I can't help but notice that RonR has been absent from the OBi Forum for some time. Has he been banned from the forum? Maybe Michigan Telephone (asxhole) can shed some light on this issue, since he has waged a one-man war to have RonR ban from this forum. RonR has been one of the most helpful individual on this forum and despite what one envious/buffoon individual thinks, has done a lot the promotion of the OBi ATA. It would be a shame if RonR is no longer allowed to provide support to the masses.
RFord,
I think you are not the only one to notice that RonR was MIA. I had considered putting up a similar thread, however I didn't want to be the first to start something again that might be of a controversial nature. I've mentioned several times before that RonR was providing product support that OBihai could not reproduce with any amount of money.
This website and this forum specifically is the public face of the product. This is probably one of the first places people come to visit before they make the decision to purchase the product. I think that if OBihai has any success with their product, it will be as a result of the following combination:
Good product (On going effort to stay on top. Costs money)
Good reviews (Write once, referred to often. Usually free, or cheap for the cost of a donated unit)
Good internal product support (On going effort to stay on top. Cost money)
Good user based product support (On going effort. Free. Generously offered by enthusiasts. Not acknowledged by product vendor, even taken for granted)
RonR was generous with his time. I still don't understand what his interest was in spending the countless hours helping people on this forum. I believe that he was one of the contributors in the success of this product in the early stages of it's product life. How to quantify "his" contribution to this success is impossible to say with certainty. I've mentioned this before, I wish I had an employee that was as talented and passionate as him in my business.
I've been mostly a reader on forums. I usually don't take an interest in contributing because I couldn't be bothered unless I feel a good vibe in the community. I've noticed lately that the quality and quantity of the support has gone down. If you have observed, users are feeling the need to bump their threads in an attempt to get their issues noticed. The impression of user isolation, abandonment, whatever you may want to call it is starting to take root. I would suggest that the OBihai support people need to pick up the slack because you guys had it far too easy for the last couple of years.
OBihai was fortunate to have the stars aligned in their favor after building the better mouse trap. Any mouse trap, no matter how good it may be, will always need some Buzz to get it noticed and advance. Perhaps they have enough momentum behind them now that they can ride the wave without the help of generous contributors.
I hope RonR pulls a MichiganTelephone and rejoins the community in the near future. At least his absence was not caused by any meltdown. None that I noticed anyway.
QBZappy,
Well said! I have never seen better explanations of dial plans and digit maps than those provided by RonR. I don't blame him for taking offence and walking away, but I too am hoping for a swift return any time soon.
Ianobi
Maybe he ran off with Carmen Sandiego.
Yeah, I know, it's a Tuesday after a Monday.
I think I spotted him on Google Street view doing his favorite activity. Anyone spot him elsewhere?
He might also be on vacation (people take those now and then). This should be seen as an opportunity to, "get our game on". After all depending upon one person can cause problems down the line. Let's say he got hit by a bus? Then what?
Well I for one would nominate infin8loop, as honorary resident guru until the mystery of RonR is better understood. Anyone else care to second it. :D
RonR vacation photo...
(http://infin8loop.freevar.com/sharedphotos/RonR_working_on_a_dialplan.jpg)
RonR working on a dial plan
Quote from: QBZappy on June 05, 2012, 11:25:45 AM
Well I for one would nominate infin8loop, as honorary resident guru until the mystery of RonR is better understood. Anyone else care to second it. :D
Funny Canadian. I'm here for comic relief only! I cut and paste
my dial plans from RonR posts.
LOL
Quote from: RFord on June 05, 2012, 05:51:40 AM
I can't help but notice that RonR has been absent from the OBi Forum for some time. Has he been banned from the forum? Maybe Michigan Telephone (asxhole) can shed some light on this issue, since he has waged a one-man war to have RonR ban from this forum.
I will admit that in his early days on this forum I thought he should be banned, simply because back then he was so inconsiderate to others, in my personal opinion. However, in my opinion he got better about that over time, and for the last few months my primary objection to him has been that I thought he was giving bad advice to new users, by telling them not to use the OBiTALK portal to configure their devices. Then he got on this kick about the non-existent (for all practical purposes) "back door" in Obihai devices, and went badmouthing Obihai on BroadbandReports.com's VoIP forum. I suspect it was that last act, far more than anything I said, that took him out of the good graces of the people at OBiHAI. I did think, and still think, that it was pretty rotten of him to try and act as the "guru" in this forum, but go over there and try to scare a certain percentage of people into not buying an Obihai device. I cannot even fathom why he did that; it totally mystifies me why he would do such a thing given that so many people seemed to admire and respect him here.
When I realized he hadn't posted in a few days I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone accused me of driving him away. I rather doubt that, because all indications were that he totally ignored my posts. At least he never bothered to respond directly to anything I said. Even when I created a thread where people could post their reasons for using or not using the portal, and I tried to make it as neutral as possible, he ignored that opportunity to explain his reasons (maybe he really didn't have any good reasons, but if that was the case, that makes it even worse that he kept discouraging people from using the portal).
I have mixed feelings about him leaving. On the one hand, I realize that if he does not come back, we have all lost a valuable resource when it comes to explaining Obihai dial plans. On the other hand, I feel that we all may have become too dependent on him to explain those to us. If he had not been around in the early days, Obihai might have felt a bit more pressure to publish documentation that explained exactly how the dial plans work, in language that more of us could actually understand. But for so many months, we've all become accustomed to letting him spoon-feed us dial plans. To paraphrase the old saying, we have been begging him for fish, and he's been giving us the fish, instead of teaching us how to fish. He'd give us dial plans but rarely if ever explain why they needed to be done in a certain way. I don't fault him for that; he wasn't being paid to be our teacher. But now we are caught in a situation where he's not around, and we simply don't know why — you can blame me, you can blame Obihai, or you can blame it on the rain, but we actually have no clue as to why he's been MIA. It would have been nice if he'd posted some sort of note explaining that he was leaving, or going on vacation, or whatever, but perhaps he was unable to do that for some reason (and I think we all hope that nothing seriously bad has happened to him).
The flip side of this is that maybe more of us will be forced to figure out how the dial plans work, or maybe Obihai will get enough complaints (or even start losing sales) to inspire them to figure out some way to simplify the creation of more complicated dial plans. Certainly, the portal could be enhanced to allow some common tasks (like sending numbers matching certain pattern(s) to a different SP than the default). I will freely admit that I do not understand the dial plans the way he did, but that didn't stop me from performing a few basic modifications to get my devices working the way I want them to. It actually took me weeks to come up with a "recipe" that works as I want it to, but the thing is, I completely understand what it's doing and why it works, which I wouldn't if I'd just had him create a dial plan for me. That doesn't mean I can tell anyone else how to create a dial plan (unless they want to do EXACTLY the same thing I'm doing) but it does mean that if a person does a little digging, both in this forum and in Obihai's documentation, it is possible to figure this stuff out.
Finally, I will say that this is not the first time I have seen this sort of thing happen. As an example, without naming names, I can think of another situation where, in a forum for a particular piece of VoIP software, one guy because the "resident expert" but sometimes managed to tick off other forum participants. He held that position for many months, and then one day got into some kind of tiff with the forum moderators and just up and left (at least he posted a farewell message of sorts). I just get a really bad feeling when I see one person becoming the "resident guru" in a forum, particularly when he has a bit of an attitude, because sometimes these guys just have a tendency to up and leave. I won't try to psychoanalyze the situation because I'm not qualified to do that, but just saying this isn't the first time I've seen a "resident guru" up and quit (if that is indeed what happened here, and again, we just don't know at this point).
Everything in this post is solely my opinion, and nothing here should be taken as a statement of fact. Don't consider me a "reliable source" on anything, because I know as little about what actually happened as the rest of you.
