[Asterisk-Users] Dialogic supported well?

[Scott Stingel]

Hi Alfred-

I'd like to echo Kaydon's very positive comments regarding asterisk and
Digium with one or two caveats.  I've had lots of experience building
systems with Dialogic boards (analog and E1), and more recently a few
systems built with Digium's quad E1 boards (the E400P and now the TE410P),
so I've had a chance to compare them under similar application load,
especially high-volume IVR and also calling card apps.

If you'll be running commercial apps, I would recommend that you do a lot of
testing, especially load testing, with the types of applications you'll be
running.  Dialogic boards, although incredibly expensive, do have lots of
horsepower built in for the purposes of encoding and decoding the voice
streams, decoding single and DTMF codes, voice energy and cadence detection,
etc.  Digium boards rely 100% on the processor that they run in to perform
these functions.  I was a little disappointed to find that I can (so far)
reliably only handle 4 E1's in a (very) high-volume IVR app.  In the past
I've run Dialogic-based systems which handled much more load (but also which
cost 4 times as much in hardware!)  Although Digium's newer TE410P board is
capable of bus mastering, I found that it made little difference in the
number of channels I could run.  

So, I guess my point is not to be over-optimistic in deciding the number of
channels that you can run.  Processors are relatively cheap these days, so
when in doubt, opt for more processors and "spread the load"!

I also agree that Digium's support has been great.  I do wish they would
spend more time in two areas:  (a) doing some documentation for the boards
they sell - even a one-page setup sheet would be nice (the TE410 boards
arrive with nothing, not even an explanation of what the jumpers/switches on
the board do)!  (b) improving the an apparent bug or shortcoming in the PRI
driver code, which results in framing errors not being dealt with properly.
This really only effects very high volume systems, but it needs attention.
(I've discussed these with Mark)

Anyway, I don't want to dissuade you from choosing Digium and asterisk, they
are super accomplishments, just want you to manage your expectations a bit.
Test, test, test!

Good luck in your projects
Scott Stingel
President 

Emerging Voice Technology Inc.

Email:          scott "at" evtmedia.com 
URL:            www.evtmedia.com  

 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com 
>[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
>Kaydon Stanzione
>Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 10:31 PM
>To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
>Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Dialogic supported well?
>
> 
>Alfred,
>
>I am in similar position. I took the route of going with 
>Digium boards for
>two primary reasons - they have excellent quality and offer the best in
>customer and technical support. I am starting with an X100P 
>just for testing
>everything out (using IAXClient and Asterisk).
>
>We have two Network Operation Centers - one running a T-3 and 
>the other an
>OC-3. We are looking to add VoIP and PABX solutions to our 
>product line.
>Once we can gain a better understanding with Asterisk and the 
>Digium card,
>we are upgrading to a TE405 with PRI (4 lines).
>
>Digium is extremely knowledgeable and continues to provide us 
>with valuable
>information.
>
>Good luck - call the guys at Digium (Malcolm or Greg) - they are very
>helpful
>
>kaydon
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
>[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
>Alfred Werner
>Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 5:05 PM
>To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
>Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Dialogic supported well?
>
>
>I'm new to asterisk and quite impressed by the feature list. I 
>have a D/4PCI
>already in hand. Is there any reason NOT to use this and buy a 
>digium card
>instead?
>
>I basically want to set up a couple line analog system to 
>check it out and
>probably use as a a Soho setup for VM, access to a postgres 
>database, and to
>play with the VOIP stuff.
>
>TIA,
>
>Alfred Werner
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