[Asterisk-Users] Qs about FXO/FXS cards

[brian at txshirts.com]

Gosh, you sure are full of yourself.

You just shouldn't ASSume that everyone knows all of the abbreviations
and when they ask you needn't be rude.  Being condescending is the first
sign that a consultant is shallow and not worth using.  A *good*
consultant will take the time to explain things and will never bash the
situation that a customer or potential customer is in.

Hardware and technology never become obsolete, they simply become
outgrown.  A customer's given choice in technology is typically made
based on the best available balance of money, commitment, and need.
Making high handed and unqualified statements is a waste of your time
and mine.  T-1's are rather unpleasant to move and for most small
businesses are completely unnecessary, in my opinion.

While you may have the money to burn by having a t-1 at home, most small
business owners would rather use what is necessary as opposed to what is
extravegant.  And as you so nicely put in your other post, customers who
come off the dime are a joy to work with.  And I suspect most of them
wouldn't tinker with * they would go straight to Cisco or Nortel, or a
"brand" name that works turn key.  

While I'm sure we haven't heard the last of your POTS bashing or small
business bashing I've got a bit of a request/challenge.  Instead of
bashing those of us who run small businesses, try to contribute to the
list by being open, modest, and professional.  Who knows, you might find
a new client, and you never know which "small business" will grow into
the "medium" client who "has money to drop".  I know I'd sure look
forward to reading your posts if you were contributing useful
information and not just bashing the line mix that works for our
company.  

You see the charm in * for us as a small company is that we can
implement big company features, control costs, make better use of people
and lines which will probably help us avoid needing 8 or 10 lines that
would require a T-1.  Regardless of if you like that, that's a cool and
powerful thing.  That is why * rocks and why there will be more of us
that adopt it that you will want to shake a stick at.  And while * is a
bit of a stretch for a home use, it's a slam dunk for any size business.

Best regards,

Brian Greul
Texas Shirt Company
www.txshirts.com
713-802-0369 / 713-861-6261 (fax)

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Critchfield [mailto:critch at basesys.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 2:59 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Qs about FXO/FXS cards

You may need more coffee before responding to another message.

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:21 -0600, brian at txshirts.com wrote:
> Steven,
>   If we grant that you are correct and that Digium and friends are 
> making hobbyist products..... Then what are the "serious" installs 
> using?  We're serious to the tune of 5 FXO ports and 3 FXS ports and I

> want to make sure we don't waste time on flaky hardware.  I figured 
> that as Digium built the hardware and wrote the original code they 
> probably know it better then anyone else.  You just seem to know a lot

> about the serious installs so I'm curious what you use and how many 
> lines you run with it.

Digium makes T1 and E1 interfaces. Take a moment and read what I have
quoted below and you will see I said serious installs would be using
these T1 and E1 interfaces. 

If you truely wanted to know what I use and how much I have installed,
you only need look at the archives. The company I work for has a T1
fully deployed right now and are expecting a second one any week now. We
have extra capacity in hardware reserved for a customer of ours who has
expressed interest in upgrading soon and needs more lines. 

I used to even have a T1 card and channel bank to run my home system
till I grew bored of it and decided it was better to spend my time doing
other things than managing the phones at home. Currently that system
minus the server is with VCCH.com and they use it occasionally for
demonstrations.

> Btw, we are a textbook "small office" install according to the docs.

And barely over the home use of a truely geeky person. I think you
actually qualify as sub-"small office".

> Also what the heck is FC?   

Fedora Core, Join that to the obvious question you will ask later, RH ==
Red Hat. Don't forget how to use google to look things up now.


On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:07 -0600 Steven Critchfield wrote
> And we come full circle to a comment I made before that TDM cards are 
> more for hobbyist than for real serious installs. A real install is 
> probably going to use a T1/E1 interface and bypasses all the troubles 
> listed in this thread.
> 
> So far I don't trust that many of the people using TDM cards are the 
> ones who will tweak a system into a serious install. Look at previous 
> threads about system load spikes where we have to pull teeth to get 
> people to swap out of a FC kernel and into a generic kernel.

--
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>

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