I noticed immediately that RonR left the forum- the most knowledgeable and helpful person here- the usefulness of the forum dropped by 75% and the attractivity of Obi products took a nose dive. It is a result of a combined witch hunt by one forum member here and the Obi forum moderators who failed to understand that they owed Ron R a lot and , as I wrote before, they should have paid him. Considered the constant hostility he encountered it is rather surprising that he did not give up earlier.
I do not believe that anyone else will be able and especially willing to replace him- I certainly will not buy additional equipment, engage a helper and spend next 3 month 60 hours a week to get where he was and then spend several hours a day doing customer service for the forum members.
We can only pray that Obihai steps up to the plate and provides the service he did- at which moment they would realize how much money he saved them, but I am not optimistic here.
See what happens.
Quote from: carl on June 05, 2012, 05:11:55 PM
I noticed immediately that RonR left the forum- the most knowledgeable and helpful person here- the usefulness of the forum dropped by 75% and the attractivity of Obi products took a nose dive. It is a result of a combined witch hunt by one forum member here and the Obi forum moderators who failed to understand that they owed Ron R a lot and , as I wrote before, they should have paid him.
Well, Carl, I STILL disagree with you. You can hate me all you want, but my opinion is still that no company in their right mind would ever hire someone who was on another forum airing their gripes and generally backstabbing the company. Furthermore, while I am not saying this is what happened here (since I obviously have no way of knowing what's going on in someone else's head), I do think that when people receive
too many complements it tends to go to their head, and they start to think they are more invaluable than they really are, and that can cause them to behave badly. And that, in turn, can actually encourage them to think that if they up and leave, it will show those f***er's just how valuable they really were. So, your posts (and those of others who may have bestowed just a little too much admiration)
might actually have been as much behind his decision to leave (if, indeed, that's what he's decided) as anything I wrote. But we have no way of knowing, because he never bothered to tell anyone why he left, if he's left.
Now, if you consider me pointing out that he was dissing Obihai on BroadbandReports.com, or that he was telling new users not to use the OBITALK portal, some sort of a "witch hunt", then what can I say? You hate me, you won't buy any more Obihai products, you refuse to put any time into learning Obihai dial plans, whatever. Guess what, the sun will still rise tomorrow and life will go on, I don't and won't care what you think of me, and if Obihai loses a few sales to you they'll doubtless make many more to people who either want to use the devices in more simple ways (that can be configured from the portal) or who are actually willing to try to learn this stuff for themselves, instead of relying on one person. Maybe in a year or two, there will be several people here who understand this stuff, not just one person with an attitude and maybe an axe or two to grind. Or maybe Obihai will do a bit more work on their portal, so there won't be as much of a need for a "resident guru" to crank out dial plans for users.
Anyway, I still strongly disagree with you and if you want to think I'm the world's biggest ass, you just go right ahead, because I honestly couldn't care less. I've never in my life tried to win any popularity contests, and I'm not about to start now. There's still a part of me that thinks that maybe we'd have all been better off if he'd never even started posting here, because then we might have developed a larger group of "experts", and many more of us would have at least rudimentary knowledge of dial plans and how they work.
RonR was great at trying to help folks. His "immediate" answers were very welcome. Seems that MT decided he should be the go to guy on this forum, even though he came very late, and was pretty much ignored. Attacking RonR was in very poor taste. And no MT, I really don't need a 5 paragraph explanation of why you did this as I really don't care. One of the main reasons I came to this forum was because everyone was so helpful and there was no petty childish computer nerd flaming going on. That all changed with you MT. I am now leaving this forum for good as it has now changed.
Quote from: dudlee on June 05, 2012, 09:42:42 PMSeems that MT decided he should be the go to guy on this forum, even though he came very late, and was pretty much ignored.
WTF? Where did you get the idea that I wanted to be the "go to guy?" That is a role I most certainly
do not want, never wanted, and am not in any way qualified to hold. Just because I didn't think it was good for someone else to have that role does not for a minute mean I wanted it... in fact, that would be the last thing I would want; it's way too much responsibility for one thing, and for another, due to my age and failing memory I can't even remember half this stuff from one day to the next.
