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[HDCraig]

Hi Guy's,

Can anyone let me know if you are using or have used Asterisk in the past, can you give me your opinion (s) on the software, how it runs, if it stable etc etc.

http://www.asterisk.org/

Thanks

[HiDef-Laws]

Extremely stable and is easy to configure and deploy (for both VoIP and regular POTS).

[innova]

Agreed. I am implementing for my home line as a fun project - currently just using softphones on the PC and havent eliminated my standard service.

There is a free Ebook out there - asterisk the future of telephony - download it!

With premade packages like Trixbox out there deploying asterisk is deadly simple.

[Timothy]

Asterisk is definitely one of the most widely used open-source platforms out there and when setup correctly, it's extremely stable.

It's not something I'd recommend for a carrier system that you're selling VoIP service with, but it's an excellent choice for an office PBX or anything along those lines.

If you aren't experienced with it, check out Trixbox like innova just recommended. It's basically Asterisk bundled with some other things in a nice, easy to use package. You can even just download a CD image from their site, burn it to a CD, and boot up with it to be good to go.

http://www.trixbox.org

Great way to learn and get exposed to it.

If you have a VoIP service already lined out, you can literally plug in your info and have your Asterisk server up and running in minutes.

[ATLDedicated]

We use it and it works well. Easy to setup and to use and it is pretty powerful software.

I don't really think there is anything that can match it for the price.

[HDCraig]

Thanks for your input guys.

Very helpful .

[Edvalbuena]

Asterisk is very stable, In fact call centers here in the philippines uses it.

one misadvantage though is that you have to have a very competent admin for it. Although some of the basic can be done using freepbx (it is included on the trixbox iso) you might need to tweak it like any other open source software out there. but thats for call centers

but if you just have like 10 extensions and wanted IVR, extension to extension calling, Personal attendant, voicemail etc etc. I highly suggest you use it. It is going to be a lot easier if u use trixbox

[innova]

Keep in mind... merely having a trixbox CD doesn't make it turnkey.

I think the main advantage to trix is getting an easily installed base to start your planning from. You will still need an asterisk reference, and you will probably want to install some additional tools.. its just a great starting point to get you up and running quickly, nothing more, nothing less.

Trixbox + AsteriskTFOT book + some FXO/FXS cards as needed = a system to start from.

[WiredTree Zac]

Asterisk is extremely stable and runs very well. For a good intro, get Trixbox and install it on a spare machine then look up one of the many step-by-step guides on getting Softphones and cheap VOIP providers set up with it. That should give you an idea of what can be done with it.

[jvmombay]

Aterisk is good if you're using it at a small to medium scale. But once you reach a large number of users (like in the 10xxxx) then better go with the expensive Avaya systems and the likes but that's if you are running a BPO / call center.

[LoginTech]

Originally Posted by HDCraig

Hi Guy's,

Can anyone let me know if you are using or have used Asterisk in the past, can you give me your opinion (s) on the software, how it runs, if it stable etc etc.

http://www.asterisk.org/

Thanks

We currently accept around 15,000 calls per day through our system via a cluster of high availability of asterisk servers

I highly recommend asterisk, it rules!

[luki]

Looks like several people above stated that Asterisk is "extremely stable". That's not my experience. It's stable, yes, but not extremely stable. In a pure VoIP environment (no zap hardware) most of our servers will die sooner or later: either with a segmentation fault (usually due to memory corruption) or will dead lock and not reply to further SIP messages, thus requiring at least a reload of the SIP channel.

I had some machines run for > 6 months without restart, yet the same machine also managed to die 3 times in one day. It's not a hardware problem because other software on the same machine runs without any issues, and it affects pretty much all of our machines, which are quite different in configuration. A simple restart of Asterisk (not the entire machine) is sufficient.

At least by my standard Asterisk isn't "extremely" stable -- compared to say thttpd, qmail or even ssh. Would I recommend it? For sure, it's a very powerful piece of software. Another one worth looking into is OpenPBX. It has some improvements which may or may not be relevant: timing source independent conferencing and MOH, T.38 pass through and gateway support (beta), etc.

[LoginTech]

That sounds very odd, are you running anything special? We've got machines running for clients that have been up for over a year with no issue what so ever.

[luki]

Nope, I don't run anything special. I still have the core dump files. This is from one machine:

-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 12632064 Jul  7  2006 core.2948
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 13881344 Jul 19  2006 core.2711
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 12054528 Aug 28  2006 core.20552
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 12402688 Aug 28  2006 core.12264
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 11784192 Dec  7 15:36 core.13488
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 11939840 Dec  7 17:22 core.2066
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 10022912 Dec  7 19:48 core.18341
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 13541376 Feb 19 14:59 core.5578
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk  9687040 Feb 19 15:01 core.21872
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 13021184 Feb 24 08:16 core.22331
-rw-------  1 asterisk asterisk 13185024 Mar  2 10:56 core.21072

Usually they are of no use, though:
(gdb) core core.21072
Core was generated by `asterisk -U asterisk -G asterisk -g -vvvvv -n'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0 0x0050a82e in ?? ()
(gdb) bt
#0 0x0050a82e in ?? ()
#1 0x00000000 in ?? ()

The box itself has been up for ~245 days now and nothing else crashes on it. I doubt it's the hardware.

Then there are dead locks of the SIP channel. This is usually the case when there is network trouble (often on the client's end) and peers switch between unreachable and reachable. Every now and then it just dead locks if there is too much chaos. It usually starts with a flood of:

WARNING[23016]: chan_sip.c:2327 __sip_destroy: Trying to destroy "1d8340c27b6e17c76eb54770665291ab@IP", not found in dialog
list?!?!

This box runs 1.2.10 although I see the same on 1.2.5 and 1.2.7.1. Aside from that, I'm not upgrading them since they ain't broken (well, usually). Ironically enough the uptime is either <1 day or >2 months (on some boxes >6 months). GO figure...

[Edvalbuena]

try to upgrade to 1.2.15.

As for myself I am a consultant into some of the callcenters here in the philippines, We use asterisk here. even for a 400 seats center we never had an issue about it.

and not the lease my clients save 1400 usd per seat