[Asterisk-Users] Up to 8 lines?

[George Bean]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of WipeOut .
> Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 4:29 AM
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Up to 8 lines?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am starting to look at the costs involved in putting a PBX system
> together using *..
> 
> We will be using ISDN lines in the UK, which when installed provide a
box
> on the wall with 2 analog ports and 2 digital ports, so these seem to
be
> the options available to me..
> 
> 1. I could use an ISDN board but I have not really read good things on
the
> mailing list about using ISDN boards, and I suspect there could be
> problems running multiple boards in a system properly, also the ISDN
> boards are quite expensive..
> 

It would be a shame to waste those nice digital BRI circuits by
converting them to analog and then back to digital again for Asterisk.
It would be better to leave them digital for better sound quality and to
take advantage of the D channel signaling capabilities.

You might want to look into the Eicon ISDN BRI server cards. The cards
have gotten some good feedback on list and off. They support multiple
BRI circuits per card, thus reducing the number of card slots required
in your Asterisk box. The cards are CAPI compliant so they will allow
you to use channelcapi rather than ISDN4Linux; that should make your
Asterisk box much easier to configure, operate and maintain.

Here is a link for the Eicon four port BRI card.

http://www.eicon.com/worldwide/products/MediaGateways/docs/4BRIFlyer.pdf

I believe they used to have a two BRI card that no longer appears on the
web site but periodically appears on Ebay. If you purchase the four BRI
card and use it until you need to expand, it should command the lion's
sure of its original purchase price after you upgrade to PRI.

Regards,
George Bean
Puwaba Technologies