Snerk

[technical.angel]

As some of you know, the university is considering the switch to VOIP. As the telco admin, this project is my baby.

I got an email today.

Our salesguy got fired. He's still going to get a commission if we go with that company, but that should affect our decision (snerk).

Also, we could hire him as a consultant to do the project for us. (double snerk)

If him getting commission shouldn't affect our decision, why tell us?

And, yeah friggin' right. Hells no. We are NOT going to hire this guy, and let him get paid twice for the same project.

[Rapscallion]

"Here's my CV. I got fired from the place you're buying stuff from, and I want you to employ me."

Oh boy.

We had one in our Customer Information inbox the other day. A CV was attached in Word format, but the body of the email read as follows:

i was wondering if thier was any jobs going i have attached my cv just incase something crops up

I read some of the CV out (young and no real experience to speak of in anything complicated in employment terms), including the school to which the youngster once went, and a colleague blurted out that it was one of the better local schools.

Must have slipped through their net, I guess.

Rapscallion

[Bliss]

Btw, I'd advise you to avoid CCM if you can, it might be easier to setup at first, but eventually it'll become painfull.

There are many commercial and free alternatives based on asterisk that ease the initial config shock, and asterisk will prove to be much easier down the road

[Pedersen]

Bliss, it sounds like you've got some experience, so I'll ask this of you, mainly because I've got some (mild) experience with CCM, and none with Asterisk.

How well does Asterisk scale? CCM, for instance, I know scales to huge levels (we had around 450 people using it daily without a problem, and it was growing easily to accommodate our needs whenever we opened new stores/etc). The only time we had call drop or "stutter" issues was during a time that we were using a wireless link (and should not have been).

And the only time I've dealt with someone using Asterisk (that I know of), his installation had such horrendous stuttering that talking on the phone was painful. However, I'm not so sure I trust his installation, since other conversations with him showed me he had numerous large gaps in his understanding of computers.

So, how well does it scale? And how easily?

[Bliss]

Well I'll be sincere and say I've not scaled it Myself into large deployments... though I know of some cases, on one hand a single machine has quite good capabilities, the local Ministry of Culture uses a single CPU machine with Asterisk and an E1 card to handle around 300 extensions over SIP (mixed Cisco and no-brand phones) and the external lines (full E1) and it works well... Plus I know from comments in the medium that the Asterisk to Asterisk protocol (IAX2) is really good, so you could scale by dropping new boxes onto the setup.

Part of it will be the asterisk machine of course. And part will depend on your network and what voice codec you decide to go with.

The largest "problem" with asterisk is if you require Enterprise support or not... and it's not really a problem since not only does Digium (the company that has asterisk now) do enterprise support, but there are both many vendors that provide paid * support, and others that bundle pre-setup asterisk-in-a-box systems with improved (dumbed down) setup/control interfaces.

[Pedersen]

Thank you. I had a feeling that it was the person, not the program, that caused the problems, but I wasn't sure. It's good to hear that sort of thing, and makes me think I'll give Asterix a try in the future (when I'm ready for it).

[Bandit]

Good Luck with the VoIP project - and I hope you're ready for the extra workload nitpicking network issues.

CCM can be a right pain to keep running - as can *, Nortel, all of them in fact - all comes down to how good the network backbone is.

IMHO, there are only 3 reasons to try VoIP - brand new install, need to support remote users, or have to interconnect distant systems.

You'll have issues with echo, dropouts, dropped calls, and some general strangeness with one-way speech issues.

Again, good luck with it, and have fun kicking the salescritter in the nuts a couple of times if you can.

B

[PepperElf]

hell... id be tempted to actually say that to him...

"So... Just checking the information here. You say you got fired from the VOIP project, but still will be paid for it, and are hoping we'll hire you and pay you for this project too?"


Only way I'd see of hiring him is if he was fired unfairly ... like if he was a whistleblower who'd reported the company to authorities for illegal actions (whistleblower protection is a joke IMOP), or for resisting sexual harassment advances.

but if he was fired for performance or doing something illegal himself... that's when you just laugh at him and hang up.