How to chanspy specific extension

i found more information about that,
https://issues.asterisk.org/view.php?id=18647

someone have any solution?
right now i’m running asterisk 1.6.2.16.1, the latest one is 1.6.2.17.2, but i see complains in the like above with the latest version also (so i have no reason to upgrade).

what do you think about 1.8.x ? is it much different? is it stable enough to use in a company? is it easy to upgrade from 1.6 ?

or do you have any other suggestion to fix this problem?

as always, thank you so much (: