I am looking for hardware in order to install Asterisk in a small company. What they actually need is to use the existing infrastructure which is an ISDN line and a PSTN line, along with 7 plain telephone devices. Also there is a ADSL modem - router which connects the company to the Internet, so VoIP capabilities should be considered. Also a modem for fax purposes is a must, since all faxes go now by hand (is this evitable?).
Please let me know what kind of hardware I should purchase for this purpose because I am a bit confused regarding the cards that are out there.
i would suggest either one of the new Digium B410P cards, or an Eicon Diva Server BRI card for ISDN connectivity, and either a Digium TDM2400E with 1 FXO and 7 FXS (8 including a fax machine/modem ??), or a Sangoma AFT A200E with 2 FXO and 8 FXS ports.
the fax modem is up to you !! you’ll have a NIC in the machine already, so with your ADSL router that’s connectivity taken care of. if you do use VoIP, consider upgrading the router to something that supports QoS.
Thanks a lot for your valuable help.
I talked with them and they informed me that they actually have 2 ISDN lines that are going to be used.
Also they would like to have the option to install up to 10 plain phones, apart from tha 7 ones (+1 for modem-fax purposes). Are the proposed cards upgradeable and can they meet these demands? Sorry for being misleading…
Also I am a bit confused concerning the FXS and FXO ports. FXO is more or less an interface for digital connection and FXS rather for analong?
2 ISDN lines as in 2 x BRI (equals 4 ‘lines’), or 1 BRI (equals 2 ‘lines’) ?
either way, the B410P is a quad-BRI card with on-board echo cancellation. there are quad-BRI versions from Eicon too.
both the analogue cards wil support up to 24 mixed FXO and FXS modules, upgradeable as a module of 4 on the Digium, 2 on the Sangoma. the Digium is a full length card that you plug the modules onto, the Sangoma much smaller and expands outwards over other PCI slots (although only ever connects to a single PCI slot)
FXO and FXS are analogue technologies, FXO for connecting to a telephone line (uses FXS signalling), FXS for connecting to a telephone (uses FXO signalling). confusing isn’t it
Hi For this mix it may well be cheaper and a lot less trouble to use a gateway such as a vegastream 6x4 as this can be configured to match your requirements in one unit.
Price wise it will be more but you have the option of using failover servers and the server wont need to be in th same place a the lines are presented.
