[Asterisk-Users] Qs about FXO/FXS cards

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 20:14 -0600, brian at txshirts.com wrote:
> Gosh, you sure are full of yourself.

Looks like you didn't get enough caffeine into your body before
responding. Ohh well....

> You just shouldn't ASSume that everyone knows all of the abbreviations
> and when they ask you needn't be rude.  Being condescending is the first
> sign that a consultant is shallow and not worth using.  A *good*
> consultant will take the time to explain things and will never bash the
> situation that a customer or potential customer is in.

Boy am I glad I am not a consultant and I don't have to deal with them
very often. And I hope you understand that if all the effort you can put
forth is to ask questions with no research behind the question, you
won't make it very far yourself. 

> Hardware and technology never become obsolete, they simply become
> outgrown.  A customer's given choice in technology is typically made
> based on the best available balance of money, commitment, and need.
> Making high handed and unqualified statements is a waste of your time
> and mine.  T-1's are rather unpleasant to move and for most small
> businesses are completely unnecessary, in my opinion.

Funny. Obsolete is when the majority of people determine it would be
better to be impaled by a red hot poker than use the technology. Well
actually I think the thresh hold is quite a bit lower. How many serious
companies are still using PDP's in production? Know of any one still
seriously using 8088's on the desktop? 

T1's aren't anymore painful to move than several analog lines. Add to
that that you don't need a T1 to use T1 interfaces as I'll point out
below. 

> While you may have the money to burn by having a t-1 at home, most small
> business owners would rather use what is necessary as opposed to what is
> extravegant.  And as you so nicely put in your other post, customers who
> come off the dime are a joy to work with.  And I suspect most of them
> wouldn't tinker with * they would go straight to Cisco or Nortel, or a
> "brand" name that works turn key.  

Maybe you should read and fully comprehend before starting replies. It
is very helpful to do inline posting so you can see what it is your
responding to. It is possible you might have figured out how much you
missed if it was closer to what you where writing. Specifically I stated
that at home I had a T1 card and a channel bank. There was never a
mention of a T1 circuit. To finish connecting the dots for you, I did
VoIP to the office and had 24 extension capability and about 17 actual
extensions on my system at home. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Critchfield [mailto:critch at basesys.com] 
> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 2:59 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Qs about FXO/FXS cards
> 
> You may need more coffee before responding to another message.
> 
> On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:21 -0600, brian at txshirts.com wrote:
> > Steven,
> >   If we grant that you are correct and that Digium and friends are 
> > making hobbyist products..... Then what are the "serious" installs 
> > using?  We're serious to the tune of 5 FXO ports and 3 FXS ports and I
> 
> > want to make sure we don't waste time on flaky hardware.  I figured 
> > that as Digium built the hardware and wrote the original code they 
> > probably know it better then anyone else.  You just seem to know a lot
> 
> > about the serious installs so I'm curious what you use and how many 
> > lines you run with it.
> 
> Digium makes T1 and E1 interfaces. Take a moment and read what I have
> quoted below and you will see I said serious installs would be using
> these T1 and E1 interfaces. 
> 
> If you truely wanted to know what I use and how much I have installed,
> you only need look at the archives. The company I work for has a T1
> fully deployed right now and are expecting a second one any week now. We
> have extra capacity in hardware reserved for a customer of ours who has
> expressed interest in upgrading soon and needs more lines. 
> 
> I used to even have a T1 card and channel bank to run my home system
> till I grew bored of it and decided it was better to spend my time doing
> other things than managing the phones at home. Currently that system
> minus the server is with VCCH.com and they use it occasionally for
> demonstrations.
> 
> > Btw, we are a textbook "small office" install according to the docs.
> 
> And barely over the home use of a truely geeky person. I think you
> actually qualify as sub-"small office".
> 
> > Also what the heck is FC?   
> 
> Fedora Core, Join that to the obvious question you will ask later, RH ==
> Red Hat. Don't forget how to use google to look things up now.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:07 -0600 Steven Critchfield wrote
> > And we come full circle to a comment I made before that TDM cards are 
> > more for hobbyist than for real serious installs. A real install is 
> > probably going to use a T1/E1 interface and bypasses all the troubles 
> > listed in this thread.
> > 
> > So far I don't trust that many of the people using TDM cards are the 
> > ones who will tweak a system into a serious install. Look at previous 
> > threads about system load spikes where we have to pull teeth to get 
> > people to swap out of a FC kernel and into a generic kernel.

-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>