[Asterisk-Users] New Sangoma AA Series?

[Walt Reed]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 12:25:51AM +1000, Mark Lipscombe said:
> This is at http://www.telephonyware.com/sangoma
> 
> In the mean time, here is some more information so this thread hasn't 
> been a waste of time.  The new cards will be available soon, and will 
> also have an option for an addon 16 port hardware echo canceller with a 
> 128ms echo tail -- this will be available in early December.
> 
> The analog boards will consist of three components, a shark board, which 
> is the base PCI board, a daughterboard, and FXO/FXS modules (with two 
> FXO, or two FXS interfaces per module).  The first board you have in 
> your system will have the base board, the daughterboard, and one or two 
> FXO or FXS modules.  When you want to add more than 4 ports, you add 
> another daughterboard, and one or two more FXO/FXS modules.  These 
> basically sit "over" a PCI slot, and screw into the back of the chassis, 
> but do not actually sit in the PCI slot itself.
> 
> Everything is then connected via an external backplane, in much the same 
> way a series of SCSI drives are plugged into a "daisy chain".

I don't quite understand why a single-card solution is being avoided by
Digium / Sangoma. This solution is interesting, as it looks like it is
designed to fit small form PCI (for 2U servers) but riser cards in
servers like the HP DL380 and others make this less of an issue. I can
get 3 full length / height cards in a DL380. If they offered a single
card 12 / 16 port version (using 4 port modules,) they should be able to
keep the per-port cost down, and the slot count down without the goofy
backplane. It also looks like each daughtercard needs it's own
drive-power cable (from the picture.)

The 12-16 port market is really underserved - too small for T1 /
channelbank, too large for solutions like this. I like alternative
vendors, and Sangoma's reputation is very good, but this product looks
like it was designed as a solution looking for a problem. If I want 16
ports, I need 4 slots worth of room.  Using a 2U server (like this card
looks to be designed for) I could only get 12 ports max anyway (as most
2U servers are not going to be loaded with slots.)