On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:05 AM, Keith Gearty <ke...@glensound.co.uk> wrote:
> 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 > My "ITSP" inbuilt grepping algorithm fired up so I felt obliged to respond: You can specify an IP address in place of the domain name. Some ITSPs work this way and sipxbridge supports that. You dont need for your ITSP to support a domain name (I'll admit, such an ITSP would make me nervous). dnsadvisor helps a lot when configuring sipx. > 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 sipx-users@list.sipfoundry.org > 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/ > -- M. Ranganathan
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