[asterisk-biz] New IP PBX lifting the bar

[Kristian Kielhofner]

On 10/27/07, Andy Davidson <andy at nosignal.org> wrote:
>
> On 26 Oct 2007, at 19:06, Kristian Kielhofner wrote:
>
> >   Cisco survived on that model for a long, long time.  Look at the
> > difference between the 2600 and the 2800.  The 2600 (maybe not the
> > XMs) were pathetic.  A 2621 couldn't NAT any faster than 20Mbps.
> > VPN?   Forget about it.  EVERYTHING was done in software.
>
> A 2621 couldn't nat more than 20Mbps because it could only switch at
> 12Mbps with CEF enabled. :-) (Ciscos figures)  It was end-of-life'd
> nearly five years ago !
>
> But I have to defend the router series that I used as my swiss army
> knife of CPE in a variety of scenarios until a year or two ago.  They
> have lots of positive attributes - they're tiny, low noise, low
> power, have such a wide range of WICs that will fit in it so you can
> throw loads of line presentations at them, they support every routing
> protocol I have needed them to in an enterprise environment, and will
> tunnel capably back to HQ offices pretty respectably.
>
> The 2811 is now probably the CPE swiss army knife of choice, as
> enterprise presentations get faster and vpn requirements are more
> typical.  But on a budget you should STILL consider whether the 2621
> can do a job for you - you can probably get one from ebay for under
> $50 instead of probably over $1000 for the 2811.
>
>
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Andy Davidson
>

Andy,

  I wasn't really criticising the 26xx (although I did use the word
"pathetic").  I was simply using them as an example product/design of
their era.  The 28xx shows how far Cisco has come in the last few
years, presumably because of technology, competition, market demand,
etc.  I think the 28xx is pretty neat for a Cisco device.

  Products like the 28xx raise expectations in the market (open source
or otherwise).  It's important to me as an open source project
maintainer and enthusiast that open source keeps up with commercial
products like the 28xx - because we can (in many ways).

  It's great projects like Asterisk exist to enable this competition.
I'll take Asterisk running on a system with a VIA processor and Digium
card over a 2811 running IOS/CME for any CPE deployment.  It will have
more features, more flexibility, and still cost a fraction of the
price (especially once you factor in the interface modules).

  There are some "unusual" situations where you'll still need
something like the 2811 (support for rare hardware interfaces, etc)
but the Linux/Asterisk system will work very well in almost all cases.

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner