Hey all,
It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA. For a
small office such as mine it would be a great product. So her goes my
question.... What is a known asterisk working BRI card that will
operate in the USA. I need to weigh price/quality. I need to do
DID/DDI (or what ever you want to call it). Asterisk will do everything
else I need. The ILEC has at the other end a DMS-100. I have been
having all kinds of problems using POTS lines that I will consider it an
investment to move to a more digital connection. I am considering
going the VoIP route (Vonage, Broadvoice, etc...) but before I commit
either way I'm exploring all my options.
Your opnion matter here to please let me know.
Mark Coccimiglio
n3whx@amsat.org
sip:293625@fwd.pulver.com
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Mark, I was in the same situation. Our current system uses BRI for almost all lines. I looked for some kind of solution and finally gave up. The BRI products here just seemed way too expensive for me. I then started checking on a PRI and ended up getting an integrated PRI with 7 channels for voice and the rest as a fractional T1 for data. It hasn't been installed yet, but once it goes live, we'll end up saving about $1000 a month from what we were paying with BRI and POTS. Most of this savings comes from needing multiple phone numbers, but not that many lines. We had 10 BRI circuits (equates to 20 voice lines). We're also getting rid of our DSL since this includes data. It kind of depends on what you have, and what you need (as far as voice and data), whether this will work for you. On 4/10/06, Mark Coccimiglio <n3whx@amsat.org> wrote:> > Hey all, > It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA. For a > small office such as mine it would be a great product. So her goes my > question.... What is a known asterisk working BRI card that will > operate in the USA. I need to weigh price/quality. I need to do > DID/DDI (or what ever you want to call it). Asterisk will do everything > else I need. The ILEC has at the other end a DMS-100. I have been > having all kinds of problems using POTS lines that I will consider it an > investment to move to a more digital connection. I am considering > going the VoIP route (Vonage, Broadvoice, etc...) but before I commit > either way I'm exploring all my options. > > Your opnion matter here to please let me know. > > > Mark Coccimiglio > n3whx@amsat.org > sip:293625@fwd.pulver.com > > > > > _______________________________________________ > --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- > > Asterisk-Users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > > > >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20060410/a9862001/attachment.htm
Mark Coccimiglio napisa?(a):> Hey all, > It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA. For a > small office such as mine it would be a great product.Hello, My opinion comes from Poland(EU). I use * with a <10 Euro (<12 USD) 1 BRI (2b+d) card named Fritz! (the exclamation mark is in name). Chan_capi works reasonably well. From my telco I have few ( 10 to be accurate) DID/DDI/MSN numbers +48 22 xxx xx x Z where Z is from 0 to 10. For faxsmiles i use additional analog phone line and external 33k6 modem. (on that analog line we also have *DSL connection to the Internet). It all works pretty well. -- Krzysztof Drewicz Affordable 2/4 span E1/T1 PCI-cards. 100% Asterisk compatible. See http://4e1.pl
Mark Coccimiglio wrote:> Hey all, > It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA. For a > small office such as mine it would be a great product. So her goes my > question.... What is a known asterisk working BRI card that will > operate in the USA. I need to weigh price/quality. I need to do > DID/DDI (or what ever you want to call it). Asterisk will do everything > else I need. The ILEC has at the other end a DMS-100. I have been > having all kinds of problems using POTS lines that I will consider it an > investment to move to a more digital connection. I am considering > going the VoIP route (Vonage, Broadvoice, etc...) but before I commit > either way I'm exploring all my options.In the US, bri & pri's are less popular for lots of reasons, part of which is the cost of implementing the necessary software on the CO switch. Siemens (as one example only) charges their small CO customers $7,000 to implement the software (plus an annual fee), even if the CO has only one potential customer. Not very cost effective in the small CO's. Also, once an management/engineering decision has been made to support bri & pri's in a CO, the telco sales/marketing folks come up with a monthly customer cost for providing the service, and frequently those prices are waaaaaay out of sight. The monthly cost will vary dramatically from one telco operating company to another, depending on what the sales/marketing folks included in their cost analysis. On top of all that, when Northern Telecomm first introduced the DMS series of switches, the line cards necessary to support bri's were different from those needed for pots service. The price of those cards were high compared to pots cards, therefore not many CO's were equipped to handle bri's. As a result of those items above, deployment has basically been limited to the larger CO's in the US, and then primarily to pri's. I don't know of any underlying influencing factors that would suggest the above is going to change any time soon. Since the bri's are the least likely to be supported (from a general overall perspective), the number of vendors selling bri interface cards in the US is rather small when compared to other countries. Since the number of implementations (in the US) is rather small, the expertise needed to support it is almost non-existent except in the larger CO's. I don't think I'd be looking to implement bri's any time in the near future.
