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Hybrid Spins, Price cuts and more…
Jan 13th
I really like marketing spins, there is nothing more amuzing than a good marketing spin – especially when its being performed by a big company. Israel, as much as I don’t like admiting it, is one of the world’s biggest spin experts, especially when it comes to technology and marketing. One of my best friends used to work as a marketing manager at a high-tech company. According to him: “We can take each and every product of ours and resell it as 5 different products, it all depends on the customer required spin that we need to display!” – well, putting marketing aside and going back to technology, Sangoma recently announced 2 new Hybrid interface boards for Asterisk.
The boards are called: “B600″ and “FlexBRI”. Let us examine the spec on these:
Sangoma B600 Board
The Sangoma B600 board boasts 4 Analog FXO interface and a single FXS interface. The combo is very interesting, as it enables a small office to utilize up to 4 inbound analog trunks, while connecting their FAX machine directly to the board itself, allowing for better fax transmission without relying on T38 and other Fax-Over-IP methodologies.
In general, I believe that the card density and idea is good. While many people believe that Sangoma competes head-on with Digium, I believe that this product has nothing to do with the Digium/Sangoma race. In my view, this board actually tackles the same niche market as the PIKA WARP appliance, as it boasts a similar perspective in terms of connectivity. I don’t believe this is a spin, as this product has a valid market share, especially in upcoming markets such as Africa. With a boasting price of around the 400US$ mark, I believe the card will gain popularity with the small TrixBox/Elastix/PBX-in-a-flash fly-by-night integrator scene, as it fits that niche fairly well.
Sangoma FlexBRI
Ok, the Sangoma FlexBRI card, at least from where I’m standing, in nothing but a worthless spin. It boasts 4 BRI interfaces and 2 analog interfaces (FXO or FXS). Why do I call it a spin? well, simply because I hadn’t seen a BRI installation in the past 4 years. I figure that Sangoma in now tackling the German market, especially the one being catered by the card made by Junghanns, however, these provide a fairly strange combo. In any case, the niche here is very much target to a select number of countries in the EU, so the validity of this product in the world is close to null – thus, I call this one a pure spin. The marketed price is yet to be revealed, however, judging from the density and the functionality of such a card, I’m not sure its price will allow it to be a valid market option. In addition, with the PIKA WARP ISDN appliance that is due to be out later this year, there is a high chance that this product’s voice will be nulled by an appliance of same density and easier integration.
Yeastar YE110 – Single Span E1/T1/J1
Yeastar is a chinese manufacturer, making Asterisk compatible boards for the Analog market. The YE110 is their first attempt at approaching the highly growing market of the E1/T1 circuits market. According to the website, the YE110 is fully compatible with the Zaptel drivers, thus, it doesn’t require any driver patches – which is a wonderful thing. We still have to learn about the stability and capabilities of this card, however, as it uses a similar chipset to the old Digium TE110P card, I suspect we’ll notice similar performance and capabilities – yet to be seen.
PhonicEQ cuts price by almost 40%
PhonicEQ had cut their prices by almost 40%, across their entire product line. Now, I admit that I’ve used their products and I was fairly happy for a while – however, as Zaptel versions progressed and Zaptel turned into DAHDI, PhonicEQ didn’t issue out any new drivers and updates – so I had to patch my own versions of the driver.
In my view, PhonicEQ cards needs to regarded as: “The poor man’s Asterisk card” – if you can’t afford anything else, then go with PhonicEQ. You’re probably wondering why I’m saying that, after all, everybody who knows me knows that I’m strongly affiliated with Digium. Well, when I started my business, I couldn’t afford a Digium card, even used cards were fairly expensive, I have a distinct issue with the Sangoma distributor in Israel (so I’ll never use Sangoma) and PhonicEQ seemed like a good choice at the time. I purchased the card, only to realize that I need to massively patch Zaptel in order to get it to work (something that wasn’t said on the site). For me, patching Zaptel and Asterisk isn’t anything new, so it took me about 30 minutes and I was up and running, no problem. However, for most Asterisk users, this may be a slightly more advanced task than others. In any case, PhonicEQ is still considered in my book as “The poor man’s Asterisk card” – use it only if you have no other choice.
ITExpo 2009 – Miami Beach, Florida
Well, it’s now official, I’ll be lecturing at ITExpo about utilizing Asterisk and VMWARE as a dialer framework for high-speed dialer services. If you will be in Miami for the conference and you’d like to meet, just look me up. I’ll be landing on the 2nd, so I guess i’ll only be up and running (pending jet-lag) on the 5th. C’ya all there …
A recent post on the Asterisk-Biz list
Jan 7th
This morning, I was greeted with the following message from the Asterisk-BIZ mailing list:
I have seen there are so many Palestine children have been killed in the Irasel-Palestine collide from the news, I am so sad about this, how do you think of this war created by Irasel army, I hate war, hate butcher, why UN discard this war, why Arabia countries do not union to oppose Irasel invasion. Who has been making the mistake in this war, Irasel? or Palestine?
But children have no any mistake.
Could you please kindly your comments? -- andy andyspr@gmail.com
In general, this kind of message that is not related to the mailing would have simply been discarded by the participants, however, some of the people decided to comment. While most people commented with: “SPAM!” or “This is an Asterisk list, not a political list” – some commented with some interesting remarks.
Before I go into these, I must say the following: While I’m considered a left winged man who truly believes in the need and possibility of peace and harmony between Israelis and Arabs – I also have family living in Sderot, Ashkelon and other locations – currently being targeted by the Hamas.
Mr. Savinovich (amazing proximity to my last name – isn’t it) commented:
1) Israelites don't know what Obama's doctrine will be, but their best bet is that he is really muslim friendly, so they are better off clearing up as much as possible before Jan 20. The rocket's thing, is an excuse.
2) Having said that, the Palestinians really do throw lots and lots of rockets to innocent civilians in Israel, and they really got to be stopped for good. Then again, I am not the one living in poverty in gaza with 2 million people in 150 square km."
Well, in regards to 1, the rockets can be deemed an excuse – I admit to that. However, imagine that the US or the UK would have had a portion of their border, constantly being targeted day and night. 250,000 people are under constant threat (in US numbers that would be around 5 million people). In the terror attack of 9/11, the US basically sent thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan, and later on, send thousands of soldiers to Iraq – all the name of “Protecting the world from terror”. True, the attacks from the Gaza strip pose a threat to the southarn parts of Israel (currently expanding to the center of Israel) – however, it is still a threat. I totally disagree with both sides in terms of the way they approach the problems, however, I can’t say that I don’t understand both parts of the equation.
Mr. Argov of Tikal Networks, and Israeli Asterisk integration company commented:
"Because Hamas terrorist are firing rockets on Israeli children from schools and civilian houses."
Well, the tactic of using civilians as human shields is a well know tactic in Guerrilla warfare. The difference here is this, Hamas is firing rockets directly into civiliant oriented areas, in the hope to hit something and show themselves as heroes. Hamas stores their weapons and ammunition within the civilian population of the Gaza strip, knowing for fact that they are putting their people in harms way.
One of the people on the list I truly admire is Rehan Allah Wala, who commented:
hi Andy
I am sorry that people are making fun of you on this mailing list,
The reason being that it is not happening in their own back yard
However the problem is caused due to many reasons i guess, and to Isreali's it is war and they are taking the killing of childrens as part of the war.
Do remember that war is when 2 parties can fight, where as in this case it is one sided
Remember that Isreal says that Hamas sends rockets to Isreal, however do remember that all water, electricity, grain, food, comes from Isreal to Gaza, and it is probabbly like a Future war movie from Hollywood how they are attacking on Isreal out of desperation, when for weeks power is cut on them.
I am very sure both sides are to blame, and it however should be solved by the Big Boys asap , including US and China, I hope Mr Obama will take this issue very very seriously and try to finally bring peace and harmony to the human kind, as if it can not be done in this hugely connected world, it probabbly can never be done.
Some Facts on Gaza on gaza SHOULD be read by all, as I think in today's connected world we all are responsible to end this conflict between the 2 parties.
I totally agree with the fact that both parties carry the blame, however, claiming that the fighting is one sided is untrue. It is true that Israel has a tactical advantage, after all, it does have a modern army. However, in the ground, when troops are going into the strip, Hamas has the upper hand – knowing the terrain and knowing the weak spots and strong spots of each location. The Israeli army is doing what it was trained to do, fight the battle, trying to suffer as low as possible casualties as possible on all sides.
It is true that Israel provides most (if not all) of the Palestinian authority’s infrastructure, be it power, water, telephony and more. The desperation is on both sides of the conflict, Israel is tired, fed up, angry and disappointed that almost any type of action it takes to bring peace to the area fails each time – every time due to the other side’s inability to live up to their part of the agreement. On the other side, the people from the Gaza strip are equally desperate. I don’t know exactly what is the nature of desperation, but I can only imagine. At the end of the day, what does a man want? to wake up in the morning, go to work, earn a decent salary, come back home and enjoy life with his family. Currently, neither sides is able to do so.
I honestly believe that peace in the ME is a possibility, more than a possiblity, it’s a MUST! We are all paying the costs here, Israeli families who had lost their sons and fathers over the year, Palestinian families who had lost the same, families who were teared to shreads by differences in political views and god know what.
I hope this conflict will end soon, it’s not serving any value to any side at this point.
Open Source has bad reputation in Israel!
Dec 28th
The Open Source movement had been in existence since the 60′s, and we can surely find its roots somewhere along the hippie culture and movement. While Free-Love had transcended to Free-Code, or to be more exact – Free-Knowledge, the question of the sources for your Open Source is still questionable. Comparing it with the Sixties, it’s easy to compare the various “Free-Love” movements with the various “Open Source Paradigms” of today. While GPL, BSD, MPL, ZPL and others preach for Open Source adaptation – each one took a different path.
