[Asterisk-Users] Re: Best gateway to use for *?

[Michael Crown]

Joel,

I know there are some very vocal critics of the TDM cards on this newsgroup,
but we also have many customers who are using them with no problems.  There
are many variables involved and I am not personally convinced that it is
fair to say all of the reported problems are the fault of the Digium cards.

Digium did have a bad revision of these cards, and frankly they did not do a
good job of getting these problem units out of circulation.  It is possible
that a good percentage of the troubles we hear about are related to this bad
batch of cards.  Also, it does seem that the use of multiple cards is less
reliable in some systems.

The Digium cards offer low cost and tight integration with Asterisk, both
big benefits.  Another option worthy of consideration is to use external
analog gateways such as those offered by Mediatrix or Audiocodes.  My
personal opinion is that separating the analog interface from the Asterisk
server offers significant architectural advantages, but the cost is higher
and these devices have their own learning curve.

We use the TDM cards in our own systems all the time with no problems.  Then
again, we also use every other thing that people warn against on here: VIA
motherboards, Fedora, Grandstream phones.  Sometimes it takes some diligence
to work through the issues, but in all these cases we have determined that
these products offered benefits that made the effort worthwhile. 

Michael Crown
Managing Partner
The VoIP Connection

vox: 321.989.6728 ext. 611
fax: 321.989.0284
email:mike at thevoipconnection.com