Mark Coccimiglio wrote:> Hey all, > It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA. For a > small office such as mine it would be a great product. So her goes my > question.... What is a known asterisk working BRI card that will > operate in the USA. I need to weigh price/quality. I need to do > DID/DDI (or what ever you want to call it). Asterisk will do everything > else I need. The ILEC has at the other end a DMS-100. I have been > having all kinds of problems using POTS lines that I will consider it an > investment to move to a more digital connection. I am considering > going the VoIP route (Vonage, Broadvoice, etc...) but before I commit > either way I'm exploring all my options. > > Your opnion matter here to please let me know. > > > Mark Coccimiglio > n3whx@amsat.org > sip:293625@fwd.pulver.com >In theory, bri makes a lot of sense, flawless disconnect detection, 8 directory numbers, placing a caller on hold is done by the switch and doesn't tie up a line, and on. But my experience hasn't been all that encouraging. I've had a bri line in Seattle for about 4 years or so. The local Qwest co switch is a 5ESS. It took about 3 months to get it properly provisioned for a couple of Lucent 970 phones. And that's only because one of their techs felt sorry for me, came in on a Saturday and followed the provisioning instructions I found on a telecom site. I'm now convinced that if I had provided a copy of the 5ESS screens with my order and they actually got to the tech, I would not have had a problem. Next, I got a Eicon Diva board and tried to get the hisax kernel driver working. It's ni-1 implementation, the only one I could find, isn't very complete. It was written by a guy in Australia using only an isdn simulator, a significant accomplishment. It appears that it's intent was to just place outgoing data calls. At best, it would signal my POTS line, but give up during call setup. Unfortunately, our layer 3 protocol is secret and the specs have to be purchased from Telcordia. The last time I checked, assuming I chose the right publication, it was about $600. Adding ni-1 to either Junghanns' work or visdn probably wouldn't be that difficult given the specs. Both of these drivers happily talk to my $10 HFC-PCI card and negotiate, then assign a tei to the phone. So, the existing layer 1 and 2 stuff configured as point-to-multipoint seems to work fine. My understanding is that all bri's, both here and in Europe, use the same Q.920/921 standards. It's layer 3 that's different. Given an ni-1 protocol stack, hardware like Junghanns' 4 and 8 port cards should work with Asterisk here too. So, - Telcordia NI-1 specs - Some code - Detailed provisioning instructions for at least a 5ESS and a DMS-100 Anybody interested? Steve
I guess what I need to find out first if there is anyone out there using Asterisk & BRI in the USA? If so what hardware have they been able to use. I no longer want to hack around with analog circuits. BRI has the potential of PRI with only 2 B channels. A great idea for a small office such as my own. VoIP may be an option, but I would need a ITSP that would allow calls to transfer from my asterisk box to the remote phone set. My link to the internet is fast, but its pointless to route a call into the office just to stream it back out. More work more work more work..... Mark Coccimiglio n3whx @amsat.org sip:293625@fwd.pulver.com
I was reading that Junghanns was palnning on supporting National (Q.931) if they do, all you should need is a NT1 to turn the U insterface in an S/T.> -----Original Message----- > From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of > Walt Reed > Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 4:39 PM > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk BRI in the USA > > On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 09:10:09AM -1000, Mark Coccimiglio said: > > I guess what I need to find out first if there is anyone out there > > using Asterisk & BRI in the USA? If so what hardware have > they been > > able to use. I no longer want to hack around with analog > circuits. > > BRI has the potential of PRI with only 2 B channels. A > great idea for > > a small office such as my own. VoIP may be an option, but I would > > need a ITSP that would allow calls to transfer from my > asterisk box to > > the remote phone set. My link to the internet is fast, but its > > pointless to route a call into the office just to stream it > back out. > > More work more work more work..... > > I'm in a similar situation. Being on the end of a long loop, > POTS sucks > - echo / static / crappy calling features. > > Paying around $2K-3K for BRI solution is a non-starter > though. It