[asterisk-users] Best FXO Gateway

[cb]

On Feb 15, 2007, at 1:12 AM, jameson asterisk wrote:

> Can anyone provide a recommendation based on user experience?
> Feel free to suggest an alternative gateway if one stands out.

I've been working with the Grandstream GXW-4108 (the 8 port version  
of the 4108), and it was a rough start, but I *think* all my issues  
have been worked out.

Initial setup wasn't too bad, it helped that I found someone else's  
notes on it on the Trixbox forum. It it hadn't been for two problems,  
I'd have probably been up and running with it in just a few hours.

The two issues I had were 1: I had major logging problems that I  
originally blamed on the GXW, but turned out to by my syslog server.  
When I changed to a different syslog server, the GXW's logs started  
working fantastically. I needed that logging to debug the 2nd issue.

The 2nd problem was more involved, the GXW didn't like my PSTN  
connection. It worked wonderfully when connected to my VoIP ATA, but  
when I went to PSTN, it had all sorts of problems. I had some back  
and forth dialog with Grandstream and they think they found the  
problem and fixed it, and sent me a beta test firmware to try out. I  
put that online yesterday, and so far it has been working fine, but  
yesterday my office was closed due to snow, so I wasn't able to  
really stress test it (but I also was not able to reproduce my PSTN  
connection problem, which previously I could do with ease, so it  
gives me hope that the problem is indeed fixed).

I'll know better today when the office is open and I expect the 8  
lines to be in use for a good part of the day with a solid mix of  
inbound and outbound calling. If all goes well, then I might be able  
to recommend the GXW-410x as a viable unit.

However, it does have one feature that might be a show stopper for  
some. It selects the next outbound FXO port in a round robin manner.  
There does not appear to be port level control over which FXO port is  
used on a given outbound call. This is probably fine for most of the  
targeted users (going on price, I'd say they are aiming at the SoHo  
market, which is likely to have a single bank of numbers in a single  
hunt group, so round robin would work fine). But for some, this could  
be a show stopper and prevent them from being able to use the unit. I  
personally have to see if it is going to work for me as I actually  
have two different hunt groups in my 8 lines, so round robin is less  
than ideal for me as it can cause one group to busy out from outbound  
calls, while the other has no calls at all. I do plan to send a  
feature request to Grandstream to give better control over selecting  
outbound ports.


-chris
<www.mythtech.net>