 2007-09-08 17:17:07 UTC asterisk*CLI show uptime System uptime: 63 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds (Asterisk was restarted after queue config changes) We had a single power supply and single drive fail in one incident in Feb 2007 (one drive of RAID 1). System stayed up but was taken down for 15 minutes to swap the drive. PS was hot-swapped when it arrived later. regards, Drew -- Drew Gibson Systems Administrator OANDA Corporation www.oanda.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Drew Gibson wrote: The box has been up since we upgraded the UPS, time before was for the disk failure in Feb 2007. Asterisk has now been up for 5 hours, 44 minutes (yes, by Murphy's Law, I'm troubleshooting a problem butrestart when convenient does not impact real uptime) but yesterday it had been up for 63+ days (last restart was for queue config changes) This is stock code on stock OS on stock hardware. We don't tweak it, poke at it, fiddle with it, update it unless necessary. We do OS and Asterisk updates on planned maintenance days infrequently) KISS and don't fsck with it! I have an Asterisk box running CVS-HEAD-08/21/04 with a T400P that currently has 17 weeks, 11 hours, 27 minutes, 51 seconds of uptime on a server that hasn't been rebooted in nearly a year. This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, there are several thousand wrong number calls a day besides the traffic I send through it. -Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Bill Andersen wrote: Senad Jordanovic wrote: However, I will say that it is not asterisk but people/company deploying it. Generally speaking after deployment, and as long users are using the system normally, no reboot is required. I'm thinking part of the problem IS the company deploying the commercial product we purchased. I really like their GUI. I'm an IT guy and I'd say out of the last 10 or so issues we have had with the product, I'm the one that figured out why it wasn't working correctly. They had to fix it, (their code), but I would see the symptoms and say Hey, could it be this?. I had one email from their programmer that said Good catch. Well, thanks for the Kudos, but why the hell am I paying an annual fee to catch your bugs! Yeah.. unfortunately that happens. Customers do find bugs, but but as always it is about how the software maker reacts to it :) Also, a friend of mine once said Software without a bug is dead software :) Regards, Senad ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Bill Andersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? /me raises hand. That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Agreed - I'm sure you'll be much more happy with the stability of your vanilla asterisk implementation (assuming you're running on a stable OS and server-class hardware) as well as being much more comfortable with what's going on behind the scenes. -Erik ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I highly recommend Asterisk Hacking as well. http://www.amazon.com/Asterisk-Hacking-Ben-Jackson/dp/1597491519 Tim Nelson Systems/Network Support Rockbochs Inc. - Original Message - From: Bill Andersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:38:23 PM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time? Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? I started off as just a user, then a friend said: Hey, I need something quick, then ... and look where I ended up... (Reselling asterisk boxes is not 100% of what I do though) Gordon ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Bill Andersen wrote: Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? I'm just a user at work, I manage multiple asterisk installations, including our call center. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
For true TELCO reliability, get a TELCO based service such as CENTREX. * is cool and I like it and it brings some really cool stuff to the table, but, it is NOT Carrier Grade TELCO. Anyone who tries to sell it to that way is just not being truthful. On the other hand there is a lot of stuff as a VENDOR you can't make CENTREX do for you to re-sell it. But to put * in the same class as Rockwell ACD unit or a 5ESS Central Office switch for reliability . Nope, just not the kind of critter. But, sometime good enough is good enough. You pays your money, you makes your choice Drew Gibson wrote: The box has been up since we upgraded the UPS, time before was for the disk failure in Feb 2007. Asterisk has now been up for 5 hours, 44 minutes (yes, by Murphy's Law, I'm troubleshooting a problem butrestart when convenient does not impact real uptime) but yesterday it had been up for 63+ days (last restart was for queue config changes) This is stock code on stock OS on stock hardware. We don't tweak it, poke at it, fiddle with it, update it unless necessary. We do OS and Asterisk updates on planned maintenance days infrequently) KISS and don't fsck with it! regards, Drew Mojo with Horan Company, LLC wrote: An off-the-shelf 5+ year old MSI MS-6378X-L motherboard, 1.6GHz AMD, 512 RAM, 10 extensions, no more than three concurrent calls: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uptime 11:31:45 up 103 days, 1:00, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 But: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ sudo asterisk -rx 'core show uptime' System uptime: 9 hours, 32 minutes, 25 seconds I reboot every evening :) Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk process on that box that's been up for 193 days? Drew Gibson wrote: Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill I don't think you are expecting too much. We have:- 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 (Power was removed to switch to new UPS) asterisk*CLI show version Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I think what Bill is concerned about is if Asterisk is good enough for his operation. When you talk about Asterisk there are a number of ways to set it up. Some ways of setting it up involve a gui interface, some are pure text files and some are databased in how they handle the config data. As far as managing a voice system four to five hours of maintenance time for a 30 station system is entirely too much on a weekly basis. Asterisk most certainly can be a solution that can work for your situation. If deployed right it can handle on a single server much more than what you are asking it to do. Tom -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Drew Gibson Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:45 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time? Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill I don't think you are expecting too much. We have:- 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre Debian on Dell server [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# uptime 13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 (Power was removed to switch to new UPS) asterisk*CLI show version Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on 2007-09-08 17:17:07 UTC asterisk*CLI show uptime System uptime: 63 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds (Asterisk was restarted after queue config changes) We had a single power supply and single drive fail in one incident in Feb 2007 (one drive of RAID 1). System stayed up but was taken down for 15 minutes to swap the drive. PS was hot-swapped when it arrived later. regards, Drew -- Drew Gibson Systems Administrator OANDA Corporation www.oanda.com ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
All I can say is what has worked best for me over the years trying many different boxen. IBM X Series and HP DL 3XXs, have heard that Supermicro is Super, just have not the pleasure yet. Dells have given me problems, not always, but enough to be bitten once, and twice shy... Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Al Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I would not consider a Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Server Grade you can pick them up for $250 on sale. On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Steve Totaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All I can say is what has worked best for me over the years trying many different boxen. IBM X Series and HP DL 3XXs, have heard that Supermicro is Super, just have not the pleasure yet. Dells have given me problems, not always, but enough to be bitten once, and twice shy... Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Al Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Quote This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace RE Kushner List Account wrote: Drew Gibson wrote: The box has been up since we upgraded the UPS, time before was for the disk failure in Feb 2007. Asterisk has now been up for 5 hours, 44 minutes (yes, by Murphy's Law, I'm troubleshooting a problem butrestart when convenient does not impact real uptime) but yesterday it had been up for 63+ days (last restart was for queue config changes) This is stock code on stock OS on stock hardware. We don't tweak it, poke at it, fiddle with it, update it unless necessary. We do OS and Asterisk updates on planned maintenance days infrequently) KISS and don't fsck with it! I have an Asterisk box running CVS-HEAD-08/21/04 with a T400P that currently has 17 weeks, 11 hours, 27 minutes, 51 seconds of uptime on a server that hasn't been rebooted in nearly a year. This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, there are several thousand wrong number calls a day besides the traffic I send through it. -Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
If Jared Smith is following this thread, and I am sure he is or will, WOW, what an opportunity to bring SwitchVox to the spotlight. (I personally really like SwitchVox and had over a year before Digium made the acquisition. I never had to reboot that box and it had ~40 extensions and a Digium T1 card. Do a try/buy swap out and let it play out on the list. I think Digium/SwitchVox will shine. Just an idea but this thread is one of the hottest in a long while and bringing up many questions about Asterisk and GUIs. I could not think of a better place to sink or swim! Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Steve Totaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would not consider a Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Server Grade you can pick them up for $250 on sale. On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Steve Totaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All I can say is what has worked best for me over the years trying many different boxen. IBM X Series and HP DL 3XXs, have heard that Supermicro is Super, just have not the pleasure yet. Dells have given me problems, not always, but enough to be bitten once, and twice shy... Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Al Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Steve Totaro wrote: Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. Interesting :) When I (the tech guy) leave this office, they just *could* be asking me what to do when it breaks? lol :) ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Call your dealer as I am sure you would have a support contract. Haven't really seen one break yet though. VxWorks is what runs satellites and junk ;-) Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:18 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. Interesting :) When I (the tech guy) leave this office, they just *could* be asking me what to do when it breaks? lol :) ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
