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How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I have
a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped out
about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.

Look at Nortel and Avaya solutions... there is a reason they dominate the
telecom market.

"Colby Latham" <calyn-> wrote in message
news:VgDFb.14733$ hlink.net...
> How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I
have
> a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
> problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
> having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped
out
> about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
> Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.
>
>
>

Colby:

Can you explain what exactly the problem is. I haven't used
AVVID products recently but in my experience the products
worked fine for VoIP.

What exactly is your friend trying to do?

Thanks,Steve

Colby Latham wrote:
> How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I have
> a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
> problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
> having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped out
> about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
> Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.
>
>
>

My experience has been good overall. My only gripe would be upgrades. Every
upgrade I have done has been a pain in the ass.. Other than that, It has
been stable. Older Modem's used to have problems. We just used something
that had been made in the past 5 years and all works pretty well.
Personally, the only horror story's I have heard have come from other sales
reps... I have yet to hear of something that went tottaly wrong. Maybe it's
just because I don't come out of my cave that much... Who knows..
I have looked at Nortel's VOIP offerings and I'm not to impressed. I can see
with going with them in a converged system, but not a new VOIP install. Just
my opinion.



"Colby Latham" <calyn-> wrote in message
news:VgDFb.14733$ hlink.net...
> How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I
have
> a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
> problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
> having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped
out
> about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
> Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.
>
>
>

The AVVID system is not scalable accross multiple locations. In the realm
of networking, it does not network well, allowing multiple masters
(gatekeepers) to operate at full functionality. Video is such a heavy
platform, and integrating it for a small video conference utilization for
companies is okay, but when the system gets loaded down in any way, video
suffers. This was all within a
lit building. It is not so much a problem for ptp video, but when you are
recording, while communicating, with multiple streams, and guaranteeing Qos,
there is a problem. With VoIP, Cisco does not support multiple platforms,
gateways very well. It seems as though they thought they could rule the
VoIP world like they do the data world, and supportting H.323 and SIP on any
advanced level was an afterthought. Plus, if Cisco does not have your
technology, they buy your company theology; support is impossible. Multiple
teams from multiple companies came together to design this thing, only
understanding their small part. Customization is expensive because it is so
time consuming. One engineer has to get approval from 4 other engineers
from four other subsidiaries before he makes a change to the code. I just
want to know what kind of time frame before they get this under control. I
would hate to go with a company that eventually gets bought by them, only to
lose support of the product I just bought.

"Steve Blair" <> wrote in message
news:bs7eo0$e3fq$...
>
> Colby:
>
> Can you explain what exactly the problem is. I haven't used
> AVVID products recently but in my experience the products
> worked fine for VoIP.
>
> What exactly is your friend trying to do?
>
> Thanks,Steve
>
> Colby Latham wrote:
> > How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I
have
> > a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
> > problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
> > having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped
out
> > about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
> > Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.
> >
> >
> >

> How has been everyone else's experience with AVVID, Cisco's design. I
have
> a friend within a news channel in Oklahoma, and they continually have
> problems. SBC's Cisco installation for the city of Dallas seems to be
> having quite a bit of trouble, in addition to Transcom, which has ripped
out
> about $10mil, 50,000 ports of Cisco. I am looking at manufacturers like
> Sysmaster. They haven't made a name, but they seem to work much better.

We were all set up and certified as an AVVID (Call Manager/Unity) reseller
and then dropped it for a combination of Nortel BCM for the small and Mitel
3300 for the large. I don't hear much about Mitel on this group but they've
been a big player in the traditional PBX market for a very long time. The
only drawback, compared to Cisco's CM, that I've found is that since the TDM
gateway is connected to the 3300 ICP and not directly to an Ethernet port
you can't have a remote PSTN trunk without a second controller. The second
controller doesn't cost all that much so it's no big deal if the remote site
is of any real size, but if it's just 12 or so phones it can look a bit
high. We often put these is with a Cisco infrastructure (Mitel doesn't do
routers/switches) and it works great. Mitel even built it to be compatible
with the Cisco PoE. Go with the best, Mitel does great phone systems but no
LAN/WAN, Cisco is the best LAN/WAN but a bit behind on the PBX side.