Faxing and PCI (was Re: [Asterisk-Users] Digium cards, so disappointing !)

[Jeff Gustafson]

On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 15:10 -0500, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> Jeff Gustafson wrote:
> 
> > 	I was looking at using a Dell server for running Asterisk and noticed
> > that Dell has started using PCI-X on a lot of their new systems.  Does
> > this newer bus standard help the situation with faxing?  
> 
> No. PCI-X is just a wider/higher-speed version of PCI, not a new bus.
> 
	Sorry, I meant PCI-e.

[...]
> > 	What about a new line of Digium cards that have bridge cables that run
> > between the various cards and bypass the PCI bus?  Since one of the best
> > aspects of using Asterisk is standards.  This bridge cable should be
> > standardized and published so that other companies can adopt the
> > standard.  For example an ISDN card could bridge to a Digium T1 card.
> > Or a card that supported legacy digital phones could bridge to other
> > cards.
> 
> That is called H.100, and it has existed for many years. It's also
> ludicrously expensive to implement, so you won't see it on Digium cards
> any time soon :-)

	Is there any reason an easier implementation of the same, basic, idea
could be created for the "Asterisk generation?"  According to a quick
search of H.100 it's "just" a TDM bus.  It handles 2,048 full duplex
calls.  Would a lightweight version that only supports 512 or 256 calls
be any cheaper?

			...Jeff