needs to get down to the $200-400 / port level > (more ports = cheaper per > port) to be viable. Soho / Very small business (under 12 > people) is definately a 1-2 port market which my guess would > be the bulk of sales for BRI. > > It would be awesome to see a Sangoma BRI card. It's hard to > say what the market would be since the US telco companies > have really tried to kill BRI service. > > Considering what a full PRI costs, there is also a point > where too many BRI ports no longer makes sense, but that > number is probably >4-6 BRI's. I was in a situation where I > really only wanted 4 BRI's, but had to look at a PRI instead > which ended up wasting a lot of money in the long run. POTS > was a non-option. > > > _______________________________________________ > --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- > > Asterisk-Users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users >
Hi Joe, In your mail you wrote that "I've heard a few stories that reported partial success with an Eicon Diva Server card, but always with the caveat that "it doesn't work quite right" or something along those lines." I can ensure you that this is not the case. We are implementing a Diva Server card in our call centre with Asterisk - so it works perfectly on both BRI and PRI lines. You need to follow the instructions here though. http://www.eicon.com/support/helpweb/slnxen/asterisk.asp -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Joe Greco Sent: 12 April 2006 14:06 To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk BRI in the USA> I dunno if it's THAT bad. I had a BRI line in the (relatively) podunk > town of Kalamazoo, Michigan back in 1998. Sure, it took the phone > company a couple of weeks to provision the service, but it takes the > phone company a couple of weeks to do most anything in my experience. > > The price was something like $45/mo for two channels and the same > per-call/per-minute pricing scheme as POTS (no per-minute fee for > incoming and local calls, regular LD pricing for LD, and 800 local > outgoing calls included after which it was something like 6 cents per > call). > > The switch on ILEC's end was a DMS-100 implementing National ISDN-1. I > really put the ISDN line through its paces too -- voice, data, bonded > data, automatic bonding and de-bonding to allow for voice calls -- and > everything always worked flawlessly. > > I don't know what today's pricing is like for ISDN BRI what with all > of the various mergers (at the time, I had service from Ameritech), > but unless it has gone up significantly, BRI seems like the perfect > type of trunk for an Asterisk system too small for a T1/PRI to be an > affordable option.It's still similar. Out here, we get a lot of RF interference, and it turns out that BRI is actually cheaper than equivalent POTS lines with Caller-ID (a feature I require), and you can do neat stuff like having 56K dial-in with a USR I-Modem. However, CPE has always been very limited here in the States, and there was no good way to hook up direct to Asterisk. I've heard a few stories that reported partial success with an Eicon Diva Server card, but always with the caveat that "it doesn't work quite right" or something along those lines. CPE like the USR I-Modem won't deliver Caller-ID to the POTS port. Other CPE like the Motorola BitSurfr Pro is sensitive to RF noise. We were using Netgear RT338's for a number of years, but they are all burnt out now and impossible to replace (actually most CPE is virtually irreplaceable, as so few mfr's make ISDN gear anymore). And while most CPE was OK with our old POTS based phone system, almost none of it worked reliably with POTS<->VOIP gateways, such as the Sipura SPA-3000. Further, BRI has two channels, and the U interface pretty much dictates that you feed both of them to the same place. Putting them into an Asterisk box, I would lose the ability to use the USR I-Modem, for example... Despairing, I thought I might have to abandon the beautiful digital delivery of ISDN, which is stupid when you have a digital (VoIP) phone system. But: After talking with a friend up in Minneapolis, I bought an Adtran Atlas 550 off of eBay, which is a versatile Swiss Army Knife for telecom needs. With a quad port ISDN BRI and an octal FXS, it's the killer CPE device, but the best part is that it also does T1/PRI, so you can /convert/ BRI to PRI, etc. I've not actually done that just yet, though I do have a Digium T1 card around here somewhere and want to try it out one of these days. So, I can't actually say it /works/, but it's supposed to. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples. _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users