Ok... I am reluctant to ask this question as I believe that it may be like asking what someones favorite linux distribution is... but I need to make an informed decision. We are getting ready to upgrade from a TE210P to a quad T1 card with echo cancellation. I am trying to decide between the Sangoma card and the Digium card. I need this to have great quality and I need it to work well. I would like to hear about personal experiences and any other technical differences between the card. Again this is not intended to start a pissing contest or flame war....
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 08:53:27AM -0400, Sean Cook wrote:> Ok... I am reluctant to ask this question as I believe that it may be > like asking what someones favorite linux distribution is... but I need > to make an informed decision. > > We are getting ready to upgrade from a TE210P to a quad T1 card with > echo cancellation. I am trying to decide between the Sangoma card and > the Digium card. I need this to have great quality and I need it to > work well. > > I would like to hear about personal experiences and any other technical > differences between the card. Again this is not intended to start a > pissing contest or flame war....I'll hijack your thread for a slightly related question: there used to be a Debian package (in Woody) to install Sangoma cards. That package was called "wanpipe". Now I can't find any existing Sangoma drivers in the form of standard debs. As I don't have the hardware to test this myself, I don't really bother. But if anybody just needs help with packaging, I'd be glad to lend a hand. -- Tzafrir Cohen sip:tzafrir@local.xorcom.com icq#16849755 iax:tzafrir@local.xorcom.com +972-50-7952406 tzafrir.cohen@xorcom.com http://www.xorcom.com
Sean Cook wrote:> Ok... I am reluctant to ask this question as I believe that it may be > like asking what someones favorite linux distribution is... but I need > to make an informed decision. > > We are getting ready to upgrade from a TE210P to a quad T1 card with > echo cancellation. I am trying to decide between the Sangoma card and > the Digium card. I need this to have great quality and I need it to > work well. > > I would like to hear about personal experiences and any other technical > differences between the card. Again this is not intended to start a > pissing contest or flame war....One of the primary differences between the two cards is the Sangoma h/w echo canceler handles more cases of echo then do the Digium cards. Whether you need that additional coverage is 100% dependent on your specific implementation (eg, your T1/PRI provider), and not on what the list thinks about the two products. Since there are no affordable tools to truly quantify echo for each specific implementation, as a pbx engineer your toolkit should probably include both cards. Sort of like try the less expensive card and if it doesn't address your echo issues, then try the more expensive one. The downside to using Sangoma cards is that every time you upgrade zaptel you need to reapply the Sangoma patches using their less then straight forward documentation.
> If you can't afford to purchase both cards, then a safe bet is tosimply> purchase the Sangoma card since it can address more echo issues thenthe> Digium card.Also, don't forget that the high-end A104d has more than on-board EC. It has on-board DSP handling and a 5 year warranty. Check it out: http://www.sangoma.com/datasheets/p_aft-104d-specs Having your T1 card use its muscle to process digital signals can be a luxury or it can be a necessity. I say luxury because most T1 cards that work with * simply let the server's CPU do all of the DSP work. However, in a demanding environment it might better to let the T1 card share some of the workload, allowing your CPU to handle all of the other things that CPU's are supposed to be doing. Still your call, but if this is a professional install in a mission-critical environment with significant traffic then the choice probably has been made for you already... -MC
