[asterisk-users] North American voice BRI - Informal survey

[Gordon Henderson]

On Wed, 4 Jul 2007, Dave Donovan wrote:

> Sorry I'm a little late to the thread but this question has puzzled me as
> well.  My key thing for me is hardware.

In the UK but ... Cheap BRI card...

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=604415&gclid=CN6Qp6abjo0CFRDXEAodGHjJjQ

Whether it will work with asterisk is another matter though.

And what it has (or rather doesn't have!) when compared to those that cost 
£100s is an intersting question, but I'm suspecting it's something along 
the lines of the "soft modem" equivalent - ie. it's doing a lot more in 
software to simplfy the hardware which may mean more CPU overheard.

But saying that, I once used a cheap ISDN card for over a year on a data 
connection in a linux box (used the ISDN4Linux drivers in the kernel) and 
it "just worked" and didn't notice any additional CPU overheard.

Gordon


>
> On 6/27/07, Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:
>
>> > Thoughts? Who here has used BRI in North America? And when you did, what
>> > interface hardware did you use?
>> 
>> Well, at the time, there was pretty much nothing that was considered to be
>> "reliably" supported by Asterisk for NA BRI.
>> 
>> I picked up an Adtran Atlas 550 with a 4BRI-U interface and an octal FXS,
>> and I use the unit's built-in T1 network port to connect to an Asterisk
>> box.  This works nicely, except for the things for which it doesn't work
>> nicely.  The box is fundamentally being used as a BRI<->PRI translator,
>> but gives me some neat extras.  .....
>
>
> Has anyone else seen a working hardware solution that didn't cost an arm and
> a leg?  It seems to me that a BRI card should cost less than $100.  I think
> I remember a German friend telling me that they go for around $40 dollars.
>
> I know that I can get a BRI with voice service out of Bell.  I think they
> have to provide it because of the CRTC tariffs.
>
> The thing that has stopped me from trying it in the past is the uncertainty
> around hardware.  Do I understand correctly that NA (North American?) BRI is
> different from the European version and that European hardware won't work?
>
> If I could get a card for a few hundred bucks then I'd be willing to give
> this a shot.  Unfortunately, I can't afford a few grand for the Adtran setup
> described, although it does sound cool and the BRI<->PRI conversion approach
> is a clever way of overcoming the hardware scarcity.
>
> For the number of times that I see people trying to get digital style
> features out of analog lines, and banging their head against the wall, I'd
> love to get a BRI working and be able to tell you all how it worked out.
>
> Dave
>