[PLUG] Asterisk hardware question

Kurt Sussman plug at merlot.com
Fri Jun 2 20:10:35 UTC 2006


Aaron Burt (aaron at bavariati.org) typed this ...
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 11:11:27AM -0700, Kurt Sussman wrote:
> > I'm playing with Asterisk, and have been looking at the Sipura SPA-3000
> > and the Digium TDM cards. For the same functionality (1 FXO + 1 FXS,
> > which is all I need currently) the Sipura is about half the price. 
> 
> And other ATAs are even cheaper than the Sipura, especially if you don't
> need WAN-passthrough and suchlike.  Atcom and some others offer ATAs
> with 4 FxS ports, or even a mix of FxO and FxS ports, with failover.
> (So you can e.g. plug your landline into the FxO, and if the ATA dies,
> it cuts the landline through to one of the FxS ports.)

Atcom doesn't seem to be as easy to find as the Sipura ATAs; froogle
finds 33 matches for atcom (including about 8 that are really a book on
dive travel locations!) where 'sipura spa-3000', a far more restrictive
search, finds 26 completely relevant listings.

Is this a brand that you prefer? Where do you buy them?

> http://www.voip-info.org has a list of ATAs and other line-interface

I'm still looking there, but I'm also looking for direct experience.

> > Considering voice quality only, is the Digium card worth the extra
> > bucks?
> 
> It's just as crappy as any other phone-line interface in my experience,
> without the flexibility and reusability of a separate ATA.

Hmm. How do they get so much money for those cards, then? Maybe I should
buy a x100p clone and a couple of FXS-only ATAs?

> > Now considering everything you know to be important about the Asterisk
> > analog interface (which will include lots of things I haven't yet
> > discovered), what would you buy and why?
> 
> An ATA, unless maybe I needed to handle FAXes.  Which should just be
> left to a landline anyway; FAXes are used by folks who sign contracts,
> run payroll and approve purchases, and thus are Not To Be Meddled With.

Yes, I need to handle faxes. My office is small, and I do some small but
critical amount of faxing. For incoming faxes it looks like Asterisk can
be configured to receive the doc, convert it to PDF and email it. That's
very cool. But for the outgoing faxes, I guess I'll need a way to get
those out. Unless I buy a scanner and plan to email PDFs...

> > For now, this is a personal project, but some people I know in New
> > Orleans are looking for a massive voicemail system (on a budget, of
> > course) and I think Asterisk might be a solution for them. If you
> > Asterisk experts have any favorite links on setting up secure voicemail
> > systems, please feel free to share them!
> 
> The aforementioned voip-info.org, and http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/

Lots to read on both. I have been reading voip-info, but missed the
O'Reilly site. Thanks.

> Asterisk's voicemail system might not be as flexible or powerful as you
> might need for a "massive" system, though using multiple Asterisk boxes
> with a clustered database backend might help.  There are many other more
> flexible software packages.  Also, remember that T1s are way cheaper
> inside a CLEC's hosting center (e.g. ELI's facility by the airport) than
> backhauled to your office.

All I need (as far as I know now) is thousands of extensions (VMboxes)
with PIN protection, and maybe over-the-phone provisioning. All
connections can be via SIP, so no analog interfaces will be required. I
think a box in a colo cabinet would do the job, with a big RAID for
storage.

Thanks. This is useful.

--Kurt
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