Hi,
I’m interested in hearing people’s feedback who have tried the Sangoma A200 series analog FXO cards (including with the hardware echo canceller if applicable). If you’ve also used Digium cards and can contrast it to your experience with those cards, that would be great. (I’m tired of RMA’s (e.g. quality problems) with the Digium cards so I’m interested in exploring other options and these look pretty good.)
If you have used something else, feel free to mention that as well.
thanks!
p
I started out a year ago with the Digium TDM2400 (TDM04B) (four fxo’s) – To support Asterisk of course. This was for a production server that needed to be up 24/7. I struggled with it for five months. I played with the RX/TX settings and all the echo settings, re-compiled until I was blue in the face, nothing was satisfactory to me, Scratching, echo and everything in between was the norm for the card.
I took the Digium card out and replaced it with the Sipura SPA-300’s. The scratches went away, however since the SPA only has a limited echo cancellation on it (8ms), I had echo on all non-local calls. I played with that for five months.
I just replaced the SPA-3000’s with a Sangoma A200d (with EC) two weeks ago. I adjusted the RX to +15 and the TX to -6 and after 15 minutes compiling and setup everything works amazingly. There is perfect sound, no echo! The built in DSP makes the callers voice sound amazing, these lines are about 5KM from the C/O so there would be considered rural analog lines.
I would highly recommend the A200d. In fact I’m replacing my Digium TDM01B with a Sangoma for my home next week.
Hope that helps you.
I’ll be installing an A2004D over the weekend. I’ll post how it goes.
i have a couple of sites using the A200 cards with FXO modules. both are happy with the cards, but if you have carp lines, then the card won’t do anything to improve it.
the hardware seems good quality, the driver install is a breeze as long as you’ve remembered to flash update the thing (depends when it shipped from Sangoma), and they work particularly well here in the UK with Kewlstart and disconnect supervision when compared to a TDM400 card.
i was going to add in EC (using Sangoma’s trade in program) as the dodgy lines were showing some very chaotic levels from the telco, but they’ve now decided to add in a load more lines and go to ISDN30e, so i’m trading them in for an A101u.
but for a small POTS install, i would go for a Sangoma over a Digium these days.
kheston
did you do the install over the weekend? how did it go?
p
I’m VERY pleased with the A200.
We have 8 FXO channels with EC. The driver compiled the first time I tried it (Fedora Core 3, Asterisk/Zaptel 1.2). Incidentally, when I compiled the wanrouter for my A101 it worked flawlessly, too. Sangoma appears to have their act together here.
The client had more incoming lines than I was initially told about when I bid the job, so we’re adding 4 more FXO channels on Wednesday.
I’m running voice extensions and FAX machines over IP using the Sangoma A200 on the CO end with Sipura SPA-2002’s and Aastra 9133i/480i CT’s. The client is delighted and I have yet to pull out all the stops. So far, the system merely replaces their old NEC system. No real Asterisk bells and whistles, yet.
At first, I didn’t have the hardware echo cancellation enabled and we heard horrible echo on PSTN calls (I didn’t have any of Asterisk’s built-in echo cancellation features enabled either). When I finally did RTFM and enabled it all, the client was doing cartwheels over the difference. Blowing it initially actually ended up working to my benefit. Sangoma HW EC is a real crowd pleaser.
The only gripe I have is a very small one. They say in the white sheet that the cards have 4 RJ11 ports each. This isn’t technically true. The ports are actually for the 4-conductor jacks normally used to connect base units to handsets (like RJ11 but narrower, not sure what they’re called). It has proven to be a bit of a pain to not use the RJ11 to cables they include with the cards. Doing so requires a crimper you may not have in your toolbelt.
I’m still playing with the RX/TX gain settings in seek of the optimal sound (splitting hairs, really). I’ll post what I finally end up leaving them at. All in all, the A200 appears to be as close to turnkey as you can get. I’m guessing you’ll have good luck with it.
