[Asterisk-Users] mediatrix 1104

[Rich Adamson]

> > Seems all of the Mediatrix stuff is configured through snmp 
> > only. Finding
> > and changing the parameters is a royal pain, 
> 
> Yer tellin' me!  
> 
> > however others have posted to
> > the list using that same model.
> 
> Really?  I wasn't able to come up with anything googling, other than someone
> else asking how to configure the things...  Please, throw up a link if you
> see something I don't.
> 
> > I would stay away from their fxo model however. After many hours of 
> > working with a reseller, ended up having to send it back.
> 
> I'm on the verge with this one.  
> 
> > Mediatrix's gameplan seems to be oriented towards selling the 
> > fxs and fxo
> > boxes in pairs as a form of toll bypass. They really aren't 
> > interested in
> > standards and making their products work with *, etc.
> 
> But one would think it'd be fairly simple to at least do a straightforward
> sip proxy registration, no?  

The fxs model supposedly has registration support, the fxo model does not.
The mediatrix approach is for the fxs model to register with their fxo (as
in toll bypass), therefore the registration, call setup, etc, processes
are oriented around those matched-pair tasks (and not sip standards or *).

The fxo model senses ring cadence based on the first ringing cycle it see's
after a reboot, and sets all four ports to that cadence regardless of what
might be in actual use. (Ex. line 1 might be a POTS line with standard US
ring, if line 2 is a CO Centrex line the ring cadence is different and
will not be sensed unless you reboot the box. Callerid is then missed 
consistently on line 2.) There seems to be lots of embedded (and undocumented)
assumptions like that in their products.

The _basic_ sip functions are supported, but only a subset of the standard.
Therefore, don't expect things like MWI to ever work, etc.

If you dig around their web site, you'll find references to another company
or subsidiary that was responsible for software design. The words tend to
suggest that subsidiary was next to bankruptcy, some investors infused some
cash, and now they appear to be trying to bring the products back to life.
Their support is _only_ through resellers, and software upgrades are 
chargeable items. There does not appear to be any software maintenance
releases, only chargeable upgrades. The boxes have both 323 and sip images, 
but only one image can be resident at a time; the other image is also a 
chargeable item. (They sell the boxes as two model numbers, 323 or sip,
but its the same box with a different image.) Since support comes from the 
reseller only, if your reseller is not intimately familiar with *, then 
simple questions take lengthy periods of time to get answers (eg, days),
and those questions have to be translated back into words their
developers can understand (may require packet traces to get reasonable
answers).

The management software required to configure the boxes use snmp only,
and that software was written by another Canadian company (which also
sells other snmp software products). The layout of the snmp MIBs are
highly oriented around snmp logic (as opposed to product implementation
logic), therefore you have to dig very deep into "every" single MIB 
object to find the parameters necessary for basic configurations. A
packet sniffer such as ethereal will help show at least some of the
what happens when changing selected parameters. Several of those MIB 
objects require the box to be rebooted to take effect, however there 
is little or no documentation that would tell you that. Likewise,
changing some snmp mib objects will have an effect on other mib objects,
and those relationships are not well documented either.

If you pay for a software upgrade, the firmware image that gets installed
on the unit must "match" the management software installed on a PC.
(I.e, the snmp MIB objects change between firmware versions, forcing you
to either keep two management systems on your PC (assuming you have two 
or more boxes to support), or, deinstall and reinstall the management
software to match whatever is running on the box.)

The snmp support has the community string (password) embedded in the 
firmware and that string is commonly known, therefore securing the box 
when exposed to the Internet becomes problematic.

Their boxes appear to be an ideal approach to adding 4-port quantities 
of remote fxs and fxo interfaces to * (nice market niche), unfortunately 
their small development organization seems to be highly focused towards 
the toll bypass business with little interest in marketing their products
to the pbx/asterisk community as add-on interfaces.

I'd suggest you'll have at least a 98% probability of getting either the
fxs or fxo boxes to work with *, however experience suggests you'll 
spend hugh amounts of time to get there only to find out the implementation
will be limited to very basic sip functions. Given their retail (and
street) pricing, you can do far better with a pair of ata186's (fxs)
or the new tdm04b (fxo) digium card, etc.

Rich