[asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?

[Bill Andersen]

Andrew Kohlsmith (lists) wrote:
> If you're continuously restarting Asterisk, there is something wrong
> with your setup: hardware, software or both.  I have many installs
> out there on commodity hardware (either pure-voip or digital (PRI)
> only with Polycom handsets) and none of them need to be restarted.

That is good to hear.  The more I read on this thread, the more I think
I may have just chosen the wrong "commercially available Asterisk".
I've thought about just building everything myself, but, as a full time
IT guy I simply can't find the time to learn the ins-and-outs of Asterisk.
Some day, I hope to!

> Now we're not using queues; straight extensions with voicemail, some
> paging and followme, a little CTI (click to dial), and a 24h "page
> the poor shlub wearing the pager this week" for emergency support.
> You know, pretty standard systems; the kind of thing I'd think any
> small business would have.
> None of these are PoE, have separate switches or special VLANs or
> anything like that.  Think of what a small 5-50 person office would
> have the money for.

Exactly my type of setup.  Nothing really fancy.

> I hear this complaint from time to time, but I've never really sat down
> and thought about what could be causing it.  Which version(s) are you
> running? Whose hardware, what linux distro, are you running FreePBX or
> straight-from-sources Asterisk?  I'll take you on your word that you're
> not trolling.  Let's dig in a little.

CentOS release 4.4 (Final) 
Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp (SMP)
Asterisk 1.4.16.2
Dell SC440 w/RAID 1
Digium TE120P

The GUI is a commercially available product, to remain un-named at this
point.

No Trolling... I'm not wanting to "knock" Asterisk.  I just want to get
feedback from others actually using it in a production environment.  I
don't know that we have lost any customers over "missed" calls (BUSY signals
during reboots), BUT I have lost some street cred from my Bosses!  They
think
I'm an IT Guru... They keep asking why the heck I can't you make that phone
system work reliably now that it is "computer based" LOL :(

Thanks for the comments

Bill