[Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk

[Ariel Batista]

Jennyw,

I have setup about 8 Asterisk systems with The TDM400p boards in them. Yes 
allot of them had at the beginning some echo and other things. But I have 
been able to work and get them fixed.

1) Make sure your motherboard is able to assign it's own IRQ for the board. 
This is one of the most important things.
2) There is a tool on the system that lets you set the txgain and rxgain. 
It's called ztmonitor which you can use to see how the volume is setup then 
you can make some adjustments.
3) It's important to make sure your system has good network card. I have had 
some problems with Realtech with echo.
4) You also need to make sure you have the phones on connect to a switch.
5) Asterisk system does save allot of money in the long run.  I am sorry 
that the person you got was not able to help. But I know that the TDM400p 
boards have there well critic's but they do work.
6) For us to give you more help we are going to need to know more about you 
system. What is the server your using? What phones? How is your network 
setup?  If you want you can email me directly. I will try to help you out 
with your setup.

Ariel Batista

jennyw wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We recently tried installing Asterisk for a small office. We figured
> the safest way to go would be to buy from someone who sold equipment
> specifically for Asterisk and to use a consultant that they
> recommended.  However ... it didn't turn out so great.  Sound quality
> is terrible -- the echo is pretty bad, and there are popping noises,
> too. Callers say that people on the Asterisk end sound very faint,
> while people on the Asterisk end hear people maybe too loundly (might
> be related to the popping noises -- sounds like when you have stereo
> turned up too high).  The reseller and the consultant both say that
> the most likely cause for this is using Digium cards w/ analog phone
> lines. Apparently, they say, sound quality can be pretty bad.
>
> I called Digium and they gave me some suggestions for settings, but
> nothing has worked well. So I wanted to ask others ... has anyone had
> good luck with using analog phone lines and Asterisk? Especially with
> Digium cards (we use the TDM400P)? Although from reading articles on
> the net it sounds like people do have a lot of echo problems, it also
> sounds like some people are using analog phone lines with some
> success.
> FYI, what I've mainly done is try changing echotraining, echocancel,
> echocancelwhenbridged, txgain, and rxgain in zapata.conf. I've heard
> from the reseller that what might work better is to trade the Digium
> cards in for VegaStream gateway. It's more expensive, but apparently
> has a DSP built in that should increase voice quality. Of course,
> they say there are no guarantees with this.  They also mentioned
> (after the fact) that Asterisk systems don't necessarily save money.
> So far, the experience has been very frustrating and I'd love to hear
> some success stories from others (or more info on what I can
> realistically expect from an Asterisk system)! And, of course, some
> ideas on how I can get things to work better.
>
> One of the next tests will be using Asterisk with a VoIP provider to
> see what the sound quality is like with digital on both ends. PRI
> sounds like it'd be even better, but for an office w/ 5 people, it
> sounds pretty expensive. How do other people do this?
>
> Thanks in advance for any pointers!
>
> Jen
>
>
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