He could mean SIP or IAX Al Baker wrote: Quote This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace RE Kushner List Account wrote: Drew Gibson wrote: The box has been up since we upgraded the UPS, time before was for the disk failure in Feb 2007. Asterisk has now been up for 5 hours, 44 minutes (yes, by Murphy's Law, I'm troubleshooting a problem butrestart when convenient does not impact real uptime) but yesterday it had been up for 63+ days (last restart was for queue config changes) This is stock code on stock OS on stock hardware. We don't tweak it, poke at it, fiddle with it, update it unless necessary. We do OS and Asterisk updates on planned maintenance days infrequently) KISS and don't fsck with it! I have an Asterisk box running CVS-HEAD-08/21/04 with a T400P that currently has 17 weeks, 11 hours, 27 minutes, 51 seconds of uptime on a server that hasn't been rebooted in nearly a year. This code is pre-Asterisk 1.0... It processes quite a few calls daily, I have about 1,800 DID numbers pointed at it, there are several thousand wrong number calls a day besides the traffic I send through it. -Ron ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Are you SURE on that figure. Since you cold have at MOST 4 T1's coming into
that box, 1,800 DIDs pointing to it sems like
one hell of a congestion problem and a Dialplan thicker than War and Peace
We have a box with 5,000 DDIs coming into 2 PRIs. The number of DDIs isn't
particularly important - it's the number of concurrent calls that affect
things, and on these numbers it's surprising if they get more than a couple of
calls a day.
Dialplan's pretty simple too - DDIs are in minimum 100 number blocks and get
pushed out to remote asterisk servers, so for each remote server, it's only 1
line:
exten = [number]XXX,1,Dial(IAX2/someserver/${EXTEN})
Regards,
Chris
--
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
For full contact details visit http://www.minotaur.it
This email is made from 100% recycled electrons
___
-- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
asterisk-users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. So not sure what all is causing your issues, but guess it's possible some of them could be kernel related. Threads like this over there talk about 2.6.9 kernel issues: http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/2-3-0-3 I am guessing this would apply to a general Asterisk install as well, my apologies in advance if I am wrong on that one. Anyway I hadn't seen anyone talk about issues with the 2.6.9 kernel, but with all the chatter on the other forum, I figured it was at least worth a mention. Overall the CentOS stuff seems great, and a fairly decent base to run Asterisk from. Also CentOS 4.x is up to 4.6 I believe, so sure lots of updates and fixes over the older 4.4 release... --- Howard CentOS release 4.4 (Final) Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp (SMP) Asterisk 1.4.16.2 Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Digium TE120P The GUI is a commercially available product, to remain un-named at this point. No Trolling... I'm not wanting to knock Asterisk. I just want to get feedback from others actually using it in a production environment. I don't know that we have lost any customers over missed calls (BUSY signals during reboots), BUT I have lost some street cred from my Bosses! They think I'm an IT Guru... They keep asking why the heck I can't you make that phone system work reliably now that it is computer based LOL :( Thanks for the comments Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Our office PABX is a via low heat pc, with an ISDN10 and 15 IP handsets. It gets regularly used and abused by us linux idiots in the office, and runs like a charm. We test software on it, write silly dialplans and generally treat it badly. It could not be described as 'server grade' by any reasonable person. PaulH On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 11:43 -0500, Bill Andersen wrote: This is not a troll. I've used my real email because I want this taken seriously. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want some real discussion on this issue. Please bare with me... I'm a USER of Asterisk. We purchased 3 commercially available Asterisk Based PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!) Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones). The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones. My smaller sites work pretty good. I've only had to restart Asterisk every month or so. However, my 30 station system is a continuous headache. I average a restart at least once a week. Sometimes a couple of times in the week. I'm always being called to fix something that just stopped working. I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A Well, don't just complain, tell us your setup and we can help you get it working. This list HAS helped me figure out some of the issues. THANK YOU! But the purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission. 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision... a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work. Once it is configured, a phone system should just work with very little attention. My previous system was a Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC. I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC. b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate person. I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant features (mostly after hours). All the bells and whistles that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to the table for our purpose. c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features? 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk system that just works like clockwork? I'm saying, once setup, run for a year (or more) without any issues? 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor? 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just run and run without any problems. Is Asterisk simply not my solution. Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production. Because in my mind (as a user of phone services), dealing with the phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system is NOT really production ready... Before we installed an Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone issues (setting up a new station?). Since we moved to an Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK! Am I expecting too much? Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 08:08:18PM -0400, Howard Leadmon wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. So not sure what all is causing your issues, but guess it's possible some of them could be kernel related. Threads like this over there talk about 2.6.9 kernel issues: http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/2-3-0-3 I am guessing this would apply to a general Asterisk install as well, my apologies in advance if I am wrong on that one. Anyway I hadn't seen anyone talk about issues with the 2.6.9 kernel, but with all the chatter on the other forum, I figured it was at least worth a mention. Overall the CentOS stuff seems great, and a fairly decent base to run Asterisk from. Also CentOS 4.x is up to 4.6 I believe, so sure lots of updates and fixes over the older 4.4 release... Note that Trixbox (= 2.2) uses kernel from CentOS 4.3 . Generally it seems that CentOS-based distributions tend to pick some initial kernel and stick with it, even though CentOS provides newer ones with bug fixes. -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
