When Asterisk goes wrong
Yesterday I received in the post some information from a company (who shall remain unnamed) in the public sector who had put out an Invitation To Tender (ITT) for a new, VoIP-enabled telephone system. The ITT itself contained very little information indeed about their requirements, as is often the case. However, it did mention the fact that it was a public sector company, and since value for money is frequently highest on their selection criteria, Asterisk-based systems are usually a good fit. So I cheerfully applied for an information pack, which duly arrived, as I said, yesterday.
A quick read through the detailed tender document made it apparent that this was one contract not worth taking any further. When you see selection criteria such as
“The system will not be based on open source code”
then you suspect that they have had their fingers burnt. A more in depth perusal confirmed the suspicion:
“Since implementation London users and Homeworkers have experienced a variety of
issues with voice quality. The voice quality has varied from acceptable to unusable.
Outbound voice quality has been mostly acceptable but inbound voice quality has on
occasions contained dropouts or has been completely inaudible, preventing users
from hearing what callers are saying.”
They go on to say that WAN changes and the introduction of G.729 have improved matters, but obviously not enough. They also bemoan the lack of available expert Asterisk knowledge making it difficult to troubleshoot effectively.
There are a number of checks that any half-decent Asterisk consultant should have made at this site. Is the server up to the job? Is there adequate bandwidth for their requirements? Has QoS been implemented correctly across the board? Are there unnecessary codec translation going on? Is the VoIP provider up to the job? Instead company or consultant who carried out the initial implementation has left them in the lurch, and now a company that could have been very happy with an Asterisk solution are determined never to touch it again, and if anyone asks their opinion they will no doubt be very disparaging.
The solution? The best way to avoid the situation, in my opinion, is for any consultant or company selling an Asterisk-based solution/service to make sure that their customers have an alternative contact should things go belly-up. Do your homework and get in touch with someone who knows their way around Asterisk blindfolded. Your customer is more likely, not less, to stick with you if you can demonstrate that you have their best interests at heart and can provide them with a level of service that they require. That does not need you to be an Asterisk guru, but you do need to know where to turn if such a person is required.
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I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Jason Rakowski
Jason,
Thanks for the nice words….I can see how this post in particular resonates with your particular area of interest and expertise
Colman
Hello
I believe I recieved the very same tender and felt the same way. I emailed the company suggesting that they have someone check the configuaration for optimal performance.
A shame this has turned them off of ‘open source’ systems. I assume they will also not be purchasing Linksys routers or hosting websites etc on Apache servers from now on too
Perhaps they may not make use of a large ‘open source’ project called the Internet due to these worries.
Jason B (popular topic for Jasons, onviously !),
I suspect they, like many other companies, just don’t appreciate how much of the software and online services they use and rely upon are open source. Having said that, it is a pretty unregulated market, and it can be difficult to find good documentation for even the most popular applications.
I suspect what most people find an issue, though, is the lack of a single point of responsibility for fixing issues. If you find a bug in, say, Apache, then who do you speak to, shout at or sue for lost income ?
It’s a brave new world, with new rules !
Colman