Modern Technology

VoIP really bothers me sometimes... Why is it that even after YEARS of dealing with this stuff do some things just seem to be ridiculously complicated? For instance - today a Snom 360 arrived. My goal is to get this thing ready to integrate with Star2Star. That means:

• Remote firmware upgrades
• No (little) touch provisioning
• Speed dials, monitoring, etc

I've had this thing on my desk for a little over an hour and the first requirement (firmware upgrade) cannot be met because the damn things HTTP/HTTPS server disappears a few seconds after the phone boots up. WTF? Yes, I am working on this now, I am writing this now, and I am angry now. I've been working with this stuff for years and I am AMAZED it still takes this long to get a phone working. Call this progress (no pun intended)? I don't think so. Fifty years ago (if I were alive, I suppose) I could go buy any analog phone, plug it in, and carry on with my life. Instead I'm wasting it away with this phone/computer Frankenstein sitting on my desk.

Reminds me of my car (also German - BMW). About a month ago the remotes just stopped working. After taking it in a few times over the course of a couple of weeks, they FINALLY figured out what was wrong. They replaced almost $1500 worth of parts (still under warranty, thank God) and spent days (literally) "upgrading and rebooting" various computer and software components to ensure compatibility with the new hardware. I get the car back and the computer had been completely re-initialized. Everything needs to be replaced and reprogrammed. Even after setting it up again, my Nokia E-70's bluetooth didn't work with the car. It is paired and recognized but any call results in no audio - makes it kind of tough to talk "hands free". Of course it worked quite well before the software upgrade...

Now I'm trying to figure out why the web server on the Snom keeps disappearing. Is it a bug (running firmware 7.1.8)? Some kind of "feature" (another example of German over-engineering, perhaps)? At the moment I'm leaning towards bug because this thing has got some other really interesting quirks... I changed the VLAN setting, rebooted, and still had the DHCP address from the original VLAN but it wasn't reachable. The phone had joined the new VLAN but did not obtain a new DHCP address. If this were in the field, this phone would be bricked (from a network perspective). If this were Grandstream I would understand (expect) this. From someone with a good reputation like Snom it is very disappointing!

VoIP, Bluetooth, Snom, BMW, Nokia. Are our lives REALLY any better?