In fact, in case you haven't noticed, when I do try to answer questions I'm probably wrong more often than I'm right. We have several "experts" on this forum (and I wish we had more) but I don't really consider myself one of them!
After thinking about this a bit, and re-reading the comments above where I am being attacked over RonR's leaving (IF he left, and is not just on vacation or something), despite any evidence whatsoever that anything I said or did actually had anything to do with his absence, I have decided that there's no reason I should stick around either. While I REALLY don't give a sh*t what anyone thinks of me, I have a better use for my time than trying to explain anything to people who are of this mindset. Frankly, I'm getting sick of writing altogether, and put my blog on hiatus yesterday. I'm getting old and tired, and am starting to just not care about anything anymore.
There are much younger and smarter people than I on this forum, and I hope some of them will pick up the mantle and become the future "resident experts", but if I stick around, there will always be people like dudlee who think that I chased RonR off because I wanted to take his place, which was NEVER what I wanted. Some of you won't believe that and I still don't care. Right now my current mood is sort of "f--- everybody" although I realize not everyone deserves it. Goodbye, good luck, and maybe we will meet again in another lifetime.
And on a more positive note, starting with the Obihai documentation. It seems some culling through old posts, and pooling of knowledge and expertise, especially were the documentation is either incomplete, or just plain wrong would be a good step forward.
I seriously thought RonR was a paidmember of Obitalk providing actual support. His posts were extremely detailed and very technical. Most importantly, whatever he provided actually worked!
I knew he was gone the day I posted in a thread regarding 1-800 numbers and ideaSIP. He will surely be missed.
Thankfully Obitalk was easy to set up, but I feel sorry for people that will run into problems and have more technical questions to ask. Before, I would see threads with a question, a single reply by RonR, and another reply with "Thanks!". Gone are those days...
Quote from: MichiganTelephone on June 05, 2012, 08:49:28 PM
Quote from: carl on June 05, 2012, 05:11:55 PM
.
Well, Carl, I STILL disagree with you. You can hate me all you want, but my opinion is still that no company in their right mind would ever hire someone who was on another forum airing their gripes and generally backstabbing the company. Furthermore, while I am not saying this is what happened here (since I obviously have no way of knowing what's going on in someone else's head), I do think that when people receive too many complements it tends to go to their head, and they start to think they are more invaluable than they really are, and that can cause them to behave badly. And that, in turn, can actually encourage them to think that if they up and leave, it will show those f***er's just how valuable they really were. So, your posts (and those of others who may have bestowed just a little too much admiration) might actually have been as much behind his decision to leave (if, indeed, that's what he's decided) as anything I wrote. But we have no way of knowing, because he never bothered to tell anyone why he left, if he's left.
Now, if you consider me pointing out that he was dissing Obihai on BroadbandReports.com, or that he was telling new users not to use the OBITALK portal, some sort of a "witch hunt", then what can I say? You hate me, you won't buy any more Obihai products, you refuse to put any time into learning Obihai dial plans, whatever. Guess what, the sun will still rise tomorrow and life will go on, I don't and won't care what you think of me, and if Obihai loses a few sales to you they'll doubtless make many more to people who either want to use the devices in more simple ways (that can be configured from the portal) or who are actually willing to try to learn this stuff for themselves, instead of relying on one person. Maybe in a year or two, there will be several people here who understand this stuff, not just one person with an attitude and maybe an axe or two to grind. Or maybe Obihai will do a bit more work on their portal, so there won't be as much of a need for a "resident guru" to crank out dial plans for users.
Anyway, I still strongly disagree with you and if you want to think I'm the world's biggest ass, you just go right ahead, because I honestly couldn't care less. I've never in my life tried to win any popularity contests, and I'm not about to start now. There's still a part of me that thinks that maybe we'd have all been better off if he'd never even started posting here, because then we might have developed a larger group of "experts", and many more of us would have at least rudimentary knowledge of dial plans and how they work.
MT: Until now, I have tried to avoid anything what might have been interpreted as a personal attack on you but this time I am making an exception. BTW for the last time as well, because I am not in business fixing pathological personalities.