Adding the four new channels was seamless. Remember to change your zaptel.conf and re-run “/usr/sbin/wancfg zaptel” and all will be well.
The I mention above are RJ22. Sangoma includes RJ11 to RJ22 cords with the product when they ship. I tossed them in the can and crimped new ends onto wires that I punched down to make things neater in the phone closet.
For gain settings, I settled on:
rxgain=8.0
txgain=-4.0
I have found the sangoma cards to be very reliable, especially in situations where line quality is particularly bad.
The echo cancellation is quite amazing…
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I was just looking over this thread…
Due to our problems in our office with using sip/iax trunks for phone service we have decided to use analog lines, and iax trunks for long distance service.
Coming monday, I have 10 phone lines being installed in our office, however we will need to order an FXO card to input the lines into our asterisk server.
I was looking at getting the Digium TDM2402E , but after looking at this thread I tihnk i changed my mind. Is the Sangoma A20006 PCI Card, the card what you guys are talking about, i figured A2XX??
kheston: you said you are using this card with fax machines?! I thought fax machines had some major issues with EC?
i’ve had bad luck with this card. i had to replace one daughter card. then port 2 on the main card crapped out. absolutely impossible to receive faxes.
I’m not having any trouble sending/receiving faxes. I haven’t done anything extra on the Zap channels I’ve dedicated to faxing and it appears to work fine. The channels used for faxes are configured exactly like the ones configured for voice.
I did have an issue with one of the FAX lines at first. DSL uses that particular line and I didn’t have the filter installed. As a result, until I installed the filter, the Internet connection was spotty and faxes failed intermittently. Since I had two Zap channels dedicated to faxing, and one worked fine, I was able to figure out the problem relatively quickly (which is good when the client is staring at you).
Geoff is not alone in his problems with faxing. Many have reported issues. For instance, I’ve heard that faxing with any codec other than u-law is problematic. Therefore, I’ve set the SPA-2002s to use u-law only.
With the four FXO channels I added last week, I technically now have an A20005D. I’m still happy with it and no complaints from the client. The system did “go down” last week, but only when one of the maintenance people unplugged the receptionist’s 480i. But that’s another post…
Geoff,
I’m curious, how long did it take for your hardware to fail each time. Was it immediate? How Sangoma handle it? Did they come through quickly or did you need to badger them?
I just made my order for this card… it was the “Sangoma Remora A20004D PCI Card 0 FXS / 8 FXO Ports + Echo Cancellation”
I will let you guys know how the install goes next week.
Thnx again!
Hey Guys
Here is my update on the card that we installed this week. I orded from voipsupply.com and there were some issues with their shipping department so we didn’t get the card until monday morning.
So far everything is working great! I am just having some minor issues correcting the EC on the cards. For the last few days we have used hardware EC but I software EC on asterisk was turned off. Im hoping that by turning on this feature that calls inbound/outbound over the pstsn work better than before.
Hats off to sangoma for a quality card! Also thank you guys for being here!
The hardware echo canceller should be able to train within 0.2 seconds, can you check if the hardware echo canceller is running?
when a call is running, type:
wanpipemon -i w1g1 -c ehw
hmm…
wanpipemon -i w1g1 -c ehw
Sangoma HW Echo Canceller is disabled for all channels!
Wonder why?? thnx for the reply 
Have you used this command when there was active call ?
yup… still nothing tried inbound and outbound
heres my settings, maybe im doing something wrong? Also right now im only use 6 lines for testing, but we do have a total of 10, and 8 max on the sangoma card, the other two are going to mega office all in one stations.
