[Asterisk-Users] Cisco MC3810

[Wayde Nie]

Wayde Nie wrote:
> I can get a Cisco MC3810 with a mixture of FXO and FXS ports, the MC3810
> comes with a built in Ethernet port and I believe it does SIP too...
>
> Will this mean that I won't need a T1 card and dedicated channel bank? ie.
> Asterisk connected over Ethernet with the MC3810 and the POTS lines and
> stations connected to the MC3810? Does it work that way? Any other
> limitations or gotcha's with this approach? (I'm new to this and want to
> confirm before I go too far down this path...)

Hi Everyone,

I sent a message with the above questions over this past weekend, unfortunately
I had an email service outage and don't have the thread replies to respond to
in order to maintain the discussion thread... I hope this gets threaded
properly ;) , apologies for the confusion if it does not...

In any case Steve Szmidt responded:

> It's really kinda silly to have a great box like Asterisk and not use VoIP
> with it. Whenever you use a VoIP phone all you need is the network
> connection. That is the best way of using Asterisk.

Maybe silly, but I have to do this with a stepped rollout approach... At first,
I want to replicate what I have with POTS, except with separate extensions and
other details but the "user interface", aka phone handsets, remains familiar...

Next, I'd like to (slowly) add the "toys", IP phones, VoIP LD providers, etc...

> There's a good idea to have a Digium card as some Asterisk functions require
> a clock signal, from one of their cards.

Does this mean that a digium card through the MC3810 T1 interface would provide
the h/w clock whereas using Ethernet through the MC3810 10bT interface would
require a less accurate s/w clock?

Does anyone know if the MC3810 FXO/FXS ports are accessible through the built in
Ethernet 10bT port (inferior s/w clock or not) or do you need to go in through
the T1 interface? Has anyone actually done this? (I'm not really prepared to be
a pioneer here ;)

Grateful for any insights! Thanks,
--
Wayde Nie.