Where, for heaven's sake, did I ever said that I hate Obi ?? Just the opposite, on this and all other forums/rating sites I was always very positive about the device and company. Where did I say that I would not buy any more products from them??
Where did I ever " compliment RonR too much "?? I always simply thanked him whenever he gave me valuable advice( basic manners some people miss) but that's all, I only came to his defense late in the witch hunt.
And all this twisting, insinuations, lies and propaganda.
I do not hate you, MT. You should read all your posts and hate yourself. If RonR got hit by a truck, we would be in the same place now regardless what you( or Obi chat mods) did.
No, we would not have any expert team here if he never was on the forum. Because even the few people who might be willing and able to get his level of knowledge will not provide a near real time customer service round the clock.
But what MAY have happened and what MAY happen in the future that Obihai starts seriously reconsidering their approach to customer support and cooperation with SIP providers if and when they realize that this is hurting their sales , an issue especially critical should Google choose to discontinue or charge for GV. Because it hurts already now, not with me but with other people who do not have time for hassle. But those are issues for a different thread. ::)
I'm new here and was reading this forum before my purchase of a OBi100, OBi110 & two OBi202's plus a WiFi adapter over the last 3 to 4 weeks. I found the advice of both RonR and MichiganTelephone to be usefull and they also always seemed to be the members that always had a quick answer.
Now that the two of them seem to have run each other off from this forum.
I can only hope that OBi themselves start providing support on this forum. after all this is not a third party forum. it is owned and run by OBI. When I first started looking at OBi products and reading this forum I though it was a 3rd party site due to the lack of OBi employees answering these post.
I know company run forums are the first place I look for quick support. I know I have posted a few questions here and OBi employees have never responded, much less to most of the post I've read here.
They are really lax on release notes on firmware if they provide any at all, I've seen two for the OBi202 over the last two weeks and can only guess what they are suppose to address, I know I prefer not to do firmware updates unless I'm having a know issue that is addressed by the firmware or the firmware has some new features that I just can not do without. but without release notes. who knows what they are for and if my device bricks over some firmware update that I may have not needed. how will OBi address that issue?
Good bye MT. Better late than never.
On a different note, I think we all should bring peace and stop attacking one another. Both Ron and MT has provided valuable resources to the forum and loosing both of them is not good for the community.
Let's all just let loose the ego and bring peace!
RonR, if you are reading this...
Please come back, we really need you.
You have been a massive help to all of us.
MT's only advice to me for a problem was "donate your adapter to a homeless shelter", while I've probably read over 50 of the most popular posts on this forum and the ONLY posts that have helped me set up decent dial plans from Ron and they treated him like SH*T on this forum.......doubtful he's on vacation Obihai bit the hand that was feeding them (we the PAYING users) and one of the few people on this forum keeping their paying users on their devices.....all without actually PAYING him.....well I guess they did pay him when they publically stripped him of his beta tester denotation, right?
Without Ron on this forum, lets hope they don't introduce firmware with newer more complex routing features or they might actually have to HIRE him.
What I find funny, we have no one from obahi support answering user questions. I purchased the device, but did not know support was non existent.
I'm not sure that is an accurate statement that support is non-existent. They do respond to support request directed at them. Let's face it: When RonR was actively participating on this forum, he (and a few others) was/were more or less serving the role as the de facto OBi Support. IMHO, RonR new more about the product than OBi personnel. He was the individual that came up with a number of clever schemes using the OBi product.
Quote from: maddawg on June 12, 2012, 06:01:47 AM
What I find funny, we have no one from obahi support answering user questions. I purchased the device, but did not know support was non existent.
Quote from: RFord on June 12, 2012, 08:30:46 AM
I'm not sure that is an accurate statement that support is non-existent. They do respond to support request directed at them.
Quote from: maddawg on June 12, 2012, 06:01:47 AM
I cannot fully agree with that. As I stated in one of the postings, they are pretty responsive whenever you have any problem with the device itself. But they were never really helpful with configuration issues ( and I also suspect that Ron knew about it more than they did).
