[Asterisk-Users] FXO cards

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

> 6 incoming lines, 1 fax, DSL.  8 phones max, will provably start with 5 
> to save money.

> I had thought of using a channel bank, but what a pain in the ass that 
> is becoming.  For one, they are expensive, and I then have to buy the 
> T1 card for the phone server.  I though, why not go with an FXO card.  

Is there any particular reason that Aastra PT350/390/450 phones won't do the 
job of these other (4x the price) phones you've looked at?  I find these 
phones are very good and cheap, too.

I would strongly suggest the channel bank (Adit 600) and T100P.  It'll save 
you headaches in the long run and the cost is minimal, especially once you 
factor into account all the screwing around with IRQs and echo settings and 
so on you're going to have to do with the X101P and TDM400P cards.

The T1 card is what, $500 and the channel bank will probably run you $900 
after you manage to find a couple of quad FXO cards for it.  That's still 
way cheaper than the $6k proprietary system you've been mentioning.  You 
don't need a crazy quad xeon processor to handle this kind of load and four 
nine's availability (down less than a day a year) is trivial to attain with 
standard hardware. 

If you're serious about your system I would spend the money to have hardware 
available to swap out when something dies.  This includes the channel bank 
and T1 card, although you don't need the chassis for the channel bank, just 
the processor/FXS/FXO modules and power supply.  It'd be cheapest just to 
buy the cheapest adit600 on ebay for spare parts.  I seriously doubt you 
have the need to fully hot-swappable hardware, although the channel bank is 
fully hot-swap.  :-)

Regards,
Andrew