While the paths differ, but the end result is more or less the same, all suffer from a serious lack – a bad reputation. While in the early 2000, Open Source usually meant – highly stable, state of the art technology, increased ROI, lowered TCO and most importantly for many – COOL. Coming 2008, Open Source is starting to get a bad rep, due to the ever increasing simplicity of entering the Open Source world.
I started using Linux somewhere around 1994. My first Linux distribution was a Slackware, with a kernel of 1.0.28 – I needed 99 floppy disks in order to install the system, and it took me a few hours to do so. However, I can’t forget my amazement at seeing the X-Windows environment booting up, and more than that, being completely overwhelmed with the fact that I have a fully functional UNIX environment in my house, just like the one I had in my Army office. Now, I basically had no one to teach me this new environment, so, I had to take my UNIX skills (Solaris and AIX) and adopt to Slackware Linux – it took me a few weeks to get around, but I got around and stuck to it ever since.
Now, let’s jump 14 years forward in time. The year is 2008, a graphic based environment for Linux is no longer a myth and it is getting better and better by the day. People are starting to adopt Linux beyond the academic and the ISP market sectors, slowly integrating Linux based distributions (Mandriva, Ubutnu) on to their desktops and notebooks. Linux is become simple and appealing to everybody.
When something becomes easy to use, people make good use of it – a good example is the Asterisk project. Projects such as TrixBox (AKA: AsteriskAtHome), PBXinaFlash, AsteriskNOW and others had made Asterisk into a simple installation product, that can be installed and managed by any half-decent sysadmin. Problem is, while a half-decent sysadmin will do a fair job of maintaining the system, a shitty sysadmin will crap everything to hell. But hell, that is true for almost anything related to computers or technology – there’s nothing new here! Well, there is nothing new and everything is now new. People who were more or less selling shoes 3 years, then 2 years decided to sell ISP routers, then a year ago started selling IP phones, are now selling Asterisk based systems – using these distibutions, while having no idea what they are selling or promoting. For these people, Asterisk is nothing more beyond FreePBX – once encountering deeper issues, will simply abandon the customer – leaving the Open Source product with a bad rap with the, now disappointed, customer.
I want to believe that other places in the world are different, I want to believe that Israel will reach a point in time when this doesn’t happen – however, I guess that only time will tell and I surely hope this will change in Israel.
Get Ready – isrAsterisk 2009 is coming
Dec 21st
It’s been WAY TOO LONG, since isrAsterisk 2007. On January 2007, the first ever Asterisk convention took place in Israel, since then, nothing had really happend in Israel – in terms of community events. It’s high time to have another one, and hopefully, get the ball rolling into a state where we will have one each year.
Unlike the previous event, which was sponsored and controlled fully by Atelis (as no other Asterisk vendor in Israel showed willingness to pitch in) – this event is a true community event. The purpose of the event is to bring the Israeli community into a single location for a few hours, talk about Asterisk, talk about the future of Asterisk, learn from the community and most importantly – meet with the people behind the scenes of the Asterisk community in Israel.
I really hope that this time round we’ll be able to get more funding, as isrAsterisk 2008 never took place due to lack of funding. Who knows, maybe Digium would be willing to add some funds to the fund raiser on the right, and make things easier and faster 
FBI Claims Asterisk is unsafe – what a load of bull
Dec 9th
After seeing well too many movies about the US and after visiting the US for a few times, many people tend to disrespect the FBI in the USA. While I have much respect for most law enforcement agencies, wherever these are located in the world, I must admit, that the latest warning from the FBI regarding Asterisk borderlines pure hystria and complete misunderstanding of the actual issue.
On Dec 8th, the FBI had issued the following warning:
New Technique Utilizing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) Systems To Conduct Vishing Attacks
The FBI has received information concerning a new technique used to conduct vishingi attacks. The recent attacks were conducted by hackers exploiting a security vulnerability in Asterisk software. Asterisk is free and widely used software developed to integrate PBXii systems with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), digital Internet voice calling services; however, early versions of the Asterisk software are known to have a vulnerability. The vulnerability can be exploited by cyber criminals to use the system as an auto dialer, generating thousands of vishing telephone calls to consumers within one hour.
http://www.ic3.gov/media/2008/081205-2.aspx
Now, after a full weekend of frenzy trying to understand the cryptic warning the IC3 had issues, it was gathered that it is referring to an old time bug, related to Asterisk distributions prior to 1.4.18. Being familiar with the particular bug and the exploitation method – I can say this: They surely have no idea what they are talking about!
The exploitation of the bug requires several pre-requirements:
- A certain IAX2 configuration has to be deployed
- A certain version of Asterisk must be used
- A certain form of dialplan has to be existing
- You Asterisk server needs to be available on the Internet
Now, even when these 4 are met, the exploitation isn’t all that simple and that straight forward. So, in other words, if you are not utilizing any of the above, you can rest assured that your system is fine. In any case, any system is as secured as the dumbest user (in our case developer/sysamdin) who uses it.
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