Having had my device for almost 6 months, I can safely say that without this forum I would have returned it. OBi's support is virtually non-existent, and their communication (i.e. like what happened with the GoogleVoice outage) is AWFUL. I can't recommend their device to anyone without the caveat of "IF you're prepared to have to troubleshoot things yourself and seek help on the forums". I will state for the record that if RonR hadn't answered my questions this box would have gone back. No ifs, ands, or buts. In my opinion, the OBi products are not ready for mass distribution until they ramp up their support big time. It's a solution for techies. I would never consider recommending it for a non-techie.
If RonR has left, or been made to leave, that's unfortunate. If it's because he "dissed" OBi on other forums, he should have used a different username... :D
There are certainly other people on this forum with good knowledge, I'll call out Stewart as one, but no one answered questions as prolifically as RonR.
Quote from: Rick on June 19, 2012, 12:00:42 PM
Having had my device for almost 6 months, I can safely say that without this forum I would have returned it. OBi's support is virtually non-existent, and their communication (i.e. like what happened with the GoogleVoice outage) is AWFUL. I can't recommend their device to anyone without the caveat of "IF you're prepared to have to troubleshoot things yourself and seek help on the forums". I will state for the record that if RonR hadn't answered my questions this box would have gone back. No ifs, ands, or buts. In my opinion, the OBi products are not ready for mass distribution until they ramp up their support big time. It's a solution for techies. I would never consider recommending it for a non-techie.
If RonR has left, or been made to leave, that's unfortunate. If it's because he "dissed" OBi on other forums, he should have used a different username... :D
There are certainly other people on this forum with good knowledge, I'll call out Stewart as one, but no one answered questions as prolifically as RonR.
I wish somebody from the Obi executive team read your posting.
Points noted Rick, although I'd argue VoIP in general isn't quite ready for the mainstream. We've made great strides from, roll your own, and sounding like the bottom of a barrel, communications. But we do have a ways from the 24/7 ease that telco users enjoy.
Quote from: Ostracus on June 20, 2012, 09:01:27 PM
Points noted Rick, although I'd argue VoIP in general isn't quite ready for the mainstream. We've made great strides from, roll your own, and sounding like the bottom of a barrel, communications. But we do have a ways from the 24/7 ease that telco users enjoy.
Not mainstream, but widestream. Not people like my mother, who wants to have something you plug into the wall and it works reliably 24/7. But there are many people who want to go the extra mile, especially if they cannot afford the costs of PSTN on the top of overpriced broadband and cell phone. But one thing is extra mile and another thing extra 500 miles which Obi wants us to go.
My experience on forums like this mirrors that reported here. I've found I either have to take time out or walk out, and that's on two forums that have, I think, extremely supportive relationships (I walked out on one, I've been in and out for 18 years on the other.)
The issue is neither time nor money; it's emotional drain. It is very difficult to handle an argument on deeply held issues, which may appear minor to everyone else, without external (non-forum) support, and that is sometimes unforthcoming because, guess what, the people who would otherwise give it can feel very jealous of the forum!
That said, the two forums I've been closely involved in have both had a central figure who refuses to get involved in arguments and is consistently polite to everyone. This counterbalances people like me whose first response is direct insult or (in my case) sarcasm. Those people really are the foundation of a successful forum; internecine squabbles simple break and wash away from their rock.
It's also the case that both the forums I was/am involved in were not set up by corporations; they are both entirely voluteer based. It's an added disincentive to major contributors to start to feel you are doing work for the benefit of a corporation and not getting any support. (Notice, I said *support* in that sentence; not reward.)
My impressions so far of the OBi202 (after only a few days) are that the hardware is good, the software is ok, but the support is missing. Obihai will need to fix this or they'll learn the support lesson the hard way, by going out of business. They've just blown a major opportunity by losing two contributors who could have made a difference to their future.
So... now I guess we start to talk about Obihack. I assume it's an ARM inside, right?
