Well I'm slowly learning my way around asterisk although as yet I haven't had the chance to actually hook the system up to an ISDN line. I am going to migrate from an Argent Office setup. My only problem is keeping costs down on the phones. The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as getting cheap SIP phones? I have a large number of POTS phones with headsets so I would have to take that into account if I replaced the phones with SIP's In an ideal world Id like to convert a number of POTS to soft phones but as always its persuading the users that they can operate in the same way. Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall I get it direct from Digium? Anyhow, as I say I'm getting more functionality out of Asterisk than I ever did with (personally thinking) a very confusing Argent setup. I just hope that I can make it financially viable to do the install Cheers Tim
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Tim Guy wrote:> The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest > the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or > would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as > getting cheap SIP phones?A channel bank would allow you to connect the phones to the asterisk box via a T1/E1. I think they are about 50 EUR / extension.> I have a large number of POTS phones with headsets so I would have to > take that into account if I replaced the phones with SIP'sDepending on what the old phones were you may be able to reuse the headsets.> Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is > a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall > I get it direct from Digium?We purchased our TE405P (4 port t1/e1 interface) from Telappliant (http://www.telappliant.com). There was a short delay due to a mixup, but we had our card in three or four business days. Peter -- Peter Svensson ! Pgp key available by finger, fingerprint: <petersv@psv.nu> ! 8A E9 20 98 C1 FF 43 E3 07 FD B9 0A 80 72 70 AF ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Remember, Luke, your source will be with you... always...
Hi Tim, TG> I am going to migrate from an Argent Office setup. My only problem TG> is keeping costs down on the phones. Why not use the Argent office as a channel bank? If you use a TE4XXP card you could connect one E1 to NTL and one E1 to the Argent Office, thereby allowing you to use your existing pots phones. TG> Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this TG> is a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or TG> shall I get it direct from Digium? You should check with NTL that the ISDN30 they are offering is full ETSI EuroISDN (ISDN 110) and not the older ISDN 85 based product. If your circuit is not full EuroISDN you will not be able to use it with Asterisk. As for UK suppliers you should really ask in the biz mailing list otherwise the users mailing list policemen will start patrolling! I can say that there's no need to buy direct from Digium (and mess around with import duty etc.) there are good resellers with local support here in the UK. HTH Darren -- Comgate Telco>Internet<Broadcast -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Tim Guy Sent: 18 June 2004 16:37 To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] UK install Well I'm slowly learning my way around asterisk although as yet I haven't had the chance to actually hook the system up to an ISDN line. I am going to migrate from an Argent Office setup. My only problem is keeping costs down on the phones. The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as getting cheap SIP phones? I have a large number of POTS phones with headsets so I would have to take that into account if I replaced the phones with SIP's In an ideal world Id like to convert a number of POTS to soft phones but as always its persuading the users that they can operate in the same way. Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall I get it direct from Digium? Anyhow, as I say I'm getting more functionality out of Asterisk than I ever did with (personally thinking) a very confusing Argent setup. I just hope that I can make it financially viable to do the install Cheers Tim _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
If you're already using POTS phones and want the flexibility of SIP you may just want to get SIP adapters that you can continue to use your POTS phones with. I recommend the Sipura SPA-2000 dual analog adapter(www.sipura.com). You can get them for about $92(if you get more than 10 in one order) and each one handles two analog phones. They have a lot of features and great support. We are currently using them on over 80 analog phones across 3 Asterisk servers and they work great. A cheaper option might be using channel banks for your POTS phones but that may only be cheaper if you buy a used one, and then you wouldn't have the flexibility of using SIP adapters, and you would probably need to get a quad T1 card if you were planning on only getting a single T1 card, which would make it much more expensive overall. Hope this helps. Good luck MATT--- -----Original Message----- From: Tim Guy [mailto:Tim@nsoptimum.co.uk] Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 11:37 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] UK install Well I'm slowly learning my way around asterisk although as yet I haven't had the chance to actually hook the system up to an ISDN line. I am going to migrate from an Argent Office setup. My only problem is keeping costs down on the phones. The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as getting cheap SIP phones? I have a large number of POTS phones with headsets so I would have to take that into account if I replaced the phones with SIP's In an ideal world Id like to convert a number of POTS to soft phones but as always its persuading the users that they can operate in the same way. Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall I get it direct from Digium? Anyhow, as I say I'm getting more functionality out of Asterisk than I ever did with (personally thinking) a very confusing Argent setup. I just hope that I can make it financially viable to do the install Cheers Tim _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
We're thinking of doing the same with our argent office system at the moment.> The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest > the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or > would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as > getting cheap SIP phones?Best bet is to use an IAXy or supr to convert the phone into an IAX2. The supr's have passthrough Ethernet ports so easier to do. I suggest you get one to try first if you have headsets that's what we're in the process of doing soon. The other way to do it would be get an ADTRAN 650 or 750, you can pick them up cheap on ebay. But this requires an extra PRI interface for each ADTRAN box (unless there linked so they run via single T1 termination).> Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is > a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall > I get it direct from Digium?Should work yes, digium direct are good or telappliant. Would be really good if you could post your config files on a website once you've got it all up wouldn't mind seeing the config, as we're about 3 months off before we think of converting ours. Kind Regards, Chris Bond
Hi Tim, I have done a very similar migration to the one you are suggesting. To start off with, you could buy a TDM card with 4 modules to allow you to pick 4 analogue channels from the Argent system or one or two x100 cards and pass them to Asterisk. As the Argent kit is very configurable, you can configure the POTS lines to the US standard and have callerID and other features not supported on standard UK lines. This will allow you to start using the system in a production environment without the business suffering as you learn the system. Once you are happy the system operates as you expect, you can connect it directly with the PRI card and bypass the Argent system. You will find that Asterisk does work differently to the Argent kit and trying to emulate the behaviour may not be as easy as you expect. It would be interesting to find out if anyone has tried using the Argent POTS units on Asterisk or if this is possible. You could always use the Grandstream ATA 286 and use your handsets on these. The cheap SIP phones (in my experience) dont play well with standard headsets. Stuart. On Fri, 2004-06-18 at 16:36, Tim Guy wrote:> Well I'm slowly learning my way around asterisk although as yet I > haven't had the chance to actually hook the system up to an ISDN line. > > I am going to migrate from an Argent Office setup. My only problem is > keeping costs down on the phones. > > The Argent system is running about 30 POTS phones. Can someone suggest > the cheapest option? Should I get some kind of large scale FXS box or > would the cost of doing that on a large scale work out the same as > getting cheap SIP phones? > > I have a large number of POTS phones with headsets so I would have to > take that into account if I replaced the phones with SIP's > > In an ideal world Id like to convert a number of POTS to soft phones but > as always its persuading the users that they can operate in the same > way. > > Our Telco is NTL offering us an ISDN 30 style package. I assume this is > a E100P card requirement? Any suggestions for good UK reseller or shall > I get it direct from Digium? > > Anyhow, as I say I'm getting more functionality out of Asterisk than I > ever did with (personally thinking) a very confusing Argent setup. I > just hope that I can make it financially viable to do the install > > Cheers > > Tim > > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users-- | OpusVL: IT solutions for business | http://www.opusvl.com | T: 08717 50 40 02 | F: 08717 50 40 03 | E: sm@opusvl.com