I think some people here (like myself) started off as Asterisk users, then moved on to helping other people with their Asterisk systems. Which makes sense - once your Asterisk box is running well, why not share how nice your work is/was? PaulH On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 16:38 -0500, Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Nice topic, all this hardware/software gave me a migrene at start, after that it was pretty much stable (1 reboot/30 days) As for me the crappyest thing in computer is a power supply, you can get the motherboard with less heat, good ram ect, but power supply will allways have a fan. i found the solution for small installs, buy a 120v/220v =12v transformer and a carpc power supply, 60-250W like this one http://www.cartft.com/catalog/il/903 (not an advertisement), that was it for me two years with 120w power supply. 2008/3/20, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 08:08:18PM -0400, Howard Leadmon wrote: Sure some others on here may disagree, but I am also over on the trixbox forums, and have often seen talk about the 2.6.9 kernel having interrupt issues, and such that cause asterisk issues. One reason I think they moved forward into the CentOS 5.x stuff, so they got the 2.6.18 kernel, which I am told works much better, and doesn't have the issues the old kernel did. So not sure what all is causing your issues, but guess it's possible some of them could be kernel related. Threads like this over there talk about 2.6.9 kernel issues: http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/2-3-0-3 I am guessing this would apply to a general Asterisk install as well, my apologies in advance if I am wrong on that one. Anyway I hadn't seen anyone talk about issues with the 2.6.9 kernel, but with all the chatter on the other forum, I figured it was at least worth a mention. Overall the CentOS stuff seems great, and a fairly decent base to run Asterisk from. Also CentOS 4.x is up to 4.6 I believe, so sure lots of updates and fixes over the older 4.4 release... Note that Trixbox (= 2.2) uses kernel from CentOS 4.3 . Generally it seems that CentOS-based distributions tend to pick some initial kernel and stick with it, even though CentOS provides newer ones with bug fixes. -- Tzafrir Cohen icq#16849755 jabber:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-50-7952406 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xorcom.com iax:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/tzafrir ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On March 19, 2008 07:00:20 pm Steve Totaro wrote: I would not consider a Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Server Grade you can pick them up for $250 on sale. Why not? Is the price not high enough, or is there some technical reason? I ask because your only explanation as to why it's not server grade appears to be the price. I've got no idea what a SC440 is, can't be arsed to look it up, but your post seems to indicate that expensive must mean good quality. -A. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On March 19, 2008 05:05:05 pm Bill Andersen wrote: CentOS release 4.4 (Final) Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp (SMP) Asterisk 1.4.16.2 Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Digium TE120P The GUI is a commercially available product, to remain un-named at this point. Ok, and what specifically are the types of problems you are encountering? choppy audio, dropped calls, stuck calls, kernel panics, asterisk crashes...? -A ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Paul Hales wrote: I think some people here (like myself) started off as Asterisk users, then moved on to helping other people with their Asterisk systems. Which makes sense - once your Asterisk box is running well, why not share how nice your work is/was? I would second that. In fact, it seems very likely that almost everyone on the list is an Asterisk user, and many users do consulting in this area as well. I both provide Asterisk-related services and use Asterisk myself. I imagine this is a category to which much of the list belongs. -- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel: (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (706) 338-8599 ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 19:14 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote: If Jared Smith is following this thread, and I am sure he is or will, WOW, what an opportunity to bring SwitchVox to the spotlight. You'd better believe I'm following the thread. :-) Even though I've been at a trade show all day and I'm dead tired, I can't seem to go to sleep without catching up on a few of the mailing lists and forums. (I personally really like SwitchVox and had over a year before Digium made the acquisition. I never had to reboot that box and it had ~40 extensions and a Digium T1 card. Do a try/buy swap out and let it play out on the list. I think Digium/SwitchVox will shine. Thanks for the glowing endorsement... Speaking for myself, I'm still amazed at what the Switchvox team has done, and I'm excited to see what new things we can create now that they're a part of Digium. -- Jared Smith Community Relations Manager Digium, Inc. ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Very interesting thread!
