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

[Rich Adamson]

Remco Barende wrote:
> On Fri, 26 May 2006, Rich Adamson wrote:
> 
>>> You mean that 3Com switches are not to be regarded as decent 
>>> switches? At least Snom could have put some remark then that you need 
>>> a certain brand of switches.  If 3Com is not good enough for the 
>>> phones I would have bought different phones.
>>
>> Blaming the 3com switch is very likely to be the wrong root cause. 
>> High probability the 3com was not configured properly for the phone.
> 
> The 3C16479 is a non-configurable, non-managed 3Com workgroup gbit 
> switch. It is directly connected to the asterisk server with one cable, 
> the phones are connected to the other ports.  There is nothing to 
> configure on the switch.

The switch is doing auto negotiation, whether you can see it or not. 
That's exactly why I'd never use an unmanaged switch for anything that 
is critical. Gig in this case has no value whatsoever.

> Maybe I need to change my opinion, it's not only the firmware that 
> sucks, if the ethernet chip on the phone is this oversensitive I guess 
> the same would apply for the hardware.

Part of the problem with this half vs full duplex is there are no 
commonly implemented industry standards for negotiating a correct 
setting. Essentially, the switch port "and" the attached device auto 
negotiates at the same time, and one device "sees" what it thinks is 
half duplex when the other device is in the middle of its negotiation 
process. In most cases, statically defining "one" of the two is 
sufficient, but to be 100% accurate from a performance perspective, both 
should be statically defined.

Gig ports that truly operate at gig speeds is not an issue as there is 
no such thing as half duplex gig. But, if the attached devices only 
operate at 10/100 speeds, the switch still has to negotiate the half vs 
full duplex.

> There is just no valid reason why the phone would need to lockup or 
> reboot even if the network connection would be problematic, no matter 
> what. That is just poor design, not a feature.

I'd agree with that 1000%. I stopped using snom products with the 200 
for that very reason (eg, lack of testing and quality control).