Asterisk Hater.. :) Sorry matt couldn't resist.. _.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::._ Brian Fertig - dCAP, MSCE, CCNA, DCSE, RHCE Data/Telecom Engineer IT Administrator Planet Telecom, Inc -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Matt Florell Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 11:20 AM To: scook@kinex.net; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Quad T1 Card Hello, I have done a lot of testing on both the Digium TE406P and the Sangoma a104d and was involved in debugging both of them with Digium and Sangoma in their early releases. Since we are on a Digium-owned list right now and I don't want to be branded an "enemy of Asterisk" again for suggesting that you might consider buying a non-Digium product, I will mention right up front that a large portion of your purchase price from buying a Digium card will go toward keeping Asterisk development going, in fact it is how Digium makes most of their money and allows them to have dozens of programmers working full time on Asterisk. Sangoma does contribute to the Asterisk codebase, but buying a Sangoma card will not help the owner of Asterisk further improve their product at all. Now on to my recommendation. As I mentioned we have had both the Digium and Sangoma echo-cancellation cards in production for over 6 months on heavy load Asterisk servers running both 1.2.X Asterisk. Both had initial problems with drivers with the Sangoma side being fixed within a couple weeks and the Digium side being fixed by having to manually disable the hardware DTMF detection in the wct4xxp.c driver code every time I upgrade zaptel. Both of the cards do a good job at removing echo from our calls, and they both have a fairly equal effect of reducing the overall load on your system(10-20%). So performance-wise in our tests in our environment they are pretty much the same. As for the technical specs on the echo-cancellation modules used, the Sangoma card uses an Octastic chipset that is highly configurable and is one of the best telecom echo-cancellation chipsets in the industry. Is has a configurable tail length and is capable of dynamically being turned on and off as needed by it's firmware. The Digium card uses an Oki chipset that has a smaller echo tail length and is hard-coded into the firmware so you cannot change it. The other differences are just the usual differences between Digium and Sangoma cards: Digium - ready to go just loading zaptel and Asteirsk, Sangoma - must load wanpipe drivers and configure each span before using, also must recompile zaptel after installing/upgrading wanpipe driver Digium - 2 year warranty, Sangoma 5 year warranty Digium - has motherboard incompatibility list, Sangoma - guarantees functionality with all modern PCI-compliant motherboards Hope that helps, MATT--- On 6/7/06, Rich Adamson <radamson@routers.com> wrote:> Sean Cook wrote: > >> One of the primary differences between the two cards is the Sangoma > >> h/w echo canceler handles more cases of echo then do the Digiumcards.> >> Whether you need that additional coverage is 100% dependent on your > >> specific implementation (eg, your T1/PRI provider), and not on what > >> the list thinks about the two products. > >> > >> Since there are no affordable tools to truly quantify echo for each > >> specific implementation, as a pbx engineer your toolkit should > >> probably include both cards. Sort of like try the less expensivecard> >> and if it doesn't address your echo issues, then try the more > >> expensive one. > >> > > > > No offense but isn't that like saying .... "Don't take what the listhas> > to say about your purchase... instead you should guess and hope youget> > the right answer... but if you don't, gamble again and buy twocards?"> > The list cannot guess at what level of echo "you" are going to incur, > therefore there is no way for anyone to accurately tell you how to > address issues. Both cards are quality products, but with slightly > different operational characteristics. > > If you can't afford to purchase both cards, then a safe bet is tosimply> purchase the Sangoma card since it can address more echo issues thenthe> Digium card. > > _______________________________________________ > --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 >_______________________________________________ --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 This email was scanned by: Mcafee GroupShield ---------------- CONFIDENTIAL DISCLAMER ---------------- All information provided in this email is considered confidential and proprietary of Planet Telecom, Inc. and Telecenter Inc. Use of this information by anyone other than the recipient or sender will be considered in breach of agreement.
Hi, I have troubles setting the userfield in mysql ( using asterisk 1.2.8 / addons 1.2.3 ) I use this in my dialplan: exten => s,n,SetCDRUserField(SOMEVALUE) I tried also: exten => s,n,Set(CDR(userfield)=SOMEVALUE) But everytime i look at the cdr database the userfield is still empty Does anyone has a clue on how to get things working ? Thanks in advance !