My general sense, being both a person of heavy UNIX systems programming
and modest telco background, and as an Asterisk enthusiast, is that
Asterisk itself is quite production-worthy as such. Experience suggests
that what is controversial about it from a business standpoint, in terms
of total cost of ownership, support, and dependability, are many things
rather ancillary to it that contribute to the overall experience of an
Asterisk-based system as a product. Some of these pitfalls have already
been pointed out with regard to the shortcomings of consumer-grade PC
hardware, hard drives, power supplies, etc.
In other words, it seems to me that you can't just throw up an Asterisk
box as such and have it perform to your expectations. My experience
with the few Asterisk based IP PBX appliances that claim to be thusly
turn-key has been very poor, although, in their defense, it's been a
while and I'm sure those platforms have come a long way. But overall,
the domain of expertise required to make Asterisk work well in an
environment demanding of high availability is of a scope considerably
beyond Asterisk itself, and amounts to a fairly broad nexus of network
engineering, *nix systems administration, and so on. Most generalised
-- and, to some extent, highly specialised -- IT savvy is required, as
can be true with anything open-source and not packaged as part of some
immaculate, embedded black box culturally or technically.
Asterisk works well if deployed in a manner that brings quite an array
of skills to the table in a rather comprehensive way. In and of itself,
it assures little. This conclusion is supported by the differences in
my effort expended to support and (re)engineer third-party Asterisk
installations of varying quality and sophistication. And of course,
what I am saying here applies to most other things as well. It is
possible to set up Apache or MySQL or Linux itself naively, from the
heart, as well, as many do, or to do it in a nuanced, refined manner
that is attentive to the specificity of tight production requirements
and capitalises upon considerable expertise.
All Asterisk setups in which I have been involved have generally
involved a from-scratch custom compile of Asterisk, zaptel (if
necessary), and very frequently - especially if the latter is required -
a hand-compiled kernel as well. I do not use Trixbox, any Asterisk
administration front-ends, IP PBX appliances, and so on. I can't really
comment on their respective merits, but even if I could, I feel strongly
compelled to point out that this would be more of a referendum on
particular vendors or integrators who have packaged Asterisk a certain
way than about Asterisk in principle, which is something several people
have already said. If all of the nuances of a hand-maintained Asterisk
configuration are observed, I think it's a pretty solid product in any
event, but it does increase total cost of ownership for my clients as
they have to find someone like myself or other Asterisk consultants on
this list with the knowledge and experience to do that sort of thing.
It's the same sort of dilemma that arises between investing a lot of
faith in a stock CentOS or Fedora install by someone who kind of knows
a bit about Linux vs. hiring a really knowledgeable Linux sysadmin,
where the limitations of the distribution don't really matter because
they're going to know what to do with it on a highly detailed level.
The latter obviously gets vastly superior results, but costs a lot more
money and time.
At the risk of inflaming a lot of passions, including those of
hard-working developers, I must say that where Asterisk may be
production-worthy, the entire constellation of things (like Zaptel) of
which its PSTN hardware interface capabilities comprise is absolutely
not, if my experience is at all telling. Of course, that's not all
Zaptel's or Digium's fault; much of it is just the buggy, flaky, and
very inconsistent nature of PC hardware, the kernel, ${insert true
culprit here}.
