[olug] Which Asterisk?

[Phil Brutsche]

Luke-Jr wrote:
> In my experience, Cisco stuff is generally "looks nice, has a huge reputation, 
> but sucks a lot in reality"-- especially when it comes to their phones. The 
> SIP firmware tends to be the "we make it because we have to" and doesn't get 
> the attention that the SCCP firmware does.

When it comes to SIP phones Cisco is bottom of the barrel and is only
barely better than a bare-bones Grandstream, the only reason people use
Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones is Cisco's reputation for equipment that
largely doesn't suck.

Of course, you need get past the proprietary nature of their
interoperability protocols (spanning trees, link aggregation groups,
etc) first.

Me? Bitter about Cisco?  Naaaah

> That said, at work we use only Cisco IP phones (and I'm the one stuck 
> supporting them). So I can't comment on Snom or other products-- for all I 
> know they could be even worse, but I tend to doubt it.

You might be surprised how much a lot of VoIP stuff sucks.

That's why I suggested Polycom - I know they *don't* suck, and one
absolutely MUST HAVE feature on the Asterisk box at work (intercom aka
paging) works gracefully with Polycom and a very small list of others.

PS I LOATH Asterisk. I miss our old Nortel BCM, it expensive and
complicated to set up but at least the features it supports works
reliably - with Asterisk call forwarding absolutely CANNOT be used in
conjunction with paging (Asterisk speak: intercom) or hunt groups
(Asterisk speak: ring groups).

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us