[asterisk-users] [POTS/BRI] Neutral comparisons of PCI vs. box?

[David Backeberg]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Gilles <codecomplete at free.fr> wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 09:33:22 -0500, David Backeberg
> <dbackeberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>* pay somebody else to do it in the form of appliance and lose most
>>control versus do it yourself and have total control but also the
>>chance to screw up.
>
> Thanks for the input. Has someone in this ng tried a PCI card and then
> an appliance of the same grade, and could provide some feedback?

I've done both. It's hard to determine what 'same grade' means. I
guess you could go by price?

I've used Digium PCI cards. They worked well.

I've used Cisco gear for terminating PRI lines. It also worked well.

Both the cards and the appliances have had 'issues'.

The Digium PCI cards themselves were solid, but there are lots of ways
to do the configuration wrong. You have to match the line settings to
the line provided by the phone company, but sometimes you figure those
out by trial and error. That's essentially no different for the
appliances.

With asterisk there are certain bugs I've run into, but unlike with
Cisco, I've been able to find the actual problem, change the code, and
run the version I want, which also has the patch I want.

I've gotten into an upgrade / downgrade trap with Cisco where I wanted
to fix a PRI error so I upgraded. Then the upgrade generated broken
callerID. I couldn't downgrade if I wanted the PRI fix, and I wanted
the PRI fix more than I wanted callerID. Alas, Cisco.

All known, documented issues, escalated through Cisco paid support.