Asterisk 1.6 - not so scary! curious?

[alauppe]

So...

I've been riding the company line - Asterisk 1.6 isn't ready for prime time. Heck, Asterisk 1.4 wasn't really ready until 1.4.20ish right?

I was talking with some people on IRC that I've grown to respect, and they were touting details about 1.6 that were surprising to me.

1. Most of the changes to 1.4 from 1.4.19 until now have been the results of 1.6 development. i.e. IAX2 handling (anyone else had IAX2 capacity problems? ugh.)

2. Most of the changes in 1.6 since it's release have been feature add's and tweaks - not stability or bug related. IOW, 1.6. is quite stable already! New features include a very stable chan_mobile (bluetooth channel driver for mobile phones), and native g722 wideband codec support.

So - I decided to try it. With PIAF, its so easy to uninstall 1.4, compile/install 1.6, uninstall 1.6 if necessary, and put 1.4 back so nothing to lose right?

I was blown away. For one, FreePBX didn't even bat an eye at 1.6. Everything worked out of the box.

So - I'm going to give it a real go here. I would LOVE to know about anyone elses experience with 1.6.

best,
AndyML

Ps> Join us at #pbxinaflash at irc.freenode.net

 

[james]

Honestly I think people are more scared of the complete deprication of Zaptel then simply *1.6

I think they did allot in 1.6 that should have been done long ago. There was some threads on the dev list about them making pipes in to commas. Old timers resist change. I am pretty confident you will see more advantages then disadvantages.

 

[tshif]

I think the uncertainty about dial plan syntax's being changed - deprecated - is another issue. I have completely avoided 1.6 because I'm not quite ready to start reinventing the wheel in all the custom dial plans we use. Even saying that - I have to admit I have done zero research into the topic. I still get frustrated when I think back to the 1.2 => 1.4 pain so many of us had to suffer through - all because of outrageous arrogance and shortsightedness on the part of the Asterisk developers.

 

[wardmundy]

Amen, Brother!

 

[darmock]

I actually use 1.6 every day but dahdi still has some rough edges for my particular clients from non supported hardware to dialplan changes for custom programming. I only run my office PBX on 1.6 and still have the old 1.4 machine ready to take over if required.

I suppose that digium would have had a better rate of adoption if they had decided to support zaptel on 1.6 during transition instead saying that mama digium knows best.

Thus Asterisk 1.6 is good, Dahdi is still not good, especially if you have "unsupported hardware". Will I be switching my client base over to 1.6? Not while 1.4 actually works well and supports all of the varied hardware that my clients have. I can hardly wait for some pogrom to start telling me how my clients always need the latest version of everything! PBX systems historically did not change for years.


As with Ward "if it ain't broke don't fix it"


Tom

 

[alauppe]

I was right there with all of you, and if we had more custom AGI in place I wouldn't be so quick to suggest it. '|' and ',' are pretty different, and with no support for ',' I'd be pretty honked if I had to re-write my Agi...

The other thing that made it easier for me to try 1.6, was the fact that some of Digium's new cards (PCI-e) require Dahdi so I had to learn it early. Other than a couple bugs in dahdi_genconf, it has been nothing but simple and stable (I'm happy to help anyone that PM's me with Dahdi btw - go ahead! If your card is supported, I'll help). Of course, we're running all Digium hardware, so there isn't any that isn't supported.

What I was really amazed by though, and the reason I posted this up here, was the complete preparedness FreePBX had in place for me. I didn't have to change a single thing in my PBX between 1.4 and 1.6 for all of FreePBX's features to work.

We really had problems with 1.4 on our hosting platform. chan_iax2 has limitations (that I alluded to in my post re: vitelity) that have been resolved in 1.6 which is the biggest reason I thought I'd try it.

If you have a legacy PBX that works, don't touch it - I completely agree. If you're starting fresh, 1.6 might surprise you.

 

[alauppe]

tshif - what dialplan syntax changed from 1.4 to 1.6?

 

[bjeung]

Not to go off on a tangent, but my understanding is that pretty much all of the problems/concerns with 1.6 center around DADHI. If I am in a pure SIP environment, with no analog/T-1 cards, and nothing fancy in my dialplans/config (everything currently done via FreePBX) then am I pretty much safe to wander into the world of 1.6?

