Pete Mueller <pete@privateconnect.com> wrote:
There is a need for ensuring that calls do not drop, but we must balance that with the cost of making the system redundant. We took some small, inexpensive measures, to improve our odds, but we could spend a lot more, for basically nothing more than giving some client a warm fuzzy.
I think this is one area where, as indicated earlier in the thread, a lot of development effort would be needed to obtain that extra degree of reliability.
From a broader perspective, the question is whether, over the next decade or two, VoIP can compete with the PSTN in reliability. My (limited) understanding is that PSTN equipment typically achieves 99.99999% uptime, and if VoIP systems are going to play in that arena, it would be desirable for free/open-source software to do so.
If FreeSWITCH itself is working correctly, all you need is a hardware failure or a kernel panic or a network outage to drop that up-time substantially, not to mention dropping the calls as well, which I've never experienced as a user of the PSTN due to equipment at the telephone exchange. I have, however, experienced some rather low-quality PSTN calls over international lines, which have the added disadvantage of being expensive to use.