[asterisk-users] Sangoma PRI

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Stephen Bosch wrote:

> The only way this will ever happen is if Digium completely redesigns the
> card, which is a long way of saying that you will buy a new card before
> you have that request filled.

That is incorrect. The TE4XXP cards with v2 or later firmware *can* be
upgraded in the field, but we have not released an upgrade for those
cards that warrants distributing it to end users (there is a v3 but it
is only necessary for the PCI Express variants). This may change soon,
though, as there is work to produce some improved firmware for all the
TE4XXP cards in process right now. Unfortunately cards with v1 firmware
will not be able to be upgraded in the field.

Steve Totaro: We regularly allow users to cross-ship (advance
replacement) cards for firmware upgrades; you should not be required to
have your system out of service for any length of time longer than what
it takes to swap cards.

> This is one of the great things about the Sangoma hardware -- it was
> designed to be fully "field upgradeable" (they use an FPGA
> architecture). The design approach is worth emulating.

Have you looked at the Sangoma cards and the Digium cards? Did you
notice that *both* of them are based on large Xilinx FPGA parts? They
both use an 'FPGA architecture', at least for the PCI interface and
TDM/data buffering (both cards use dedicated T1/E1/J1 framer chips,
because it would be silly to not do so <G>).

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Director of Software Technologies
Digium, Inc. - "The Genuine Asterisk Experience" (TM)