—Starts------------/etc/zaptel.conf-------------------
loadzone = us
defaultzone = us
fxsks=1-6
—Ends------------/etc/zaptel.conf-------------------
—Starts-------/etc/asterisk/zapata.conf-------------------
;
; Zapata telephony interface
;
; Configuration file
[trunkgroups]
[channels]
language=en
context=from-zaptel
;signalling=fxsks
rxwink=300 ; Atlas seems to use long (250ms) winks
;
signalling=fxs_ks
channel=> 1-6
;
; Whether or not to do distinctive ring detection on FXO lines
;
;usedistinctiveringdetection=yes
;hanguponpolarityswitch
relaxdtmf=yes
usecallerid=yes
hidecallerid=no
callwaiting=yes
usecallingpres=yes
callwaitingcallerid=yes
threewaycalling=yes
transfer=yes
cancallforward=yes
callreturn=yes
echocancel=yes
echocancelwhenbridged=yes
echotraining=800
rxgain=8.0
txgain=-4.0
group=0
callgroup=1
pickupgroup=1
immediate=no
busydetect=yes
busycount=3
;faxdetect=both
faxdetect=incoming
;faxdetect=outgoing
;faxdetect=no
;Include genzaptelconf configs
#include zapata-auto.conf
group=1
;fxsks=1-8
;channels=1-8
;Include AMP configs
#include zapata_additional.conf
—Ends------------/etc/asterisk/zapata.conf-------------------
—Starts------------/etc/asterisk/zapata-auto.conf-------------------
; Autogenerated by /usr/local/sbin/genzaptelconf – do not hand edit
; Zaptel Channels Configurations (zapata.conf)
;
; This is not intended to be a complete zapata.conf. Rather, it is intended
; to be #include-d by /etc/zapata.conf that will include the global settings
;
callerid=asreceived
; Span 1: ZTDUMMY/1 “ZTDUMMY/1 1”
; Span 2: WRTDM/0 “wrtdm Board 1”
; ??: 1 WRTDM/0/0 FXSKS
; ??: 2 WRTDM/0/1 FXSKS
; ??: 3 WRTDM/0/2 FXSKS
; ??: 4 WRTDM/0/3 FXSKS
; ??: 5 WRTDM/0/4 FXSKS
; ??: 6 WRTDM/0/5 FXSKS
; ??: 7 WRTDM/0/6 FXSKS
; ??: 8 WRTDM/0/7 FXSKS
; ??: 9 WRTDM/0/8
; ??: 10 WRTDM/0/9
; ??: 11 WRTDM/0/10
; ??: 12 WRTDM/0/11
; ??: 13 WRTDM/0/12
; ??: 14 WRTDM/0/13
; ??: 15 WRTDM/0/14
; ??: 16 WRTDM/0/15
; ??: 17 WRTDM/0/16
; ??: 18 WRTDM/0/17
; ??: 19 WRTDM/0/18
; ??: 20 WRTDM/0/19
; ??: 21 WRTDM/0/20
; ??: 22 WRTDM/0/21
; ??: 23 WRTDM/0/22
; ??: 24 WRTDM/0/23
—Ends-------------/etc/asterisk/zapata-auto.conf-------------------
—Starts-------/etc/asterisk/etc/wanpipe/wanpipe1.conf------------
#================================================
#================================================
#================================================
#================================================
[devices]
wanpipe1 = WAN_AFT_ANALOG, Comment
[interfaces]
w1g1 = wanpipe1, , TDM_VOICE, Comment
[wanpipe1]
CARD_TYPE = AFT
S514CPU = A
CommPort = PRI
AUTO_PCISLOT = NO
PCIBUS = 7
PCISLOT = 2
FE_MEDIA = FXO/FXS
TDMV_LAW = MULAW
MTU = 1500
UDPPORT = 9000
TTL = 255
IGNORE_FRONT_END = NO
TDMV_SPAN = 1
[w1g1]
ACTIVE_CH = ALL
TDMV_ECHO_OFF = NO
—Ends-------/etc/asterisk/etc/wanpipe/wanpipe1.conf-----
two ports on the daughter card never worked. sangoma tech support quickly sent me a new piece. a port on the main card failed about 3 weeks later. i have not tried replacing the card yet since i no longer have any techies available on site to swap out the piece. i’ll get sangoma to send me the new card later since there is a 5 year warranty.
Mingo,
Which version of the wanpipe are you using?