The PBX Is Dead; Long Live VoIP (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

O'ReillyNet takes a look at Asterisk. "While the computer industry has changed vastly, telephone systems until relatively recently have changed only superficially. They are expensive, proprietary, and often so arcane that only factory-authorized dealers have the remotest clue how to manage them. This, coupled with the emergence of open source Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, leaves PBX on the verge of obsolescence. In this article I'll look at Asterisk, a Linux-based open source softswitch, and why it heralds the end of PBX."

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Mostly Irrelevant Personal Experience

Posted Jun 24, 2005 20:38 UTC (Fri) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

I recently had the odd and annoying experience of having my residential land-line phone number hijacked for a week. That is to say that the phone number that rang to my home was a totally different number in the same area code and that same number showed up on caller id when I dialed out from my house (service worked fine other than that). Qwest told me that the number belonged to a company called Echelon that only sold services to businesses and at first said that Echelon should fix the problem before I got fed up and threatened immediate cancellation, and then they fixed the problem in a few hours.

I'm posting this because I was wondering whether this switching related snafu was attributable to implementation of some new technology or whether the same thing could have just as easily happened 20 years ago.

Mostly Irrelevant Personal Experience

Posted Jun 24, 2005 21:53 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

I don't know the answer to your question, but being told the cause was
"Echelon" when my phone was ringing to the wrong number would have likely
been enough to send me to the loony bin :)

Mostly Irrelevant Personal Experience

Posted Jun 24, 2005 22:15 UTC (Fri) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

Qwest gave me a customer service number for Echelon and I was able to call them and confirm that it was true that my phone had been temporarily converted to one of their numbers (they even told me the name of the business that the number was supposed to belong to) and they promised to look into it. But since I wasn't their customer and a lawsuit wasn't practical I didn't have much leverage with them.

Mostly Irrelevant Personal Experience

Posted Jun 24, 2005 22:27 UTC (Fri) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

I think perhaps Ross had this Echelon in mind :-)

Having worked in a telephone exchange and with the guys who install telephone lines for a few weeks, I am not surprised these sorts of things happen. One guy had the only copy of the wiring plans for the CDB in his own personal notebook!

Mostly Irrelevant Personal Experience

Posted Jun 25, 2005 21:33 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

The telephone network is marvellous in the fact that it works at all. I worked at a phone company and I can tell you that crossed lines and line switches are nowhere near as uncommon as one would hope. Maybe one in a thousand lines in a particular year is what my top of the head guess would be.

Phone lines incorrectly wired up or disconnected. Contractors digging up cables and rewiring, getting the connections wrong. Or even just your line being disconnected by some random contractor who was installing somebody else's line. These take up a lot of time in customer service.

Still, it works most of the time. Will VoIP make this better or worse? Who knows...

The PBX Is Dead; Long Live VoIP (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 25, 2005 11:50 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Note that while the author uses what seems to be his usual authorative tone (I guess, I'm not familiar with the author), he is not exactly familiar with Asterisk, and the article does have a number of inaccaricies.

Still, this is a good summary of the major benefits and problems of Asterisk and of similar programs (BTW: there a number of alternatives for Asterisk, e.g: yate, and SER).

One thing you should not take from this article is that Asterisk is a 1 dot oh-no product. Version 1.0 was to signal maturity, after it has already been used for the infrastructure of a number of service providers.

So should you run off and replace your existing phone system with Asterisk? Well, if it works, don't touch it. A PBX needs to be relible above all. However if your PBX does not provide all you need or if you want to set up a new one, Asterisk is certainly a nice option.