asterisk users - Jun 2004 - NetworkWorld article on Open Source Telephony

An interesting article for those needing ammunition to sell Asterisk within
their organisation or to others:

"Is open source IP telephony ready for prime time? Yes"
by Zenas Hutcheson, St. Paul Venture Capital
Network World, 06/07/04

http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0607faceoffyes.html

On a related note, they also have an article arguing the contrary position
(see link within article). I'm too busy right now to write up a response
showing the flaws in that column but others on the list might wish to
contribute to the fray.

George Pajari
www.netvoice.ca
www.IP-Centrex.ca

At 7:06 PM -0700 on 6/8/04, George Pajari wrote:
>An interesting article for those needing ammunition to sell Asterisk within
>their organisation or to others:
>
>"Is open source IP telephony ready for prime time? Yes"
>by Zenas Hutcheson, St. Paul Venture Capital
>Network World, 06/07/04
>
>http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0607faceoffyes.html
>
>On a related note, they also have an article arguing the contrary position
>(see link within article). I'm too busy right now to write up a response
>showing the flaws in that column but others on the list might wish to
>contribute to the fray.
>
>George Pajari
>www.netvoice.ca
>www.IP-Centrex.ca
The opposing view had some good points, though I don't agree with 
many of his comments.

http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0607faceoffno.html

I'm not even going to try to post a reply on NetworkWorld's broken, 
ad-strewn, and ambiguous forum manager.

I think I can disagree with all of Zeus' comments except this: 
management(*) for IP telephony is just as important as the telephony 
itself.  Without the ability to measure, manage, and examine 
performance, it is a tough sell for open-source software in the 
enterprise.

Perhaps that doesn't matter, actually.  Enterprise isn't really where 
Asterisk is written and supported, so we don't see the robust 
features that an enterprise would require.  Remember: there are no 
sales brochures for Asterisk, and the CTO who is looking to implement 
Solution C or Asterisk will not have anything to use in the Asterisk 
column except for (maybe) my feature spreadsheet and an enthusiastic 
network admin who runs it at home.  This will not typically lead to 
Asterisk as the winner.

I am not saying that this is good or bad, actually.  It's neutral. 
The purpose of Open Source is not to defeat commercial 
implementations of the same features, but to provide a "better" 
solution for some people who want to get in there and make things 
work exactly they way they wanted, if they have the spare time, clue, 
and don't have any money to pay someone else to do it.

JT



(*): for a quick definition of what "management" means, here are some 
concepts: provisioning interfaces, per-stream QoS examination, 
overall QoS examination, call routing interfaces (GUI or otherwise), 
cost control and cost examination tools, etc.   You're saying "Well, 
all of that can be easily built!"  Sure it can, but careful with that 
word "easily."   The question is: are these components a patchwork of 
third-party tools, or is it a well-planned whole-system design?  Is 
management an afterthought?   As an example of what enterprise users 
might need, view this post and note that there have been no movements 
towards answering these items:

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2003-July/014965.html

Again, this is not a fault that these management reports don't exist. 
If nobody develops these reports, then maybe they're not used by the 
people that use Asterisk.  Enterprise users aren't so hot on 
developing things themselves, so maybe this just languishes, and so 
they don't use Asterisk (yet?) because the combined effort of doing 
all that stuff is just more than it's worth when they can have the 
CFO sign a check for Vendor A to get it all done.

On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 07:06:22PM -0700, George Pajari wrote:
> http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0607faceoffyes.html
There are very valid arguments in the contra argument. If you have
existing equipment it's all about integration. Traditional telcos are
moving to VoIP as are enterprise players and SMBs (small to medium
businesses) etc. It may be OK for a small business to replace what
they've got, get a "techie" in to maintain it etc, but that
doesn't
work at the large side of things.

There's also provisioning and other such matters to worry about. If
you're a small player again that can be a manual process, or even maybe
web based. If you're a larger player, you'll have existing systems in
place and provisioning processes in place and any new devices have to
fit into these processes.

For * to really take off, it does need management interfaces etc.


Steve (IMHO of course)

-- 
NetTek Ltd Phone/Fax +44-(0)20 7483 2455
SMS steve-epage (at) gbnet.net [body] gpg 1024D/468952DB 2001-09-19

I happen to feel that Cisco IOS is the most beautifull inteface known to
present day man...

W. Kevin Hunt
CCIE #11841
www.huntbrothers.com
 
-----Original Message-----

Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Re: NetworkWorld article on Open Source
Telephony
> The power of asterisk comes from its method of config.
yup.  it meets the challenge of finding something more complex, less
intuitive, less parsable, and less managable than crisco ios.

randy

> I happen to feel that Cisco IOS is the most beautifull inteface known to
> present day man...
women know better.  get a shrink.  or better yet, take a
compiler 101 course.

randy

Obviously, you have seen very few O&M interfaces.

Regards,

Gus

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "W. Kevin Hunt" <Kevin@hbcorporate.com>
To: <asterisk-users@lists.digium.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 6:26 PM
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Re: NetworkWorld article on Open Source
Telephony

> I happen to feel that Cisco IOS is the most beautifull inteface known to
> present day man...
>
> W. Kevin Hunt
> CCIE #11841
> www.huntbrothers.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Re: NetworkWorld article on Open Source
> Telephony
>
> > The power of asterisk comes from its method of config.
>
> yup.  it meets the challenge of finding something more complex, less
> intuitive, less parsable, and less managable than crisco ios.
>
> randy
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
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> Obviously, you have seen very few O&M interfaces.
>> I happen to feel that Cisco IOS is the most beautifull inteface known
to
>> present day man...
>>> The power of asterisk comes from its method of config.
>> yup.  it meets the challenge of finding something more complex, less
>> intuitive, less parsable, and less managable than crisco ios.
another exceedingly incorrect assumption

randy
---
Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
A: Why is top posting frowned upon?

I hope we can get ISDN in Sao Paulo - we have been told it is available 
as we are planning to deploy an Asterisk box in Brazil.

Having said this, Asterisk is what users make it.  If you want R2 
signalling (and I think a lot of people in South America do!) then 
please get on and write the module or put a bounty on it so that some 
enterprising software developer can do it for you.  In the rest of the 
world ISDN BRI and PRI are THE standard telecomms building blocks for 
all but the smallest of telephone installations, and Asterisk support 
for this is improving on a regular basis because that is what most 
people outside the US are using.

 It is really only the US that seems not to understand ISDN (especially 
BRI) and there are some quirks relating to ISDN that I am sure will be 
ironed out sooner rather than later.

As regards DTMF caller ID, I think the beginnings of this option are 
already there as I seem to recall that the CVS head now has experimental 
support for UK caller ID which requires line monitoring during ringing. 
Adding DTMF is not difficult.

Rather than point out the areas where Asterisk is weak, fix it and make 
it do what you want, and add it in for the benefit of everyone!.  That 
is what open source is all about.

Rgds
Tim

Gelson Dias Santos wrote:
> Brent Franks wrote:
>
>> Aside from echo issues that seem to be apparent with everyone 
>> occasionally
>> (by everyone, those not running hardware T1 echo cans) I believe * is
>> ready for the prime time.  Integrators however should have a better
>
>
>     I add to the list: hangup detection on FXO interfaces is terrible. 
> The busy tone detection routines does not work right/reliably, at 
> least not for those outside USA. Same thing about callprogress, the 
> lack of support for DTMF CallerID and no R2 signaling.
>     Without these features * will never be a serious option outside US.
>
>     Gelson
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