[Asterisk-Users] Snom firmwares suck <--additional datapoint to consider

[Colin Anderson]

We have a large install of 360's running rev 4.1 with zero problems. I did
another, smaller install couple weeks ago with 40 360's running rev 5.3. In
both cases, the install was identical, same Asterisk version, same dialplan,
everything the same except the differences were:

1. Different firmware rev
2. Different physical LAN

Guess what? On the smaller install, lockups and reboots. Emailing Snom, I
got this response: 

"The mentioned behaviour occured under certain
network conditions and should have been fixed with V5.5 which is -though its
Beta state- the last verified stable and reliable version:
snom360: http://fox.snom.com/download/snom360-5.5b-beta-SIP-j.bin
I would not recommend to downgrade since you would be loosing some
functionality"

Changing firmware revs did not help, so that left the LAN.

I looked long and hard at the LAN and it was basically narrowed down to the
switches. In this smaller install, several cheapo Dlink ($30) switches
de-aggregate a Cisco Catalyst switch. What I noticed was that any phone
plugged direcly into the Catalyst did *not* lock up or reboot. Any phone
plugged into the crap switches experienced the lockup. So now we are down to
the cheap switches themselves. We are nuking the Dlink switches and
replacing them with 3com workgroup switches, same as what we use in the
large install to good effect, and I fully expect the problem to dissapear. 

It's unfortunate that Snoms have a propensity to freak out in certain
environments but I don't think it would preclude me from using Snom in the
future. As long as one is aware of this issue, it should be easy enough to
work around.