[Asterisk-bsd] Full length cards

[Jeff LaCoursiere]

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Kim Culhan wrote:

>  There seems to be a little confusion in this thread.. The original posting
> asked about using 4 TDM4xx cards to get ~90 FXS ports.
>  I think Jeff meant TE4xx cards which are T-1/E1 interfaces.
>  As for the TDM400P on FreeBSD, this should be no problem.
>  Just use the zaptel-bsd drivers on FBSD 6.0-RELEASE or 6.0-STABLE.
>  If anyone needs any help getting the source of this and compiling, let me
> know.

Actually I did mean 4 x TDM400P to get ~90 FXS ports :)  I was wondering
if anyone had attempted this in one chassis...  I am considering bidding
on a hotel's phone system upgrade, and cost per port is very important,
obviously.  I think I see three ways to reach their 90 rooms with existing
cabling and analog phones.  I can use T1 interfaces and channel banks, and
with some of the pricing I have dug up so far this seems to be around $100
/ port.  I can use 4 x TDM400P (?) and get it down to $60.  Then a perhaps
hoky idea was to use around 50 dual FXS ATA devices, which potentially
gets it down to $35.  I say potentially because I haven't used many of
these devices, and don't know if the sound quality of an inexpensive ATA
is sufficient?  Also this only makes sense if PoE is possible, which is
something I haven't seen in literature on ATAs.

I saw Kim's earlier post about drivers for TDM4xx, which is what prompted
the question, actually.

So, are the drivers for FBSD6 production stable?  Would I be giving myself
headaches to install this for a client?  I would hate to fall back to
Linux, but stability is primary...

Thanks!

j