[olug] Which Asterisk?

[Rob Townley]

On 6/24/07, Phil Brutsche <phil at brutsche.us> wrote:
>
> 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
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In response to loathing of Asterisk.  i have to make a few points:
1.) Although the latest Nortel BCM 50s use Linux as an OS, they are still
very proprietary.  You are stuck with it, including their use of the
completely outdated H.323 protocol.  SIP is huge, encompasses much more.
SIP is analogous to the SGML standard.
2.)Why would i want to pay $200.00 + upto $200.00 to use a free softphone
with a Nortel box?  i don't know what works with the BCM because i am not
sure what features are licensed out of the box and which ones are licensed
later.
3.)The OpenSource nature makes "absolutes" unlikely.  There is a great deal
of false information because few understand how to pull together all the
features in a phone system -  any system.     If i remember correctly, again
from more than a year ago, one answer to combining "Call Forwarding" and the
"ring group" requirement is to put all the extensions for forwarding into a
separate "Call Queue."