[Asterisk-Users] An anniversary and a lament for FXOs

[Greg Boehnlein]

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Rich Adamson wrote:

> > So, while I've posted with respect to FXOs previously, I must ask
> > again....what FXO interface device can anyone recommend from real
> > experience?
> 
> I'd have to agree with you 110%; exactly the same issues here over the
> past year. I've spent more money on digium cards then you have invested
> in your old system, tried the spa3000, and a few other external gateways.
> The external gateways are always far better then the digium/spa adapters,
> but most of them have other issues that preclude production use. The
> market space is absolutely wide open for a two-to-four port pstn adapter
> of some sort that actually works.
> 
> As I'm sure you've seen over the last six months or so, the digium fxo
> cards (drivers) suffer from lots of different problems and no one seems
> to really care. As a non-programmer, I'm about to give up on those as
> I don't have the skills to attempt fixes, and opening bug reports seem
> to be totally ignored. Seems at least some of the issues relate to
> interrupt latency and/or pci controller problems with selected motherboards,
> however there hasn't been any realistic effort focused on identifying
> which boards are acceptable/unacceptable.
> 
> Seems rather strange for a company that wants to finance the * project 
> through sales of adapters to ignore the problems, but guess that's their
> call.

Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I have X100P cards in several 
boxes and as long as I do a little tweaking to the Echo Cancellation, 
rxgain/txgain and other parameters in the zapata.conf, I've had great 
sucess with the cards.

While I agree that the "market is ripe" for a multiport FXO card, I 
would not categorize the X100P cards as failures. Whenever I have opened 
bug reports on the Bug Tracker, I have had results. In many cases, the 
responses have been that I need to provide more detailed information, and 
if/how the problem is repeatable.

On my side of the fence, I've done upwards of 200,000 minutes of calls 
over the past 8 months using X100P cards in my home and with some test 
servers at clients. That is an average of 400+ hours of calls / month. 
Through that time, I've only had to update Asterisk a couple of times and 
reboot the boxes a few times for updated kernels. Other than that, they 
have run without incident. The feedback that I have gotten from the users 
of these minutes is that the quality is as good as or better than their 
existing Key system.

Conversely, I've had to restart a client's Pansonic Key system about 25 
times in that same space. My own company has a Vodavi Starplus w/ External 
Datavoice Voicemail system. That has has to be restarted nearly twice a 
month, and it only seems to be getting worse.

As far as Digium ignoring the problems, I'm going to call that a spade. 
I've called Digium with questions and problems on several occasions, most 
of which turn out to be MY issues, either through lack of configuration, 
or not clear understanding of what is required in the application of their 
products. They have gone above and beyond the call of duty for me, and 
personally I'm very grateful.

Keep in mind that Asterisk is NOT for the feint of heart and is a pretty 
daunting system for the uninitiated.

As for the Interrupt issues and PCI issues, Digium isn't really 
responsible for broken PCI busses. You need to be complaining to the 
manufacturer of the $35 motherboard for that. I do agree, however, that a 
community developed Hardware Compatibility List would be a good thing.

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