I would agree with the comments below, with the exception that Asterisk is certainly no longer a "one-man show". While there is still one person that gates the code into the CVS tree, there are several dozen active participants in the project from a "writing code" perspective. The Asterisk bug/feature tracker system is practically bursting with new data, patches, and applications every day.

Asterisk is not a "reference" platform, that is certain. Documentation is thin, in-line comments are thinner, and the (very, very active) user community is the primary resource for learning the system.

That being said, I use Asterisk for many tasks and have been thrilled with it's versatility. Asterisk is a chameleon. It has many different features with surprising depth, and an Asterisk server can turn itself into a system that looks like a very expensive "appliance". As noted, it has a very nice IVR system. It has a reasonably decent voicemail system. It has support for extremely inexpensive PRI interface boards, making a super-cheap media gateway. It can do translation between codecs, between protocols, between NAT/non-NAT networks, and between physical interfaces. Any one of these functions can be reproduced by a box costing ten times as much... but why not use Open Source? Asterisk can do all of them. If you have a small environment, then Asterisk may be all you need since it does pretty much everything well at the bottom end of the scale for size.

If you have an "enterprise" (more than several hundred users) then SER is a better SIP server, and is better at "routing" calls from place to place. Asterisk has a role in this type of deployment, as perhaps an application server or media gateway, but with the advancement of some of the add-ons to SER, perhaps this is becoming more a matter of taste than of administrative sensibility. SER will route calls more efficiently and at a higher speed, but if you don't have those requirements, I'd suggest you set up an Asterisk server and see if that meets your needs.

At some point in the near future (1 year?) the comparison between Asterisk and SER will be similar to the arguments I hear about "What is the 'better' game, checkers or chess?" (before you answer that so quickly, do some research on the question and you'll see the answer is not as obvious as it sounds.)

JT

At 3:53 PM +0200 on 3/27/04, F.S.Salloum wrote:

Dear Eugene,

I have used both and currently i'm doing some stress tests in both of them, I think the best solution is to combine them, SER is excellent for the SIP stuff, can work as a SIP proxy and whatevere else you want with the modules which supports (sms gw etc) Asterisk in the other hand works fine as a SIP to ISDN/CAPI Gateway and an IVR system (better and faster compared with the sems+ser solution until version 0.8.12).

Regarding the underlying code SER is a reference for any programmer out there, it is very good written and includes some excellent methods for faster execution. Asterisk as far i know is almost a one man show and the code it is not so nice written (for sip you can check the code channels/chan_sip.c and you will understand what i mean) so it is more difficult to add some staff there for the near future compared with SER which can be maintained more easily.

Sotiris

Eugene Babchin wrote:

...

Is anybody here experienced with Asterisk server and what is you experience? What pluses and minuses for SIP from IPTEL and from Asterisk? Thanks, Eugene.