John Bowler <jbowler@acm.org>
Quote from: JohnBowler on June 21, 2012, 05:38:51 PM
That said, the two forums I've been closely involved in have both had a central figure who refuses to get involved in arguments and is consistently polite to everyone. This counterbalances people like me whose first response is direct insult or (in my case) sarcasm. Those people really are the foundation of a successful forum; internecine squabbles simple break and wash away from their rock.
... but the support is missing. Obihai will need to fix this or they'll learn the support lesson the hard way, by going out of business. They've just blown a major opportunity by losing two contributors who could have made a difference to their future.
John Bowler <jbowler@acm.org>
Actually, Ron was a person like that. MT was rather an example of a person who blows every forum.
I would say one very major contributor but the fact remains that Obihai's handling of this case was extremely irrational . They shot themselves in the foot with a hunting rifle.
Obihack? Yes , I believe the Obi202 uses an ARM chip. They seem to be pretty popular these days. As far as all the rest? Read through all the posts and make one's own decision.
Since RonR is still MIA, I would like to chime in...
I disagree with RonR on the value of OBi Web portal, and i disagree with MT on politics, but I hope I was able to be respectful to both (and everybody else on this forum).
Quote from: RFord on June 05, 2012, 05:51:40 AM
Maybe Michigan Telephone (asxhole) can shed some light on this issue, since he has waged a one-man war to have RonR ban from this forum.
I don't think it was a healthy was to start the thread... If OBi banned RonR just on MT's say so -
they are the stupid ones; not MT. I think RonR's complaint about back door access was correct; but it could rub somebody in OBi the wrong way. So, if Ron was banned - and it's a huge if - maybe OBi didn't take criticism well. Or maybe they didn't take criticism well, and Ron decided that he has better things in life than to compensate for woefully inadequate documentation for a company that doesn't listen to his opinion. Like everybody else - I don't know what happened. But there are many more options than MT had RonR ban from this forum.
Now, what's next? Maybe, somebody in OBi will realize that having good user documentation is important. Well, given absence of OBi staff in this thread (and, if I remember correctly, they were absent from the conversation about back door as well for long time) - that's unlikely to happen. Maybe, the sales of OBi devices will decrease (when people won't know how to set them up, and end up returning). Maybe, OBi is signing up a deal with VSPs, where they will sell 100,000 "preconfigured" devices, and dissatisfaction of tinkering geeks will be a drop in the sales bucket.
But also, maybe people will not set up the plans that are beyond their comprehension. As I was reading Ron's responses, more than once I was thinking, do you
really need something that complex? Maybe start with something simpler (more permissive) - and see if you want to adjust it later. But when somebody gives you a working solution to the complex configuration that you asked - sure, why settle for less!
All in all - OBi is a great family of devices (I own four); but if Ron's departure will force OBihai do some soul-searching - it may be a great thing. That said, I sincerely hope that Ron is on a highly-paid gig, and will show up tomorrow to calm us all down :'(
I don't think Obiahi did anything, I think RonR said WTF and left.
RonR helped many, many users, including myself, with configurations. I didn't have any problems directly, I just didn't like his biased, cynical attitude, which always led to biased guidance and cynical remarks.
If he hadn't have been so biased, I think Obihai would have tried to do something (compensation) concerning his "much needed" help here.
Obihai is moving on from us little fish. I saw the info the other day somewhere. Look for voip providers offering the Obi customized for their systems and locked down for only their configurations. I see Anveo as a good target.
Now is the time to partner with Obihai and start a voip company.
Quote from: jimates on July 03, 2012, 12:55:33 AM
Obihai is moving on from us little fish. I saw the info the other day somewhere. Look for voip providers offering the Obi customized for their systems and locked down for only their configurations. I see Anveo as a good target.
Now is the time to partner with Obihai and start a voip company.
A win, win, for them. Shifts some of the burden to the VSPs, just like Microsoft shifts some of the burden to OEMs. If RonR was smart, he could partner with one of these VoIP providers doing set-up...and a paycheck.
