[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk BRI in the USA

[Joe Greco]

> Hi Joe,
> 
> In your mail you wrote that
> 
> "I've heard a few stories that reported partial success with an Eicon
> Diva Server card, but always with the caveat that "it doesn't work quite
> right" or something along those lines."
> 
> I can ensure you that this is not the case. We are implementing a Diva
> Server card in our call centre with Asterisk - so it works perfectly on
> both BRI and PRI lines.
> 
> You need to follow the instructions here though.
> http://www.eicon.com/support/helpweb/slnxen/asterisk.asp

Happy to hear it...  it's just depressing how poorly BRI is supported in
general here in the States though.

I know a number of folks who do (or did) BRI for telephony going back a
number of years (mid '90's at least) and I've yet to hear of one who
succeeded in hooking one up to Asterisk without issue, though there are
a few, as I mentioned, who reported partial success with the Eicon.

BRI is becoming more poorly supported as time goes on by CPE mfrs, and
while there was at one time a loose race to implement features such as
Caller-ID delivery to POTS ports on ISDN CPE, now there doesn't appear 
to be much even happening in the way of development of new CPE.  This
pretty much matches the way it is being supported by the telcos, who do
not want to offer any of the powerful capabilities that could be possible
over BRI.  By offering only "packages" that implement basic functionality,
and requiring that you buy services a-la-carte if you want to do anything
odd like (shudder) get an extra DN or ten, and pricing a-la-carte services
sky-high, they've guaranteed that it isn't competitive with PRI - but also
guaranteed that it isn't all that useful to anyone, either.

It's insane that the only solution that seems to work for people is a
$1K-range card.  It's good that it works perfectly for you; I've yet to
meet anyone else who has made that claim, as the reports I've seen are 
all of partial success.

For a long time, I thought I was going to have to go get a Cisco gateway
with a VIC-2BRI or something like that, but that scared me too.  :-)

So I still like my (very pricey) solution with the Adtran.  It's nice and
it works so far (caveat, haven't got it working with * yet).  More 
interestingly, it can act as either network or user, meaning I can hook up 
existing devices such as the USR I-Modem to it, and direct only a single 
B channel over there...  now I've just got to find out what happens when 
I configure up its PRI and hook it up to *.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.