I was trying to do a little searching to see if there has even been a comparison between Asterisk and VOCAL or any of the other OSS packages? "Practical Voice Over IP using VOCAL" published by O'Reilly and Associates, attempts to make a strong case about how scalable VOCAL. Of course, considering that the book is written by the makers of VOCAL, it tends to have a one sided slant. Maybe we should try to put together an unbiased comparison (read that as pro/con). I was talking at a meeting about Asterisk, and someone attempted to start flaming Asterisk, and swearing by VOCAL, while another was babbling about the wonders of Bayonne. The only thing that was successful in that meeting about VOIP solutions was tabling that discussion until a future (as in way, way in the future) date. Just a thought! Kim C. Callis
[Vocal]
Tried it, didn't like it :)
A little more detailed:
- First you have to compile and install Vocal,
what can be very challenging already
- The Book is written for an older version of Vocal,
so there are several things (including the configuration
tools) working quite different.
And even using the book it is still not easy
(also because of the changes) to do a working setup
- One great disadvantage is, that Vocal comes with no
native connectivity to PSTN.
In the O'Reilly Book they just use some Cisco-Boxes - who
wonders as Vovida belongs to Cisco and Vocal is developed
by Cisco-workers.
- If you manage to install it, the configuration is done
through a Java-Gui which is slow and not very self-explanatory
Also I never discovered where the values entered there
are stored. I've found no plaintext config-files or the
likes.
- One advantage seems to be IMHO the design with different
servers (CDR, User agent, Redirect,...) which can also be
put on dedicated hosts and also can be redundant.
But we never got Vocal working that far.
After Vocal we tried * and it was like
installed, configured, phoned
So I prefer asterisk, but things like redundancy as vocal
has are also interesting.
Greetings
Rainer
--
http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/VoIP/
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Kim C. Callis wrote:>I was trying to do a little searching to see if there has even been a >comparison between Asterisk and VOCAL or any of the other OSS packages? >"Practical Voice Over IP using VOCAL" published by O'Reilly and >Associates, attempts to make a strong case about how scalable VOCAL. Of >course, considering that the book is written by the makers of VOCAL, it >tends to have a one sided slant. > >Maybe we should try to put together an unbiased comparison (read that as >pro/con). I was talking at a meeting about Asterisk, and someone >attempted to start flaming Asterisk, and swearing by VOCAL, while >another was babbling about the wonders of Bayonne. The only thing that >was successful in that meeting about VOIP solutions was tabling that >discussion until a future (as in way, way in the future) date. >Bayonne solves a different problem. Asterisk is switching with a little IVR. Bayonne is IVR with a little switching. Building a complex IVR with Asterisk wouldn't be much fun. Unless Bayonne has changed a lot recently, it make a weak switching platform, but a pretty good IVR one. I know less about Vocal, as it is a less friendly platform to get get started with. So far I haven't been very inclined to climb the learning curve and get started with it. However, if I am not mistaken, it is a pure VoIP platform. I haven't seen anything that provides direct interworking with the PSTN (unless you call a 5300 a PSTN interface for Vocal :-) ) Regards, Steve Regards, Steve
Big issues for sip: (Please note I use both Asterisk and Vocal between the two you can have a fairly scalable sip environment with a fair amount of call features.) Pluses for Vocal: For sip switching Vocal is much more scalable, You can have a cluster of UserAgents and Gateways. It never terminates rtp streams so Vocal can not easily be over run with calls. But vocal is mostly just a voip call switch. (Like SER) Negatives for Vocal: Has Zero usable call features, It can route sip calls all day no problem, Don't even try to have it do call features everyone of them has some problem or another. Asterisk pluses: It has call features, Not always implemented the best way but has them in boat loads! Asterisk is an ok switch for sip calls, but you can never have more then one box doing the job. Asterisk Negatives: It crashes. (It is development code) It terminates every sip call that goes through it so can only scale to the point of the boxes ability to excepts the rtp streams. (You can do some clustering of dial plans but this does not help with incoming sip registration and call paths IE your call drops if your box reboots) You may also want to through SER in your list of systems to evaluate. Kim C. Callis wrote:>I was trying to do a little searching to see if there has even been a >comparison between Asterisk and VOCAL or any of the other OSS packages? >"Practical Voice Over IP using VOCAL" published by O'Reilly and >Associates, attempts to make a strong case about how scalable VOCAL. Of >course, considering that the book is written by the makers of VOCAL, it >tends to have a one sided slant. > >Maybe we should try to put together an unbiased comparison (read that as >pro/con). I was talking at a meeting about Asterisk, and someone >attempted to start flaming Asterisk, and swearing by VOCAL, while >another was babbling about the wonders of Bayonne. The only thing that >was successful in that meeting about VOIP solutions was tabling that >discussion until a future (as in way, way in the future) date. > >Just a thought! > >Kim C. Callis > >_______________________________________________ >Asterisk-Users mailing list >Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com >http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > >