This is the flip side of the coin–the other half of IP telephony and the systems administration dilemma. It’s for the guys like me who enter the arena knowing how to configure, operate and administer a server, with some server-level operating system on it, and who are handy with the tools of that OS. We are adept at building open-source software from the C source files and issuing commands to run the software. It’s for those of us who arrogantly look at software like Asterisk or FreeSWITCH and think, “Piece of cake. Install the build tools, configure, make, edit a config file and done! I’ve done it a million times!”
Not so fast. What the systems administrator has before him or her at that point is software that may run, but not do anything useful. And to make it work in a sensible way, it seems like you have to understand
- the whole realm of telephony hardware, including endpoints and interfaces to analog and digital telephone networks;
- networking protocols, including some fairly complicated quality-of-service configurations and NAT/firewall workarounds if you’re in such an environment;
- phone company lingo, so that you can order the right service from a provider to connect you to the outside world;
- technical voice services areas like call routing and dial plans, so that your phone system is actually usable (by your business or family);
- business functions, so that you can get the call records into the hands of the people who are going to charge the users for their usage.
And, because I am sure I am forgetting a number of other areas, I’ll tack on “and much more.”
I personally have found these areas much harder to learn than server and operating systems administration. When it comes to voice, I know what I know, and more importantly, I know what I don’t know, which is quite a lot! But the real stumper is when I don’t know what I don’t know. (You know?) In situations like that, Google doesn’t help much because I don’t have the right terminology in the search. It’s time to find the voice gurus out there, the ones who have been through the various iterations of PBXes.
I suspect that it’s easier to add server and OS administration to a full and rich voice services skill set than it is to take a systems administrator and make him/her into a competent voice person. Any commenters care to share opinions on this?
