[asterisk-users] Sangoma vs Digium: (was Re: ping too)

[shadowym]

Because there is still old hardware in the pipeline at distributors and
resellers.  They may even still be manufacturing some of that old hardware
so there is probably a lot of unrealized money involved.  So in that sense I
can't blame them for being a bit hush hush about it's short comings.

Digium is advertising the new hardware improvements but at the same time
they are careful not to talk about the shortcomings of older hardware.  Just
look for the discussions about "VoiceBus" on their site.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Totaro [mailto:stotaro at totarotechnologies.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 11:35 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Sangoma vs Digium: (was Re: ping too)

Jared Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 11:32 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
>> I used to buy Digium products until they let me down with all kinds of 
>> quirky behavior with regards to echo, clicks, "incompatible 
>> motherboards" and IRQ issues.
> 
> (Let me take off my Digium hat for a minute and speak as a community
> member, and not as a Digium employee.  The opinions expressed below are
> my own, and not Digium's.)
> 
> I'll be the first to admit that Digium has made some design mistakes on
> some of their cards in the past.  And since I've been doing Asterisk
> consulting and also teaching Asterisk Bookcamp classes for the past two
> and a half years, I've seen Digium hardware installed on a wide variety
> of motherboards.  I'm happy to report that I haven't had any motherboard
> or IRQ incompatibility with any of Digium's newer cards that use their
> VoiceBus technology.  In some ways, I think Digium hasn't said enough
> about their efforts to fix the problems of the past and to make sure
> that their products are rock solid.  So if anything, I've gotta stand up
> for Digium a little bit here and say "Yes, they've had problems in the
> past.  But you shouldn't discount the effort they're making to change
> that."
> 
> That being said, I've also had the opportunity to spend a lot of time
> using hardware from most of the other board vendors.  For the most part,
> they've worked OK for me and my clients, but they aren't perfect either.
> The biggest problems have been related to drivers (either drivers that
> are buggy, or won't work with the latest version of Zaptel or the
> kernel).  Obviously in a perfect world the third-party drivers would be
> integrated right into Zaptel, and the zaptel drivers would all be pushed
> upstream into the Linux kernel.  Until that happens, we're going to
> continue to have these sorts of problems to a certain extent.  (I also
> have a philosophical problem with certain of the smaller-scale board
> vendors that basically do a lot of taking from the community and don't
> give anything back, but that's another topic for another day.)
> 
> I should also mention that I strongly believe that competition (or maybe
> co-opmetition?) helps keep the world progressing and keeps all the
> players on their toes.  At the same time, I believe there's been more
> than enough mud-slinging both in this list and in other venues, and we
> should be able to each make our own decision on the boards based on
> their technical merits, and not on vague generalities or past mistakes.
> 
> -Jared Smith

I have been in the Asterisk community a little longer than you.  I hope 
you do not consider sharing my experiences as mudslinging.  If you do, 
you should make sure you have your Digium hat and socks off and 
reconsider.  Past experience is one of the things that makes this list 
great. Anything other than someone's past experience is theory.

Here is an idea.  Let me exchange my old boards (gathering dust) for 
your "New and Improved" boards and I will try them in production.  If I 
do not experience the same issues from the past, I will gladly go back 
to Digium hardware and sing praises to the lists.  If I have the same 
issues, then that is a different story.

The bottom line (and what you conveniently snipped) is that I do what is 
best for my customers and myself.  I live by the cliche (slightly 
modified for this situation) "Sell Me Sub par Hardware Once, Shame on 
You.  Sell Me Sub Par Hardware Twice, Shame on Me"  I know what works 
and I generally stick to that.

If there has been such vast improvements in hardware, how come Digium is 
not doing press releases or posting the improvements to the list or a 
changelog somewhere?  Again, take off your Digium hat and socks and 
think about it.  It is a valid question and you raised it yourself and 
should probably be raised with Mark and the Adtran guys (maybe even the 
3com guys too ;-)

Again, I hope nobody takes this as mudslinging or bashing Digium, I 
would be more than happy to buy Digium products if I had the faith that 
was lost along with many hours of troubleshooting, losing customers, one 
thing we can all sympathize with, stress.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro