About 3 years ago when I first started tinkering with Asterisk, I tried a number of products that were popular on the market at that time ... I have played with Mediatrix (nice), Audiocodes (nice, but hard to setup), Voicetronix (never could get it to sound right) and various clone X100P cards ... So far I have not had an install that screamed for a T1/Channel Bank solution though I do have a small Addtran channel bank and a clone T1 card in the lab that I play with from time to time when there is nothing on TV ...
in the past 2 years or so, I have used Digium TDM cards exclusively ... I have a TDM22B in one of my own production machines ... I have 9 TDMxxB cards deployed at client sites with various FXO/FXS combinations ... And I have a couple that I use as lab rats with a variety of FXO/FXS modules depending on what I am experimenting with at the time ... I settled on the Digium card because at the time, the darn thing seemed to work right ... Sound quality was decent and I never really had any issues with echo or obscure sound artifacts ... I am a simple kinda guy, like my setups to be simple and tend to stick with what I know works ... Since I upgraded to the most recent versions of Astlinux, I have started having some really serious issues with echo and choppy sound ... All other elements of the config are same as previous ... Only recent change has been upgrades to Astlinux ... Now it is a fact that my Digium cards have a couple years on them at this point ... For all I know, my cards are now obsolete due to some recent change in the Zap drivers ... If so, it kinda pisses me off but would not surprise me ... Because I have been pretty much out of the market for FXO solutions for a while, I was sort of hoping to get brought up to speed on what is new and well thought of these days ... You pretty much echo what I have heard from others ... I keep getting pointed at Sangoma or Rhino if I want a PCI solution ... I have heard from others that Mediatrix is still thought of as one of the better external gateway solutions ... So it seems that there are a couple new kids on the block that were not around last time I was looking and an old favorite that is still a contender ... I agree with you in principle that most of the low density FXO solutions leave much to be desired in Asterisk land ... But the fact remains that my requirement is not unusual ... There is a lot of small business out there that needs access to between 4 and 8 PSTN circuits ... I need a reliable solution for myself today and potentially for some of my small business clients tomorrow ... I sure wish Intel would get off their high horse and let go of the Dialogic source ... I would LOVE to use some of my old D41's with Asterisk ... I think I got a box of 6 or 8 of them laying around here somewhere ... The other factor I am becoming aware of is that the price per port seems not to have come down a penny since last time I bought ... This is a bit of a surprise to me ... I figured I would be able to buy a 4xFXO today for half what I paid 2 years ago ... Seems this is not the case ... So what I am hearing so far is that I am going to pay a lot of money for a solution that may not be satisfactory ... Its hard to be me right now ... I am kind of surprised that my query did not elicit an argument over PCI card vs external gateway ... I was really hoping to benefit from such an exchange of view points ... Last time I was looking there seemed to be two camps with very firm views on the topic ... Last time around the PCI argument won out for me only because it worked and was about 1/3 less money ... But I would love to hear an updated version of this argument ... G.Hendershot -----Original Message----- From: canuck15 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 10:03 PM To: 'Discussion of AstLinux - Asterisk on Compact Flash'; 'Discussion of AstLinux - Asterisk on Compact Flash'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Astlinux-users] Need FXO suggestions Care to list the FXO's you tried? There is a lot of junk out there. I can recommend the recently introduced Sangoma A200D. The new Rhino card looks promising as well. Have not found anything else that is worthy excluding T1 cards to channel banks which is not a very pretty solution and impractical for small numbers of FXO's. -----Original Message----- From: Michael Graves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 3:11 PM To: Discussion of AstLinux - Asterisk on Compact Flash; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Astlinux-users] Need FXO suggestions Been here, done this, maybe not with the device specifically...but after 2 years of trying & fighting with FXO interfaces/adatpers from various sources I just gave up. As a short term solution I added call forwarding to all my lines (only 3) then forwarded them to DIDs issued by ITSPs like Nufone, Clearpath, etc. After about six months of this it was working well enough that I ported my numbers to Nuvio, through their reseller CarolinaNet. This I've had in place for just over six months. It's working great. The only time it hasn'worked was when I blew an upgrade on my server or had trouble getting G729 working. Small FXOs are just not worth the trouble....IMHO....of course YMMV. Michael --Original Message Text--- From: Gary G. Hendershot Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:50:09 -0500 I saw this one and felt the same way ... say what you want about GrandStream's phones, they are cheap, easy to setup and pretty much just work ... agree that sound quality is not as good as on better quality phones and they kind of feel cheap ... but I cannot say that I did not get my money's worth when I bought their products ... I am sorely tempted to give this gizmo a try ... at $250 it is certainly below the threshold of pain ... but I hesitate to try it on my main office production machine ... if I was thinking of using it on one of my lab monkeys it would be an interesting toy to play with ... but I think for production, I will look for something that is known to be of high quality .. but if anyone takes the gamble and the gizmo works, PLEASE let me know ... if I were to hear back from a couple folks that this piece worked well, had decent sound quality and was reasonably easy to setup, I would jump on it in a heart beat at this price point ... G.Hendershot From: Lonnie Abelbeck [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 1:11 PM To: Discussion of AstLinux - Asterisk on Compact Flash Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Astlinux-users] Need FXO suggestions Gary, I ran across a new FXO product from Grandstream... Grandstream GXW-4104 Analog FXO IP Gateway - 4 Port: http://www.telephonydepot.com/product_p/105-056-4104.htm I know, I know, it's Grandstream... but has anyone gambled $250 to try this box? It would be an awesome solution if the voice quality was good. Lonnie On Nov 20, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Gary G. Hendershot wrote: I need to get some feedback from you folks on what to use for an FXO solution ... at my main office, I need to feed a total of four (4) phone lines into my Astlinux server ... I am currently using a Digium 4 port card but am becoming quite frustrated with issues related to echo and choppy sound ... I have managed to reduce the problems with sound quality substantially by installing fresh cable from the phone closet to the location of the Astlinux machine but it is still at an unacceptable level ... I have heard very good things about Sangoma but understand that support for these cards is not currently in Astlinux ... and while the cards are not horribly expensive, they are costly enough that I hesitate to spend that money without some assurance that support for them will be ongoing ... I have also heard pretty good reports about the 4 port analog Rhino card ... these are also a bit pricey to buy without knowing for sure that it would save the whales and feed the starving ... but it seems that the card is readily supported in Astlinux ... Some time ago I played around with a couple FXO gateway gadgets ... one of them, the Mediatrix 1204 seemed to work quite well but that was back in the pre-1.0 days of Asterisk so I am not sure if this might still be a good option ... and if I recall, the only way I could afford to get my hands on one was because I chanced into a bargain on a good used one ... darn thing was very expensive if purchased new ... Bottom line is, I would like to hear from others who have tried a couple FXO solutions what their experiences have been with the options they tried ... I need to make a decision on this one in the next few days ... I am also interested in hearing arguments about the pros/cons of using an external gateway instead of a PCI card ... your opinions are valued ... G.Hendershot _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kriscompanies.com/mailman/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Product Specialist www.pixelpower.com Pixel Power Inc. 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