[Asterisk-Users] SoftPhones: Bad, or just bad QoS?

[Time Bandit]

> Any idea if this applies to Mac OS X clients? We are a strictly Mac
> company, and OS X's Unix core allows for preemptive multitasking. If
> I am unhappy with the performance of the soft phones, I should be
> able to tweak the priority of the phone so that it gets more compute
> cycles.
I don't know about the Mac since I don't have one. Better test it and
see for yourself.

> (Well, in any event, it sounds like I need to set up Asterisk at Home
> and see for myself. But of course I won't be able to easily simulate
> 20 users on the phone at the same time, so real-world feedback is
> always appreciated.)
It doesn't make a difference for the server if you are using soft or
hard phones, so the 20 users on the phone will be the same with one or
the other. The difference will be what codecs and/or protocols you are
using.
 
> I like not only the portability of the soft phone, but the potential
> hooks into other information systems. My eventual goal is to have
> incoming calls trigger a query on our main database on the Caller ID
> supplied phone number. That way a record for that person will open up
> on a user's computer the moment they receive a call (assuming the
> numbers match). 
You don't need a softphone for this, you just need a computer beside
the hardphone.
Of course, you'll need a program on the computer that can receive the
callerID and query the DB (ex.: YAC
http://sunflowerhead.com/software/yac/)

> I also like the integration of OS X's AddressBook
> with soft phones, so that people can dial right from their main
> contact list.
Some softphones support this, like X-lite, and my softphone (MediaX :
http://www.marccharbonneau.com/asterisk/mediaxphone.php  but not the
current version, only the developpement version)

But you can still do this with a hardphone using call files on
asterisk and some programming. See
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+auto-dial+out

hth