[Asterisk-Users] Re: How far is IAX to be a Standard

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 16:13:15 -0600, Michael Giagnocavo
<mgg-digium at atrevido.net> wrote:
> Unless SIP just plain does not work, I think it'll be hard (for IAX to get
> excellent acceptance),

Funny you should say that from the comfort of your first world
environment. In many countries internet infrastructure is such that
SIP does indeed simply not work, but IAX does.

IAX is so vastly superior to SIP, that the comparison shouldn't be
things like VHS versus Betamax, but it should be more like horse
carriages versus motorcars.

Besides, only five years ago, SIP was the underdog and H323 was all
the rage. At that point people were very sceptical if anybody would
even implement SIP because it was yet another standard created by a
committee, many of which had failed to catch on in the past. In this
respect, IAX has a clear advantage in that it isn't designed by a
committee and that it has already got a significant installed base.

> At VON, only a few people even understood what Asterisk was, let
> alone even had heard of IAX.

Well, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but some folks with
far more clout and credibility that you and I and pretty much
everybody on this list seem to think differently. A few weeks ago
there was a statement from an open source guru at an event making the
mainstream news all over the world and the statement was this: "Watch
out for Asterisk, it will be bigger than Linux".

This wasn't coming from an Asterisk zealot driven by wishful thinking.
It was a guy with enough clout to make top headlines in the mainstream
media.

Of course IAX, once going RFC, will have to start its own life outside
of Asterisk.

> My only point is that we can't just rely on a better design to somehow
> magically win out. Getting Digium to create a standard with input from other
> vendors would be a huge plus and help pave the path forward.

I totally disagree. IAX is not a standards committee protocol. It's a
grassroots thing. If it catches on, and we have any reason to believe
that it will, given how far it has already come, then it will be
through grassroots implementations. It will be through small vendors
who seek an edge and use IAX to get that edge, forcing other small
vendors to follow. Once there is a critical mass, even the bigger
vendors won't be able to ignore it.

rgds
benjk

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