[asterisk-users] Best Current Release for Long Term Use

[Danny Nicholas]

There are over 100 open items on the Digium board related to DAHDI.  I'm
sure quite a few are "chair-to-keyboard" issues, but here are two real ones:
1. DAHDI will not look for a connection when dialing, so if I make a call
and play a file, X percent of the file plays before the person actually (if
ever) answers the phone.
2. DAHDI (IMO and IME) is more difficult to tune than Zaptel.

I'm certain that DAHDI will be solid and great in a few years; It just
doesn't seem to be yet.

Zaptel isn't the "end all" either; I upgraded to 1.4.25-rc1 because I
couldn't get zaptel to tune sufficiently on 1.4.21.2.  We use POTS for our
outgoing service and haven't gotten satisfactory results with DAHDI or
Zaptel on TDM400 and TDM410.

I've spent probably 4 1/2 of my 8 months exposure to Asterisk just trying to
get the sound right on calls.

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 1:18 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Best Current Release for Long Term Use

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 12:58 -0500, Danny Nicholas wrote:
> This being said, I'd probably go with 1.4.21.X since anything above
> that replaces zaptel with DAHDI.   There are still a lot of things "To
> be worked out" in DAHDI - Zaptel is a pretty solid standard.  

It continues to amaze me when I hear this, as there really isn't much
difference between Zaptel and DAHDI.  In fact, the only two differences
I know about are:

1) The name change
2) Making software echo can modules able to be loaded on a per-channel
basis
3) DAHDI will continue to be developed, Zaptel will not

I've been using DAHDI in both my personal systems and in the Asterisk
training classes I teach for more than six months now, and I have yet to
find any reason not to use it.  If you're having problems with DAHDI,
mind sharing the specifics of what those are?  

I've also been using the 1.6.0 branch of Asterisk, and it's been *much*
more solid than the 1.4 branch for me and the things I use.  It's not to
say there haven't been some quirky little bugs, but overall I've been
very happy with it.

As far as Linux distributions go, I'd say go with whatever you're most
comfortable with, and will have the best chance of supporting over the
long term.  I personally like RHEL and CentOS, but Debian or Ubuntu LTS
would be great choices as well, as they all have *years* worth of
updates rather than months.

(Please read these comments as own opinion, and not necessarily being
officially endorsed by my employer.)

-- 
Jared Smith
Training Manager
Digium, Inc.


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