Nevertheless, my only truly solid experiences with Asterisk have come in
situations where it is used as a purely SIP agent. FXO interface
hardware, PRI cards (Sangoma, Digium, Rhino, etc.) all have bugs,
strange interop problems I've never seen before with big iron TDM
switches or newer telco softswitches that generate those circuits,
bizarre apparent interpretations of certain ISDN messages, and can cause
system instability, lockups, etc. (Whether they are the true cause of it
or whether that's just a consequence of their interoperation with the PC
is unknown to me, and somewhat beside the point.)
They've come a long way, I think. When I first used Digium T1 cards,
little, basic things like B channels not being hung up properly were
still a major and frequent theme. For low-capacity installs involving
at most one or two PRIs, I think one may be all right at this
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Not sure if this is the best place to ask this or not...but since it was mentioned.. Is SwitchVox a alternative to * ? Were they a competitor to *, and DIGIUM bought them and so DIGIUM has 2 Totally Different PBX software packages ? Sorry if I am asking a ? that everyone is totally clear on, but this IS just a little confusing :) Steve Totaro wrote: If Jared Smith is following this thread, and I am sure he is or will, WOW, what an opportunity to bring SwitchVox to the spotlight. (I personally really like SwitchVox and had over a year before Digium made the acquisition. I never had to reboot that box and it had ~40 extensions and a Digium T1 card. Do a try/buy swap out and let it play out on the list. I think Digium/SwitchVox will shine. Just an idea but this thread is one of the hottest in a long while and bringing up many questions about Asterisk and GUIs. I could not think of a better place to sink or swim! Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Steve Totaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would not consider a Dell SC440 w/RAID 1 Server Grade you can pick them up for $250 on sale. On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Steve Totaro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All I can say is what has worked best for me over the years trying many different boxen. IBM X Series and HP DL 3XXs, have heard that Supermicro is Super, just have not the pleasure yet. Dells have given me problems, not always, but enough to be bitten once, and twice shy... Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Al Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
Who are you getting your HP DL3xxx from ? Steve Totaro wrote: All I can say is what has worked best for me over the years trying many different boxen. IBM X Series and HP DL 3XXs, have heard that Supermicro is Super, just have not the pleasure yet. Dells have given me problems, not always, but enough to be bitten once, and twice shy... Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Al Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quote I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. Would you share which Server Grade rack mounts you use ? I have a project that could use quite a few and I am getting suggestions to order DELL. Thanks. Steve Totaro wrote: I am a user and a consultant. I stick with 1.2.X and use server grade (not Dell) rackmount units. I offload everything except what is needed. Put the DB on a different box, run fastagi, no GUI, vi to hand edit my confs. Very stable this way. I try to recommend this to clients but often they find google and do not listen to solid advice. Anyways, as to the four FXO system, I would not think twice to steer that customer to the 3Com V3000. It is when you start reaching into higher trunks that you pay the big bucks, but a V3000 is on par price wise with an Asterisk install on decent equipment and super easy to configure. Rock solid too, VxWorks is nice. Thanks, Steve Totaro On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Mojo with Horan Company, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm just a user :) we do real estate appraisals, and I found the time to roll my own (so to speak) pbx. We're on 1.4.4, TDM card with four FXOs. Honestly, you'll find it's easy to toss some zaptel and asterisk tarballs onto a system and compile them. You'll probably learn a lot along the way, but I won't liken it to the deep end of a swimming pool -- only halfway down! Moj Bill Andersen wrote: Thank you to everyone that replied to my post. I started to reply to most of them, but it is getting a little out of hand. Again, thank you. It actually makes me think the problem is not so much with Asterisk as it is with implementation. (My Vendor) Although this is a users list, I think it is more of a list for Asterisk resellers. I'd be interested in how many of you are simply using Asterisk as your phone system and NOT selling your services or an Asterisk based solution? Anyone? Just a user? That being said. As just a user of Asterisk, it is clear that if I want to continue with Asterisk, it looks like I really need to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk and ditch my pre-packaged solution. Off to Amazon for to find TFOT (I want the hard copy :) Bill ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?
On Thursday 20 March 2008 00:09:36 Al Baker wrote: Not sure if this is the best place to ask this or not...but since it was mentioned.. Is SwitchVox a alternative to * ? Were they a competitor to *, and DIGIUM bought them and so DIGIUM has 2 Totally Different PBX software packages ? Switchvox is a commercial GUI frontend built on top of Asterisk. -- Tilghman ___ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
