Hi.
What is the best way to go when you need 10-16 FXO ports?
The most important question to me is of course - PCI card vs FXO gateways. Well, I understand basic differences pros and cons etc, but what I really need - is argumented advice from someone who had experience with both.
Since I need more than 8 ports and it is not recommended to install more than 1 Digium card into the box, I believe the only choice of Digium’s card for me is DTM2400. But from the first glance it looks like FXO gateways (2x8) will cost less than 2400 with 12/16 ports.
I have very good experiences with Audiocodes gateway with * (FXO, FXS and PRI), so I would use 1 or 2 Audiocodes MP FXO and in general I prefer to use external gateways instead of internal cards to interface phones or pstn lines; price is higher but flexibility is greater and the workload on the * box is much less.
We use Patton boxes for both FXO and FXS connections.
Keeping the external connections on IP connected boxes allows us
to virtualise the asterisk server itself, letting us provision redundancy and resilience in the core PBX.
We have also used Patton boxes to replace remotely located PBXs, consolidating all the analogue lines in one location onto one Patton, then bringing back the connections over IP to the centrally located asterisk server.
Works REALLY well.