[asterisk-users] Asterisk 11 and H.323 trunk using OOH323 - is it stable?

[Patrick Lists]

On 17-01-14 01:57, Dan Austin wrote:
> Patrick Lists wrote:
>> On 16-01-14 21:37, Gergely Kiss wrote:
>>> Dear List,
>>>
>>> I'm about to build an Asterisk 11.7 based PBX from scratch for our
>>> company. I'm in the middle of the planning phase and it turned out that
>>> our VoIP provider prefers H.323 protocol for handling voice calls (while
>>> SIP is also supported as "plan B").
>
>> It's SIP everywhere and anyone who requires you, in 2014, to use H.323
>> should get a clue. Avoid them or at least demand SIP
> Bah.  There is nothing wrong with a working H.323 stack.  Just assuming
> that they will have a working SIP stack because of the date can lead to
> heartache.

By itself there is nothing wrong with a working H.323 stack. I just 
would not use it :-) Using H.323 for one provider while any backup or 
alternative providers probably use SIP results in needing two stacks in 
testing & production. It also requires the admins to gain knowledge of a 
legacy protocol. Maybe there are some incumbents or service providers 
with legacy H.323 equipment continuing to offer H.323 service. I get 
that. But for a business building a VoIP PBX from scratch H.323 does not 
make sense from a cost and operations point of view.

>>> As I never worked with H.323 channels in Asterisk earlier, I'm not sure
>>> if it's stable enough to be used in production.
>
>> No idea. Maybe someone else with H.323 experience will respond. AFAIK
>> it's a dead-end.
> The ooh323 channel has been fairly reliable in our use case, which involve
> connecting to a commercial IP PBX with crud SIP support.  Only you can tell
> if it will work for you however, as sadly many times new core features only
> get tested against the SIP channel(s), or worse only implemented there as
> well.  Our current Asterisk version is 11.5.1

The OP mentioned that his VoIP provider prefers H.323 so it seems to be 
about trunking. IMHO "fairly reliable" is not something that is 
acceptable for trunking phone service.

H.323 is what Gopher is to HTTP/webservers. When was the last time you 
used a Gopher service? Would you today still buy Gopher based service 
because the service provider prefers it? :-)

Regards,
Patrick