[asterisk-users] Adding 4 more POTS lines

[cb]

On Jan 25, 2007, at 5:38 PM, Leif Neland wrote:

> A Grandstream GXW-4108 with 8FXO cost $400, almost the same as a  
> TDM404B fully populated 4FXO card.

I'm currently testing a GXW-4108... my verdict is still out. I've had  
some problems, some minor, some major.

In the minor department, it does not always reboot when instructed to  
via the web interface. I think I've tracked it to the reboot button  
on a regular screen is ignored, but the reboot from the post update  
screen goes thru. This is likely a minor bug in the firmware.

Next into the minor-ish... the documentation isn't great. It it  
written assuming you know a lot more about this stuff than I did when  
I started. The more I've played and learned, when I go back and  
reread parts of the docs, they then make more sense to me.

Heading into the not so minor, but not really major... the logging  
sucks. It only supports a syslog server, which isn't a huge deal, but  
having a web interface to read the logs would have been nice. But,  
the logging doesn't seem to give much info (even in Debug mode), and  
seems to randomly stop working entirely. Sometimes it will start  
again when you power cycle the unit (not just a software reboot, but  
physically turn it off and back on), other times it needs to be  
defaulted to factory settings to get the logging going again, which  
is totally unacceptable.

Also in the not so minor category, there doesn't appear to be any  
easy way of backing up the config files. When it polls the tftp  
server on boot, it does look for a config file, but since there  
doesn't appear to be any way to save one out of the unit, and no  
documentation or otherwise (that I've found) to create one from  
scratch... it makes it very difficult to save settings and then  
easily restore them.

And then into the potentially major catagory... I've run into a  
problem that I *think* I've tracked to the unit doesn't recognize the  
dial-tone issued by my PSTN provider (Verizon). It works inbound and  
outbound just fine at my house, where it is connected to a LinkSys  
PAP that interfaces with Verizon's VoiceWing service. But when I move  
it to a real POTS line, it works inbound, but outbound single stage  
dialing stalls. This is a problem that I only just identified last  
night, and have been working on it today and as I said I *think* it  
may be that it isn't accepting the dial-tone. There is an option to  
ignore the dial-tone and not wait, but I haven't tested that yet (at  
3am I gave up at the office I was connecting it to and brought it  
back to my house where it promptly started working again... I'm  
hoping to retest on POTS tonight or tomorrow).


All of the above are probably fixable via a firmware update. I'm  
currently running the latest that Grandstream has on their web site,  
but I have not yet contacted them to see if they have a newer "beta"  
version available that hasn't been publicly posted. My guess is, all  
the issues will be worked out in due time.

With the only show stopper appearing to be the dial-tone issue (or  
whatever is causing it to fail on the POTS lines), it may be a good  
buy if you can either verify that it works with your PSTN provider  
first, or have the ability to return it if it doesn't (in my case, I  
could probably return it to the dealer, but A: it has been over a  
month since I bought it, and B: I'm not done playing with it to see  
what might or might not be wrong, and since for me price is the  
single most important factor, I'm willing to keep at this one to see  
if I can get it all working correctly.)

-chris
<www.mythtech.net>