Tuesday 28 October 2008

How to channelise PRI circuits with MGCP

MGCP doesn't properly support channelised E1 or T1 circuits, in that you can only specify circuits that have the full 30 or 23 channels respectively, rather than an E1 that only has 8 channels from the TELCO.

You can use the following guide from Cisco to get channelised PRI to work in CallManager, simply by creating a full T1 or E1 with the full amount of channels, and then use the guide to busy out the channels that aren't required/available from the TELCO. You can also use the same feature to disable individual channels when troubleshooting:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/products_configuration_example09186a008076f8d2.shtml

Monday 27 October 2008

iPhone vs HTC Touch Diamond

Hey all.

I felt compelled to write about this as I am now the (proud) owner of both phones - as work saw fit to give me a work phone!

I felt quite angered at some of the reviews i'd seen of certain presenters views on these devices, because it mainly comes down to what people think of them on first impressions. I feel it's very wrong of the presenters to review a phone in this way! Asking most people in the street about which device to go for, they'll pick the iPhone 95% of the time because it looks swish. Just because it's a nice interface and the buttons wobble in a funny way when you hold your pinky on it, does not a great phone make.

I would even go as far to say that they're pretty biased in favour of the iPhone. It may be a pretty off-the-cuff thing to say but if you think about it, loads of businesses will now go for the iPhone as a business tool based on what the media has said about it (Plus it now 'does' Activesync), and when it gets filtered down to techies like me, we'll be bitterly disappointed...

So here's some views/criticisms from a technical perspective:
  • Google Maps on the iPhone is great, but I have full blown TomTom on my HTC Touch Diamond and it works brilliantly. People keep wanting to go on about how great a free app is on the iPhone when the Diamond has had it for ages too, and has an uncomplicated method for installing better apps for the job.

  • Everything costs money on the iPhone. I went out and got Mobile Putty, a command line program, and some ping/test tools for the Diamond for free. Most important of all I got RDP for the Diamond for free too. All of the above for the iPhone costs cash.

  • The iPhone hides all the important settings. For instance I want to change the behaviour of the auto-lock feature when on battery compared to when on charge? Nada. I could have fettled with this stuff on the Diamond to my heart's content.

  • The iPhone is massive. Why on Earth does it have to be so big?

  • I don't think I can tether my iPhone to my laptop and use it as a modem - if I can it'll probably cost cash again. With the Diamond I simply plug it into the laptop, start ICS on the phone and woohoo I have HSDPA internet without running anything more than Activesync.

  • I can take the battery off my Diamond when it cocks up. The iPhone has locked up more times than my Diamond has.

  • I can't write my own apps for the iPhone easily.

  • No integration on the iPhone with OneNote.

  • The signal strength on the iPhone is simply awful. We're sending the Sales team out with these phones and all they do is complain that while the phone has lots of whizz-bang features, you can't actually make a phone call.

So there you go, a techie-biased view of the iPhone's faults.

Buy a diamond instead.