Picher, Michael wrote: >There's no doubt that Trixbox is good for very small installations. It >has a lot of functionality and can be easy to setup. For those two >reasons alone it can make a lot of sense for home users. > >For those of us with corporate responsibilities sipXecs is a more robust >solution that is easier to manage and expand. There is a level of >knowledge required around DNS and IP that I believe is required... >Programming knowledge however is not required (I am not one, nor do I >pretend to be). > >
SipXecs is well suited to enterprise environments, but I feel that more work could be done to make it more accessible to small business and home users. I run SipXecs in a small business environment, so it certainly is possible, but it doesn't seem to be what it was designed for. Here are a few suggestions I'd like to discuss. I implore people to consider them carefully, from a small business / home users perspective, rather than discarding them as heresy or blasphemy: 1. Provide proper control of the system as a whole through the web interface. This issue stems from the fact that most developers view SipXecs as one of many Linux applications, while most users view SipXecs as a complete stand-alone system installable from ISO. By making ISOs available, the developers are encouraging the latter view, and should therefore be prepared to support it. What this means in reality is providing uncomplicated control of features such as changing the NIC IP settings, changing the domain name settings (this must be a simplified and abstracted way of editing the DNS records), configuring certain key features of sendmail (such as Smart Host, SMTP Auth, etc). All of these would be "out of scope" for an individual Linux application, but if you view it as a stand-alone system then these features should all be configurable through the central management interface (SipXconfig). 2. Re-think the strict DNS requirements. The SIP protocol does not require a local domain name to work, it can work just as well with IP addresses. Using domain names should be preferred, as without them you can't connect to an ITSP, but they shouldn't be mandatory. Many small business / home users use PSTN gateways instead of ITSPs, and can't set up local DNS servers because of the issue mentioned here: http://list.sipfoundry.org/archive/sipx-users/msg17340.html . A few responders to that thread suggested overcoming the issue using an external DNS server, but why should users have to pay for DNS hosting just to overcome a shortcoming in SipXecs? Using IP addresses instead of domain names is already possible in SipXecs, by going to "System > Domain", changing the "Domain Name" to the correct IP address, then adding the original domain name as an alias. This setup works fine, but its an unsupported hack. I would suggest that, in both the web interface and the lo-res initial setup wizard, you add the option to use IP addresses instead of domain names. This should be changable at any time, and if required you can automatically use a script to change the setting in all the required config files. I believe that if these 2 points are addressed, it would go a long way to making SipXecs more accessible to the world of small business and home users. This is a very large market, and catering for it would result in increased popularity of SipXecs, and ultimately a higher market share. As Tony likes to say: "Adapt and survive, or become a dinosaur with limited lifespan." Keith. _______________________________________________ sipx-users mailing list [email protected] List Archive: http://list.sipfoundry.org/archive/sipx-users Unsubscribe: http://list.sipfoundry.org/mailman/listinfo/sipx-users sipXecs IP PBX -- http://www.sipfoundry.org/