Quote from: Ostracus on July 03, 2012, 02:46:35 AM
Quote from: jimates on July 03, 2012, 12:55:33 AM
Obihai is moving on from us little fish. I saw the info the other day somewhere. Look for voip providers offering the Obi customized for their systems and locked down for only their configurations. I see Anveo as a good target.
Now is the time to partner with Obihai and start a voip company.
A win, win, for them. Shifts some of the burden to the VSPs, just like Microsoft shifts some of the burden to OEMs. If RonR was smart, he could partner with one of these VoIP providers doing set-up...and a paycheck.
True, I am sure much of RonR's knowledge of digit maps and call routes never came out on this forum. I wish I knew just half of the stuff we had the opportunity to receive from him. If I did, I would be selling these things at every county fair in our area. Fair season is coming soon.
Here is the info I referenced in my earlier post. It was in the Obi202 thread.
Cloud-Based Configuration and Software Management
The OBi202 includes the ability to be managed by the OBiTALK cloud configuration service. From anyplace where there is an Internet connection, OBiTALK allows users to add OBi devices, configure VoIP accounts and share services amongst their own OBi endpoints and those of their trusted friends. In-service software updates are easily performed either automatically from the OBiTALK portal or by dialing ***6 from a phone attached to the OBi device.
Zero-Touch Provisioning with Remote Management / Diagnostic Troubleshooting
With Obihai Zero-Touch provisioning (ZT), it is very easy for service providers to purchase OBi units in quantity and realize the benefits of touch-less provisioning to lower operational costs and speed-up customer deployments. OBi units provisioned via ZT can be fully customized such that the OBi factory default settings are those of the service provider and securely locked to the OBi device after initial power-up and ZT provisioning. Subsequent subscriber-targeted profile configurations can be directly served from the service provider's network with security and reliability.
Complimentary to ZT, Obihai have a specialized web-portal for VoIP service providers. Via the portal, service provider support engineers can access each device individually to troubleshoot and configure specific parameter settings as well as set-up and perform loop-back calls and other tests without requiring the end user subscriber's assistance or intervention.
Quote from: jimates on July 04, 2012, 04:02:49 PM
Zero-Touch Provisioning with Remote Management / Diagnostic Troubleshooting
...
Complimentary to ZT, Obihai have a specialized web-portal for VoIP service providers.
I assume it's still aspirational, or at least not public! I haven't heard of any VSP deploying locked OBiHai the way Linksys or Grandstream adapters are deployed. Maybe Ron's startup will be the first one :-X Good luck then!
Quote from: jimates on July 03, 2012, 12:55:33 AM
Obihai is moving on from us little fish. I saw the info the other day somewhere. Look for voip providers offering the Obi customized for their systems and locked down for only their configurations. I see Anveo as a good target.
Now is the time to partner with Obihai and start a voip company.
The beauty of Obi is the fact that it is not locked and can be used with different providers, at least if you know how to configure it or chew through Ron's old postings ( God bless him). I do not think that anybody is waiting for one more proprietary device. If this is the direction they want to go and I would have to buy and run a separate VOIP adapter for every provider I use I may decide to quit VOIP all together.
On the Obi202, web access is disabled out of the box, so the local user can't access it on their network. The device will be accessible from the "specialized web-portal for VoIP service providers" by the provider itself.
It seems like the 202 is a little overkill if it is going to be locked down by a single provider.
No really. I see the Obi202 for either the his/hers line, or a small SOHO. Currently I use my Obi202 to solve an interesting problem.* One of us in this household regularly forgets to hang up, meaning one can't reach us (sans remote answering machine). With the Obi202 there's an available phone to ring.
*Apparently this is common enough a company has come out with a dedicated device.
While everybody's needs are different the main issue is whether you call domestically or internationally. For domestic use, you are perfectly set with 2 providers( GV on low and and Callcentric on high end). With international calling it is very different. My bill would increase more than 3 times if I used Callcentric for everything (GV is really not an option for that). If I had more traffic I would even consider a second Obi 202 as a back up and to separate my foreign DID's.