Thanks

 

[wardmundy]

You're pretty much correct today. That wasn't the case six months ago. None of the text-to-speech apps worked. Virtually every dialplan had to be rewritten. And then there was the Asterisk Manager. Some of us still aren't on speaking terms with Digium because of the disagreements. So just be glad some of the pioneers fought your battles for you:

http://nerdvittles.com/index.php?p=211

 

[OTA]

PBX systems historically did not change for years.


As with Ward "if it ain't broke don't fix it"

Amen. I've seen more perfectly functional systems downed by user intervention than anything else. If you REALLY want to play with things, go set up a workbench system and tinker on it. Leave the production systems alone.

 

[alauppe]

Ward: As a direct beneficiary of all of your hard work, thank you. PBX in a Flash aside, your fights with Digium laid a solid foundation for us all moving forward. Its really too bad it didn't end on a nicer note. You both contribute so much to the community...

OTA: I'll say it again - if a PBX is doing everything it's supposed to do, for God's sake don't screw with it! Amen!

 

[TheMole]

I just installed 1.6 this past weekend. I've done some quick testing, but nothing extensive.

I'm interested in moving over to 1.6 for g.722 support only.

One item of concern for me: Allison's voice mail prompts under g.722 sound like they have a bit of static in them. No problems with recordings made using g.722 however.

I've read reports that the system prompts are louder using g.722 -- i can confirm that is the case, so i'm thinking this might have something to do with it.

Anybody else have a similar issue?

 

[james]

Just out of curiosity what is unsupported hardware? Dahdi was released 11 months ago (10 months 3 weeks whatever) so all manufacturers should have drivers and if they don't that is sort of on the manufacturer. If you are using clone cards those should work as well worse case run sed on the digium drivers and replace the pci ids. If you have really old stuff that wasn't ported file bug reports and keep doing so untill you get the drivers...

 

[OTA]

One item of concern for me: Allison's voice mail prompts under g.722 sound like they have a bit of static in them. No problems with recordings made using g.722 however.

Are you using the stock PiaF sounds? If so, I found those to be quite scratchy even over g.711. You can download higher quality ones here: http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/sounds/

Look for the .wav files.

 

[TheMole]

Are you using the stock PiaF sounds? If so, I found those to be quite scratchy even over g.711. You can download higher quality ones here: http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/sounds/

Look for the .wav files.

I do have the PiaF stock sounds -- under 1.4 they are fine. I haven't had a chance to try 1.6 with another codec besides g.722.

Thanks for the link - i'll try the wav files and report back.

 

[tshif]

tshif - what dialplan syntax changed from 1.4 to 1.6?

Good question. Very often in the past we didn't find out until something didn't work right.

Sooo - to better answer your question, I just completed testing the modules I have released here in the forum - to see if they perform as expected on a PBXIAF Asterisk 1.6, 32 bit platform.

The test results were actually quite encouraging.

Config Editor, Config Editor Advanced, Hotel Style Wakeup Calls, phpMyAdmin, Sysinfo, Web-Meetme, Gizmo5, and Weather by Zip all performed without a hitch.

Maybe with any luck - Digium has grown tired of making the dial plan syntax a moving target. Heaven knows, enough people heaped extra large amounts of "we HATE that" on them over it.

 

[TheMole]

OTA,

I installed the sounds, but asterisk is still playing the slin sounds.

i tried to make install, etc. no luck.

what am i missing?

 

[OTA]

I should have checked that link before posting it. There are actually g722 files available and it appears Asterisk is looking for those. Go download those and it should work. Still running 1.4 here for now. I like g722, but until I can pass it externally, staying with 1.4.

 

[TheMole]

I tried those, too. no luck.

i'll post something over on the help group, as this isn't a good spot to discussing this.

Thanks for your help.

TheMole

 

[warmbowski]

What version of 1.6

Since digium has changed the naming of the version branches up, the versions of 1.6 are incrementing via the third decimal. I would suggest that people start referring to 1.6.0, or 1.6.1, or 1.6.2 in the forum to avoid future confusion.

Which branch of 1.6.x is PIAF 1.4 installing?