[Asterisk-Users] IBM to Run VoIP On Linux

[John Todd]

Yes, it is a well-kept secret, which is a shame since it obviously 
fits so many different requirements.  Here are some late-night 
musings as to why new users coming to Asterisk is only a stream when 
it should be a river:

1) No >1.0 release.  In fact, no release structure at all really. 
(Hold your flames: I know this is to be remedied soon, along with 
backtrack patches for security/stability.)

2) No books (yet.)  This also is going to be remedied soon.

3) Advocates fall (generally) into two camps:
      a) IT staff who have much more on their minds than being VoIP 
advocates, and who normally are told what to do.  Even if they have 
experience with * in testbed situations, the larger vendors come in 
and throw whitepapers/jargon/FUD at executive staff, who make 
telephony decisions, thus overruling clueful staff.

      b) CLEC or other telephony-oriented people who will try very 
hard to prevent anyone from knowing what they use, or how they use 
it, since that is a competitive disadvantage if others should start 
to use the same software-driven architectures.  There are some 
obvious exceptions to this, but you'll very rarely see (ever?) any 
posts by the two or three major IPCSP's that use Asterisk as part of 
their core systems.

   There are of course others who do not fall into one of these two 
camps, and those are the people being the "zealots" getting 
conversions to Asterisk.  Personally, as an example, I have over two 
dozen institutions, companies, and very clueful individuals that I've 
introduced to Asterisk simply based on chatting with them. 
(excluding clients, who already have intentions on installing 
Asterisk.)  The time it takes to explain why Asterisk is so useful is 
quite labor-intensive, actually, and the educational process takes 
some time even with the most clueful engineering types, simply 
because there are so MANY things to take into consideration with 
Asterisk and any telephony questions in general.

4) Hardware vendors are still blowing enough "QOS" issues around that 
it obscures open-source VoIP solutions.  "VoIP won't work" is still a 
claim I hear EVERY DAY, until I disagree and tell that person that 
I'm disagreeing with them over a VoIP call that crosses a continent 
twice, across the public Internet (and three carriers.)  This is 
obviously not Asterisk-specific, but it's certainly an issue that 
scares people away from OSS solutions that don't include "magic 
hardware."

5) I would say that it's becoming less of a secret, so don't give up 
hope.  The almost-unmanageable flood of newbie posts to the Asterisk 
lists in the last two months or so is evidence that success is 
sometimes more of a headache than one would want.


In short, nothing in the above 4 "worry" items scares me, and 
Asterisk is and will become the telephony platform of choice for a 
large percentage of conversions to VoIP in the coming years.  Fret 
not: you'll be the apache of VoIP soon enough.

JT



>Asterisk has got to be about the best kept secret in telephony.  I've seen
>numerous articles on slashdot about VoIP, even in relation to Linux and
>only *once* has the post even mentioned Asterisk.  Am I missing something,
>or is Asterisk clearly a good potential player in any kind of linux-based
>soft-switch idea?
>
>Mark
>
>On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Dave Cotton wrote:
>
>>  For those who don't wake up at 5.00 am and start reading /.
>>
>> 
>>http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid7_gci935769,00.html
>>
>>
>>  --
>  > Dave Cotton <dcotton at linuxautrement.com>