[Asterisk-Users] 7206 as SIP->PSTN Gateway?

[James Sizemore]

I use both Ciscos and Asterisk as Sip gateways to pstn.
I can say a lot of good things about both, and a few bad
things as well.

The Ciscos are a very solid  product with very good very fast tech
support. It also has some really nifty fax detection with
redirection via email options  (AS5300 and AS5800).  Ciscos can
not hire-pin voip calls, This makes it hard to handle congestion
between multiple units.  Cisco configs syntax for dial plans are
ugly as hell, but you can have over lapping dial plans
with weights. I have never had a Cisco gateway crash on me
that was not running "T" code.    

Asterisk can do hire-pining  of voip calls  (You can  send voip
calls to another gateway if you have reached max out-bound
channels! via voip) Asterisk has a very pretty syntax for dial plans.
The problems with Asterisk as a voip gateway using Sip is
it can be a bit unstable I have yet to have a week go by that I have
not needed to restart Asterisk when it is acting as a voip to pstn
gateway. I have written watch dog scripts that restart Asterisk
when it dies or  locks-up. And  support  for problem  with  Sip
in a gateway  scenario is  slow at best. Very few people are using
Asterisk as  Voip  gateways using SIP .  So it is very hard for
the people involved to reproduce your problems to fix them.
 I like the price of the hardware I would have bought a large
number of  T400 cards and used Asterisk if it was more stable
doing SIP to PSTN, but alias I just use Asterisk in small town
gateways because I can not justify the price of a Cisco for
small gateways.  I however can not over state the usefulness
of hire-pining and when Asterisk gets better at being a voip
gateway I will be deploring it in larger instillations.  Building
IVR with Asterisk is much easer then doing the same  on a
Cisco you don't need to know tcl. <smile>

All in all if price is your number one factor go with Asterisk
if however stability is you number one factor go with a Cisco.

>
> More notes:
>
> I am currently using 36xx systems as SIP gateways in some locations. 
> There are VoIP NM cards for those platforms, though they are NOT 
> cheap, even on the used market.  You'd be much better served from an 
> economic standpoint by getting a slew of el-cheapo rackmount PC's and 
> using Digium cards.  Even if the failure rate is higher (which, in my 
> experience, is not the case,) you can do failover quite easily 
> (easier?) using IAX2 to your edge devices.  Plus, in my opinion, the 
> Ciscos are lacking many features that Asterisk provides as a gateway 
> device.  ("Can you compile your own software on your Cisco?" and many 
> others which are obvious and on which I will not elaborate.)
>
> Cards: NM-1v or NM-2v for POTS
>        NM-HDV-1T1-12  - 1 port, 12 channels
>        NM-HDV-[1,2]T1-[24,48]  - 2 ports, 24 or 48 channels
>
> There are equivalent E1 cards, change the numbers to match (30 or 60 
> ports)
>
> JT
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