[asterisk-users] Is this failed Asterisk setup typical?

[Richard Kenner]

> Seems to me a similar argument for and against hosting ones own web 
> presence in house with mixed results .  Others choose to use a 
> datacenter service, seldom but sometimes with poor results.

I think that's a good analogy.  It's very hard to argue that one of those
choices is "right" and the other "wrong".  Which is better for an
individual company depends on their level of technological skills, what's
being served, and bandwith issues.

I think it's similar for Asterisk-based systems.  VoIP isn't the right
choice for everybody and if it's not, then a lot of the advantages of
Asterisk aren't present.  Asterisk is very POOR if what you want is a
traditional key-style (KSU) PBX.  But it's very good for IVR.

At AdaCore, we use a mix.  We have an NEC SV8100 as our primary PBX.  It
controls most of our phone, since we do want a key style system.  But we
have an Asterisk system that does conferencing, hosts standard SIP phones
(Aastra) for those remote people where NAT support is more important than a
key system model, and we're moving more IVR from the NEC to the Asterisk
system (they're connected with two T1's: QSIG to Asterisk and PRI to the
NEC system).  That's an ideal solution for us, but probably not for anybody
else.

> Certainly these days many have come to expect less than 99.999% from 
> their telephones, even with providers that have been around more than 
> 100 years.

Depends on the people.  A lot of people who are quite used to computers
crashing and software not working still expect their phones to ALWAYS work
and will complain loudly if that's not the case.