[Asterisk-Users] I give up!!

[Joseph Finley]

I was about to ring the same sentament.  I've been working with * for a few
months now and wouldn't even think of selling a service esecially on phones
that are still being worked on.  I do have a couple GS phones and they work
great, for me.  But when you put it in place where the peoples knowledge of
turning on a computer is questionable, all sorts of things can go wrong.
Things we take for granted or quirks with things are easily overlooked and
seem to be mountains to others when we consider them mole hills.  Just my
.02

Joe



-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Roy Sigurd
Karlsbakk
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 10:25 AM
To: Asterisk Users
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] I give up!!


Asterisk...
Linux...
You get what you pay for. And it's free
:P

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 15:21, Dave Alan Caruana wrote:
> i've just lost $2000 dollars or so on my first commercial asterisk 
> installation .. i'm running a PIV class server, three Digium Wildcard 
> FXO cards, and 10 Grandstream Budgettone SIP phones. The system was to 
> be a PBX for a small company. After over 2 months of pissing about, 
> the client has had his fill of asterisk problems, and asked me to take 
> my equipment out of the building. Obviously, I haven't been paid for 
> anything.
> 
> The problems I faced were the following :
> - initially a problem with asterisk crashing totally when there wasn't 
> an extension
>   to ring .. though this was fixed in a subsequent CVS, it was causing 
> downtime.
>   the client has no unix knowledge, and a script I put in to kick in 
> the asterisk
>   when it shut itself down didn't seem to always work.
> 
>   it also reduced the quality of my subsequent callout requests to 
> something on
>   the lines of "the phone server is crashed again" regardless of what 
> the problem was
> 
> - a dialplan problem, where one phone was ringing 10 seconds after the 
> others,
>    at the client's request and they were hearing other phones ring and 
> picking up
>    a non-ringing phone (ok, I can't really blame that on asterisk ..)
> 
> - echo on the lines .. that after much fiddling around with 
> configurations went from
>    terrible to borderline acceptable. To people not used to digital 
> telephony and
>    computer stuff, the echo was VERY annoying. They used to avoid the
phones
>    because they said people would not understand them.
> 
> - no consultative transfer. The closest I got was to park the call, 
> call the other party,
>   tell him "a voce" which line the call is parked on and then get him 
> to pick up the call.
>   This is, in my opinion, a very basic feature that is missing on 
> asterisk. The park/
>   pick up sequence proved too difficult for the clients' secretaries 
> to grasp.
> 
> - I could not get G729 working properly (license paid up, G729 up and 
> running). In
>   the absence of a manual, the fault solving process was something 
> like "ask a question
>   on the mailing list, get a few answers, go to the client, try it 
> out, fail, go back home,
>   send another question on the mailinglist" with about 48 hours for 
> each iteration. I was
>   also appearing a real chimp "expermimenting" stuff at the clients' 
> office.
> 
> At this point I decided to cut my losses, retreive the equipment and 
> call it a day. When asterisk is well documented and released in stable 
> releases, I will willingly
> consider it again. I would be willing to pay for a stable, documented
> version of
> asterisk. It is a lovely software, and to begin with I was very
enthusiastic
> about it.
> I do understand that the support community is helpful, but the current
> status of things
> limits asterisk to a hobbyist scenario or at least somewhere where there
is
> an engineer
> with lots of linux experience and patience online 24 hours to solve
problems
> as they
> crop up.
> 
> If anyone would like a couple of second hand FXO boards, contact me. I 
> have already found a home for the grandstreams.
> 
> cheers
> Dave
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com 
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

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