[asterisk-users] PRI Gateway - Worth it?

[Shashi Dookhee]

Hi all,

I was looking to build a SIP-to-PRI gateway using Asterisk (as in my other post), but there is also an alternative of using a Cisco router with something like an NM-HDV module with a T1 VIC module and DSP channel banks.

The question is, would it be more reliable to offload all dahdi/zaptel/libpri type stuff to a dedicated gateway device (Asterisk or Cisco) and have the Asterisk PBX only process SIP/IAX?  What prompted all this was terrible call quality/dropped calls over our PRI (which currently has a Wildcard TE207P PCI card) and after two weeks of searching I think I've finally found the issue today (Serial ATA vs Auto mode in the BIOS, would you believe which leads us to believe that offloading duties would be very beneficial performance-wise!).

I can think of the gateway allowing us to have multiple PBX's to serve our calls more easily, maybe making it easier to failover PRI's too, etc...  Although we do have an ADTRAN Atlas that allows us to split call volume by DIDs if we wanted to (right now we only have one Asterisk PBX, one electronic FAX server and a couple of standalone FXO devices - all sharing our PRI by the ADTRAN)...

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks!

S.