[Asterisk-Users] How can i test a modem with Asterisk?

[Colin Anderson]

>I'm thinking in sending a mail for asking WHY THE HELL they can't support
>bare modems, even if they have voice support 

Smart move, on their part:

1. Digium exists to sell hardware. Without hardware sales, formal Asterisk
development would stall, and the project as we know it would fragment.
Focussing on Zaptel cards also allows them to optimize Asterisk for the
thing that it does best. Supporting voice modems would gut the very reason
for Asterisk to exist today. Same as a BlackBerry or a Palm. They only do 3
things (yeah I know you can load apps on it, but they aren't very good) but
those 3 things they do very, very well. And, that's the *point* of a Palm.
Email. Calendar. Contacts. That's it. Loosing focus is the death of any
product line. Ask John Scully. 

2. Not to put too fine a point on it, but voice modems suck. I've never used
one that I have been pleased with (even USR). I remember in the mid 90's
when they were all the rage, and Microsoft was pushing TAPI hard. Then the
truth came out, that the voice stuff was just grafted onto existing
chipsets, so there were compromises. Poor audio quality, long delays in
doing stuff, gain control, poor hang up signalling, no real handset options,
don't even get me going about caller ID support. Why do you think Microsoft
has really abandoned TAPI? There's no new development going on with TAPI
beyond Unimodem V and it's not a core feature anymore. If Digium opened the
floodgates and made a stab at supporting voice modems, consider that this
list would also be flooded with guys going: "I'm using Modem XYZ with a
datestamp of 1998 made by Happy Lucky Logic Corp and it doesn't work - why?"
and the whole project would get a bad reputation as a result. I guess I
should have prefaced this point with yes, I know, there are great TAPI
boards out there dialogic brooktrout etc but they are more expensive than a
Zaptel board. Which leads to the next point:

3. The thing that makes Asterisk great is the Zapata hardware. It's very low
cost, considering what's out there, and nonwithstanding the "crackly"
problem on my TDM400, it's hardware that "just works". The dev kit is the
same price as a nice dinner for 2 or a copy of Halo 2 and a couple of extra
controllers for buddies to play. All that, and you can hack away for days
and days.