Kristian, you haven't had time to play with Quintums right? They are as painful as AudioCodes.
Tom, When I'm sure that my customer will not care to see extra boxes right next to the asterisk I go with external gateways all the time. External Gateways (EG) provide me with the following benefits: - EG Always have DSP chips implemented, some brands implement Octasic DSP chips, others utilize different manufacturers. - EG Provides the horsepower to mix and mtch codecs, and in case I need to do transcoding, a dedicated box is always better than a motherboard full of TDM400P -I need to make a special comment about EG and the need for channel banks. Here my choice is RedFone (http://www.red-fone.com/) it is basically TDMoE and it helps me achieve several other things in terms of balance and redundancy. Since I am in Panama,Central America, the only thing we care when talking about brands are Clothes, Watches and Cars. If the customer has the money, we go for Cisco, Audicodes, Mediatrix, because we get them locally and they have a representation office. If the customer wants to start low and then go up then we use things like Quintum, Octtel or equiments from telecomchinasourcing. We need to order them from Asia, takes a long time to come here and we might have to have some stock in case of get a unit DOA. But to give you and example: Octtel 4 FXS, with onboard DSP, SIP,h323,IAX2 and some other nice things: US Dollars: 250.00 and the 8port FXS 450.00 both with 6 months warranty and full system exchange in case of failure. And the important thing, They work like a charm, they dont crash, they dont get toasted,etc. And My Asterisk box will be more than happy to get a voice stream that does not need to transcode, recode, etc. So my advice to you Tom, get External Gateways but keep them below 20-30 FXS or below 20-30 FXO, ottherwise you'll end up wasting room space and power consumption. Kris: do you use app_meetme or app_conference for conference rooms? The question arises due to meetme needing to convert to slin before stream broadcasting. app_conference does not need to do that. Oh, an in case someone actually read this post, im still learning about mini/micro/nano ATX/ITX and I need to know what do I need to get to deploy a 12FXS/4FXO g711, CF based linux/asterisk and hdd used to hold voicemail. My previous post went unanswered. ;;) I hope my rant help others.... On 9/28/06, Kristian Kielhofner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Tom Bacevicius wrote: > > I am about to start researching the purchase of a few of these external > > gateways. I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences and > > make some recommendations? Kristian, you seem to have quite a bit of > > experience with these things. Can you share some of your wisdom with us ;-) > > > > Thanks, Tom > > > > Tom, > > Analog/POTS: > > AudioCodes seem nice. I have yet to use one extensively, but I have a > couple of them lying around that I have played with a bit. They have a > TON of configuration options (seriously - if you though Sipura was bad, > just wait), which I always appreciate. > > For one off scenarios, I like the Linksys/Sipura devices. The features > aren't bad, they are easily provisioned, and they are stable. There are > some quirks, though. For instance, last I checked the 3xxx gateways do > not listen for DTMF tones on the PSTN Line when the call has been > connected to a SIP server. That's pretty annoying... > > Digital (PRI hopefully): > > Cisco. I really have a love/hate relationship with them. Just when I > start to appreciate their products, I am reminded of why so many people > hate them. When it comes time to activate or renew a service contract, > for example (just to get new IOS versions). Anyways, they are expensive > but you can find a 2651XM and NM-HDV module on the used market for less > than you'd think (still not cheap). It you are buying new gear, on the > low end the 2811 + PVDM2 + VWIC2 is a good combo. On the high end, you > have got to appreciate the AS5xxxXM, which can easily support eight PRI > circuits in 1U. All Cisco gear has standardized versions of IOS that > support everything you'd ever need, including: > > 1) SIP over anything - UDP,TCP,etc > 2) T.38 faxing (even as a gateway, obviously) > 3) G729a/b/G723 in hardware (DSP) > 4) So, so much more > > -- > Kristian Kielhofner > _______________________________________________ > 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] > -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Erick Perez Panama Sistemas Integradores de Telefonia IP y Soluciones Para Centros de Datos Panama, Republica de Panama Cel Panama. +(507) 6694-4780 ------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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]
