Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
At Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:16:04 +1000, Michael Kraus wrote: Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? My comments: Asterisk developers prioritises new features over stability and particularly clean code. There's a *whole* lot of cruft in the Asterisk code base - lots of features are hacked directly into the channel drivers (particularly the zaptel one), so don't expect new feature combinations to work without testing it. The Asterisk community is by and large made up of people who can't code and don't really know what they're doing. Because of this there is a huge amount of disinformation and rumours about certain features/bugs. Basically treat anything you read with scepticism and learn enough about things so you can work through them yourself. Asterisk is a nice toolkit with some good ideas (and a few bad ones). If you want to use it in real-life situations, I recommend reading the code to see what it actually does and reaching a point where you feel comfortable doing trivial changes to some of the hard-coded (typically American) defaults. -- - Gus -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
G'day... Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? Thanks! Regards, Michael Kraus Software Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wild Technology Pty Ltd , ABN 98 091 470 692 Sales - Ground Floor, 265/8 Lachlan Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Admin - Level 4 Tiara, 306/9 Crystal Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone 1300-13-9453 | Facsimile 1300-88-9453 http://www.wildtechnology.net DISCLAIMER CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The information contained in this email message and any attachments may be confidential information and may also be the subject of client legal - legal professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited. This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright. No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner. If you have received this email in error, please immediately advise the sender by return email and delete the message from your system. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
I use it for my SOHO and to contact my clients and it works fine. Great product and great price, but the learning curve on generating your dial plan can be steep. Michael Kraus wrote: G'day... Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? -- Howard. LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people http://lannet.com.au -- When you just want a system that works, you choose Linux; When you want a system that just works, you choose Microsoft. -- Flatter government, not fatter government; Get rid of the Australian states. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
BTW, if you are going to run it over broadband then make sure that it is symmetrical at all connect points. Howard Lowndes wrote: I use it for my SOHO and to contact my clients and it works fine. Great product and great price, but the learning curve on generating your dial plan can be steep. Michael Kraus wrote: G'day... Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? -- Howard. LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people http://lannet.com.au -- When you just want a system that works, you choose Linux; When you want a system that just works, you choose Microsoft. -- Flatter government, not fatter government; Get rid of the Australian states. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
My current job is to design servers for hosting Asterisk. From my experience, it's the best PBX software around. There's a bunch of alternatives such as sipX (www.sipfoundry.org/sipX/). Never used them, but since Asterisk such a big community already, I would advise you to stick with it. Development is solid, it's evolving fast, and once you get the hang of it, it's a breeze, like using Apache. Speaking of which, don't let these magic interfaces for Asterisk administration trick you into believing it's a way to go. They make it easy for you to deliver an end product to a customer who is more or less into it (there's really no such thing as a wizard-like interface for Asterisk yet). To get a good grip, deal with the conf files as you would do with any popular service: with a good text editor =) and then, you'll be writing your own interfaces in a month. SIP, IAX, and RTP are protocols just like, say, HTTP (but they're UDP). There's no mystery when dealing with them if you know how networking works. I never read a single tutorial in my life on how to make asterisk work behind NAT. Got it done in a day just by reading the comments in the sip.conf file. On 8/24/05, Michael Kraus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: G'day... Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? Thanks! Regards, Michael Kraus Software Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wild Technology Pty Ltd , ABN 98 091 470 692 Sales - Ground Floor, 265/8 Lachlan Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Admin - Level 4 Tiara, 306/9 Crystal Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone 1300-13-9453 | Facsimile 1300-88-9453 http://www.wildtechnology.net DISCLAIMER CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The information contained in this email message and any attachments may be confidential information and may also be the subject of client legal - legal professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited. This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright. No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner. If you have received this email in error, please immediately advise the sender by return email and delete the message from your system. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Julio C. Ody http://rootshell.be/~julioody -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
On 8/24/05, Howard Lowndes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BTW, if you are going to run it over broadband then make sure that it is symmetrical at all connect points. I wouldn't say make sure, I'd say it's probably better to have a symmetrical connection at all Asterisk points, however if you're using a low-bandwidth codec, you can get away with asymmetrical just fine (and traffic shaping if it's a busy network). I connect my Asterisk box on a asymmetrical connection to another Asterisk box with the same type of connection (512/128 - each box in different continents) and I don't experience major problems, granted I do VoIP packet prioritizing but it just proves the [a]symmetrical aspect is not an issue. That is, at least, in my experience. Also, the dialplan is not THAT hard to work out, just takes a little reading of how it works, reading how other people's dialplans work and experimenting. Great source of info is the popular: http://www.voip-info.org I started experimenting with Asterisk way before I got my hands on a ISDN card. Back then I started playing with dialplans, how to make menu's, wake-up call service (that I still use today!) and stuff like that. It's good fun. If you know Perl, writing AGI scripts provides endless posibilities. From what I've heard, the new Asterisk to be released in the near future provides a complete rewrite of the dialplan system and it's supposed to be much better, together with many new features. HTH. Cheers, Gonz -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
Julio Cesar Ody wrote: My current job is to design servers for hosting Asterisk. From my experience, it's the best PBX software around. There's a bunch of alternatives such as sipX (www.sipfoundry.org/sipX/). Never used them, but since Asterisk such a big community already, I would advise you to stick with it. Development is solid, it's evolving fast, and once you get the hang of it, it's a breeze, like using Apache. Speaking of which, don't let these magic interfaces for Asterisk administration trick you into believing it's a way to go. They make it easy for you to deliver an end product to a customer who is more or less into it (there's really no such thing as a wizard-like interface for Asterisk yet). To get a good grip, deal with the conf files as you would do with any popular service: with a good text editor =) and then, you'll be writing your own interfaces in a month. I agree. Down and dirty is the best way to get a workable dial plan. One other thing I got caught out with earlier this year is that CVS-HEAD has some dial plan features that are not in Stable, particularly the ones that do auto-priority. This feature makes modding a dial plan simple, but without it you have to re-number all your extension priorities = PITA. SIP, IAX, and RTP are protocols just like, say, HTTP (but they're UDP). There's no mystery when dealing with them if you know how networking works. I never read a single tutorial in my life on how to make asterisk work behind NAT. Got it done in a day just by reading the comments in the sip.conf file. I tried to get my mind around STUN, because it is non-proprietory, but I gave up and went with IAX2 instead. I believe that the author is trying to get IAX2 accepted as a standard anyway. On 8/24/05, Michael Kraus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: G'day... Has anyone had any experience with Asterisk (or any other) open source PABX software, and wouldn't mind commenting? Thanks! Regards, Michael Kraus Software Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wild Technology Pty Ltd , ABN 98 091 470 692 Sales - Ground Floor, 265/8 Lachlan Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Admin - Level 4 Tiara, 306/9 Crystal Street, Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone 1300-13-9453 | Facsimile 1300-88-9453 http://www.wildtechnology.net DISCLAIMER CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The information contained in this email message and any attachments may be confidential information and may also be the subject of client legal - legal professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited. This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright. No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner. If you have received this email in error, please immediately advise the sender by return email and delete the message from your system. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Howard. LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people http://lannet.com.au -- When you just want a system that works, you choose Linux; When you want a system that just works, you choose Microsoft. -- Flatter government, not fatter government; Get rid of the Australian states. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
Gonzalo Servat wrote: On 8/24/05, Howard Lowndes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BTW, if you are going to run it over broadband then make sure that it is symmetrical at all connect points. I wouldn't say make sure, I'd say it's probably better to have a symmetrical connection at all Asterisk points, however if you're using a low-bandwidth codec, you can get away with asymmetrical just fine (and traffic shaping if it's a busy network). I connect my Asterisk box on a asymmetrical connection to another Asterisk box with the same type of connection (512/128 - each box in different continents) and I don't experience major problems, granted I do VoIP packet prioritizing but it just proves the [a]symmetrical aspect is not an issue. Yes I should have phrased that better. I use GSM as the codec and that is a bandwidth hog. The problem is that the really tight codecs are all proprietory. That is, at least, in my experience. Also, the dialplan is not THAT hard to work out, just takes a little reading of how it works, reading how other people's dialplans work and experimenting. Great source of info is the popular: http://www.voip-info.org I started experimenting with Asterisk way before I got my hands on a ISDN card. Back then I started playing with dialplans, how to make menu's, wake-up call service (that I still use today!) and stuff like that. It's good fun. If you know Perl, writing AGI scripts provides endless posibilities. I am playing with PSTN cards and that is harder, mainly because of the echo. Yes, I too have a wake up call service using call scripts. From what I've heard, the new Asterisk to be released in the near future provides a complete rewrite of the dialplan system and it's supposed to be much better, together with many new features. Haven't heard about the rewrite - I will check that out. I don't subscribe to the Asterisk mailing list because it's just too noisy, which is a strong indication of the interest, but there are a lot of posts from ppl who have plainly not RTFM... HTH. Cheers, Gonz -- Howard. LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people http://lannet.com.au -- When you just want a system that works, you choose Linux; When you want a system that just works, you choose Microsoft. -- Flatter government, not fatter government; Get rid of the Australian states. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Asterisk Open Source PABX software
On 8/24/05, Howard Lowndes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes I should have phrased that better. I use GSM as the codec and that is a bandwidth hog. The problem is that the really tight codecs are all proprietory. Yep, like G729, however I think GSM together with iLBC are 2 of the better ones to use as they are low bandwidth consumption, but I could be wrong. I am playing with PSTN cards and that is harder, mainly because of the echo. Yes, I too have a wake up call service using call scripts. Yeah, been there done that with PSTN cards and echo. I can't even remember how I sorted out my echo problems, but I had them with PSTN and the ISDN too. I remember reading a big long boring document about it since they always say it's important to understand how and where echo is generated. Haven't heard about the rewrite - I will check that out. I don't subscribe to the Asterisk mailing list because it's just too noisy, which is a strong indication of the interest, but there are a lot of posts from ppl who have plainly not RTFM... I idle in #asterisk on irc.freenode.net, that's where you hear about a lot of the latest developments with Asterisk as people like Brian West idle there too (occasionally Mark pops in, too). I remember being told by somebody the new dialplan is gonna rock. As for the noisy Asterisk mailing list, that's why Gmail was invented (at least for me!). I use it for personal mail and mailing lists (like SLUG). That way I read posts that capture my interest and then they are neatly tucked away in one of my labels out of my sight :-) Cheers, Gonz -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
