What happens after METASWITCH?

Posted on 8. May 2012. by Stephen Wingfield

Metaswitch has, in many ways, helped build many of today’s Rural ISPs that have supported ‘Jack & Diane … in the Heartland’. There is no doubt that it has proven a rock solid and reliable platform to date.

The question must follow though – what next? Continue reading →

Definition of PBX Phone System

Posted on 26. April 2012. by Laura Houghton

A PRIVATE BRANCH EXCHANGE (PBX) PHONE SYSTEM is an internal telephony network that allows for inexpensive calls within a company or organization. It is an efficient form of unifying communications within an office or network of branches.

The PBX connects the private network to the Public Switched Telephone network (PSTN) for external calls. Specific outgoing lines are reserved for those calls. Continue reading →

Voice on VMware

Posted on 19. April 2012. by Laura Houghton

Bicom Systems does not support VMware as a product platform for a number of reasons including issues with time scheduling, syncing, lack of Linux addons, insufficient performance boundaries, processing delays, and more. Bicom Systems staff has compiled a list of relevant reading on the problems with supporting VMware and some potential solutions:

As discussed in the article Timekeeping In Virtual Machines, VMware is unable to exactly duplicate the timing of other physical machines. This may cause discrepancies in timekeeping and other problems.
A Study from the University of Minnesota “Does Virtualization Make Disk Scheduling Passé” highlights some real-life examples of issues with scheduling.
A paper entitled “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures” discusses the exact conditions that would be required to support VMware.
Intel’s article on Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O presents a method of using VMware as a host. This may not work for all models and would need testing.
The VMware End-User Computing Blog had a very interesting article about VMware View 5 and the way that may address some of the above issues.
Another potential solution is vSphere 5, as outlined in the whitepaper Voice over IP Performance Evaluation on VMware vSphere 5.

Hosted PBX vs Google Voice vs On Premise PBX response

Posted on 11. April 2012. by Laura Houghton

After reading Ruben on VoIP‘s article Hosted PBX vs Google Voice vs on premise PBX, I knew I had to write a response.

My first thought: Interesting and provocative in all the best senses. Oh the benefit though with hindsight. Continue reading →

Virtual Machine Technologies

Posted on 27. March 2012. by Laura Houghton

I recently received this about using Amazon EC2:

“Here’s what I’m finding… When a backup is made of the AWS instance (create AMI from instance), logging in immediately after the AMI is created will show all settings gone. Went out to the shell to look at the database, and it too was empty (except the default 1000 extension and multi-tenant PBXware default settings).

Restarting the system from the GUI, then logging in when it’s back up will show all the settings back where they belong. Didn’t do anything with licensing.

Then I did some backups, except didn’t log in immediately when it was done. Waited 20 minutes to log in, and all the settings were there.

So it’s something with the timing of how the machine instance comes up.”

Conclusion : there are real problems using Virtual Machine Technologies and one must wonder about VMware too ?

Steve Wingfield
steve@bicomsystems.com