[asterisk-biz] your thoughts - asterisk or trixbox ?

[Mitul Limbani]

Hello Marcin,

Kindly find my answers inline.

Quoting Marcin Zastawny <marcinz at infocon.pl>:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I am new to this forum and to asterisk technology from an admin
> standpoint (not new as a user, I have used asterisk for about a year
> now), so forgive me if this question sounds lame.
>
> Anyhow, I am responsible for setting up an asterisk box that will have
> to run the following:
> - 1 digium card for an analog line, and for a gsm gateway
> - 1 isdn junghanns quadbri card
> - coming up, 1 sangoma card (2 port) for a 30B+D ISDN PRA Chanel.
>
> Today we already use many features of asterisk 1.2.4 like CDR logging
> and pretty neat dialplan features (call queuing, music on hold etc), and
> the junghanns card gives us ISDN connectivity out to the town.
>
> However, I will be implementing the sangoma 30B+D card for a small
> callcenter, on top of that I will have to get faxing going out thru
> asterisk.

Fax over IP is not a good idea yet. but it works without any 
compression in some cases. You may want to read up pages on Asterisk 
Fax on the Voip-info wiki. Also that there is a huge bounty ($10,750) 
for getting proper Fax support in asterisk.

> And the question is:
> Q: is it worthwile going with trixbox (asterisk @ home), or should I
> invest time to get to know asterisk?

Yes you should get to know asterisk that sounds better.

> Even though I dont have much time available, I realize that once the box
> is set up, it seems to stay that way until the next change, so maybe its
> worth the time to get to know exactly how it works, without the bells
> and whistles of trixbox wizards etc.

If you are not a big fan of Web interface, I would suggest not to have one.

> I have all the dialplans already working in asterisk 1.2.4, so
> theoretically, upgrading to new version of asterisk plus getting the
> sangoma card and faxing should not be too painful.

Yeah it would be painful if you want to re-generate the same kind of 
dialplan, coz Trixbox is already loaded with bunch of dialplan which 
you would hardly use.

> Any suggestions of asterisk vs trixbox are very welcome.

So my suggestion would be, upgrade asterisk, upgrade zaptel, libpri etc.
Copy the old dialplan and get up n running.

> cheers,
> Marcin

Thanks & Regards,
Mitul Limbani,
Founder & CEO,
Enterux Solutions,
The Enterprise Linux Company (TM),
www.enterux.com