[asterisk-biz] PBX Functionality for Less than the Price of a KeySystem (3Com Asterisk IP Telephony Appliance)

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:00 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
> Last point that should pretty much put your assertions to rest are
> that almost all IP and Hybrid PBXes are PCs.  Ever open an NBX 100 or
> V3000?  It is a PC complete with flash card, CPU, memory.  The NEC IPK
> is the same although not what you would consider a standard PC, but
> all the same components, they are just slide in cards like PCI.

I would like to comment on this slightly, "almost all" should be limited
to the class, most of the carrier stuff (telcobridges.com, performance
technologies (hardware in metaswitch), etc) are CPCI based.  So "almost
all" in the retail market are probably PC based because it is much
cheaper than CPCI, although CPCI has benefits that generally wont
present themselves unless you are prepared to spend the money.  Some
require a CPU card for host stuff to run on, others done (CPCI telco
gear generally uses the gigabit ethernet instead of other busses that
can have lower capacity).

So basically what I am saying is it depends on the market you are
looking at when making the generalization :)

I also think that with a properly set up network of boxes you can do
many of the things that people use CPCI solutions for, although
telcobridges being able to do a STM-1 into one unit is a nice touch.
They also did a 240,000 DS0 system at one time in hong kong although
that was multiple chassis, the density is much higher, thus
maintainence, power consumption, etc are lower on average.
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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