[Asterisk-Users] channel bank/multiplexer recommendation

[Wasim Baig]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Ivan Ochoa wrote:

> I am totally new to this PBX/asterisk/telephony world.
welcome, *'s a beauty

> I understand that what I need between the T100P/E100P and the POTS 
> analog lines is a channel bank/multiplexer?

right, since E1 channel banks are bloody expensive, and you're dealing
with POTS anyway, then the best bet maybe to just buy a T100P, which'll 
give you 24 ports to be broken out using a channel bank built for a T1 
which are much cheaper and much more readily available
 
> Another newbie question:  can I use this channel bank/multiplexer (or 
> any other you recommend) and have X number of the analog lines ports for 
> incoming lines from the POTS and the remaining ports for extensions 
> within the office?

in a perfect world, all the ports on a channel bank should be configurable
to be FXO (incoming lines from the POTS) or FXS (lines for extensions)  
[crudely put]... in real life, this may or may not come true... it depends
on the channel bank, but with any decent hardware, you should have some
sort of options, like 4FXO/12FXS or 12 FXO/4FXS or 2FXO/14FXS or some
other option... this may be configurable as jumper switches, eeprom
settings, or pluggable modules providing the fliexibility

- wasim