Hello, I ran into something similar and found the following in the wiki... *Note* : If using cdr_mysql<http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+cdr+mysql>addon make sure to set userfield=1 to in cdr_mysql.conf<http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+config+cdr_mysql.conf>. If using cdr_csv<http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+cdr+csv>, edit *cdr_csv.c* and (re)compile to enable the user field. This command has no effect if the user field is not enabled. See: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+cmd+SetCDRUserField This actually was not my problem, but it was good information. I was actually setting it and then overwriting it later on in the dialplan. Hope the information is helpfull. On 6/7/06, Tristan <tristan@telemaque.fr> wrote:> > Hi, > > I have troubles setting the userfield in mysql ( using asterisk 1.2.8 / > addons 1.2.3 ) > I use this in my dialplan: > exten => s,n,SetCDRUserField(SOMEVALUE) > > I tried also: > exten => s,n,Set(CDR(userfield)=SOMEVALUE) > > But everytime i look at the cdr database the userfield is still empty > > Does anyone has a clue on how to get things working ? > > Thanks in advance ! > _______________________________________________ > --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 >-- Origination that includes real support! http://www.VoIPStreet.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20060607/ead3663f/attachment.htm
Tristan wrote:> Hi, > > I have troubles setting the userfield in mysql ( using asterisk 1.2.8 / > addons 1.2.3 ) > I use this in my dialplan: > exten => s,n,SetCDRUserField(SOMEVALUE) > > I tried also: > exten => s,n,Set(CDR(userfield)=SOMEVALUE) > > But everytime i look at the cdr database the userfield is still empty > > Does anyone has a clue on how to get things working ?Make sure you have userfield=1 in your cdr_mysql.conf -- Cheers, Matt Riddell _______________________________________________ http://www.sineapps.com/news.php (Daily Asterisk News - html) http://freevoip.gedameurope.com (Free Asterisk Voip Community) http://www.sineapps.com/rssfeed.php (Daily Asterisk News - rss)
check cdr_mysql.conf for userfield=1 turby @ www.canistec.com -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tristan Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 6:06 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Set(CDR(userfield)) Trouble Hi, I have troubles setting the userfield in mysql ( using asterisk 1.2.8 / addons 1.2.3 ) I use this in my dialplan: exten => s,n,SetCDRUserField(SOMEVALUE) I tried also: exten => s,n,Set(CDR(userfield)=SOMEVALUE) But everytime i look at the cdr database the userfield is still empty Does anyone has a clue on how to get things working ? Thanks in advance ! _______________________________________________ --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
----- Matt Florell <astmattf@gmail.com> wrote:> fixed within a couple weeks and the Digium side being fixed by having > to manually disable the hardware DTMF detection in the wct4xxp.c > driver code every time I upgrade zaptel.This is no longer needed (editing the source); there is a module parameter that can be used to control this functionality as well, so you can place it into /etc/modprobe.d/matts-power-rules and it will take effect on each module load :-)> Is has a configurable tail length and is capable of dynamically being > turned on and off as needed by it's firmware. The Digium card uses an > Oki chipset that has a smaller echo tail length and is hard-coded > into > the firmware so you cannot change it.Small correction: the first generation VPM chips were manufactured by Oki, the current ones are manufactured at another facility... but neither of those companies designed them. -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
----- Steve Underwood <steveu@coppice.org> wrote:> other DSP functions for telecoms. What makes you think these are > foundry > chips?They are (were). They are now being manufactured at a different facility. -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
----- Matt Riddell (IT) <matt.riddell@sineapps.com> wrote:> What does the onboard DSP do when used with Asterisk? Did Digium or > someone put code inside Asterisk to hand off the > processing/transcoding > to a Sangoma card?According the Sangoma data sheet, the Octasic part _is_ the DSP (which it is, in a logical sense). The board does not relieve Asterisk/Zaptel of any additional burden beyond echo cancellation and tone detection at this time; Asterisk/Zaptel don't know how to take advantage of any of the more advanced Octasic features yet. And yes, when Digium's Octasic-based module starts shipping (currently in beta testing), it will offer the identical functionality, so I guess we can say our boards have 'DSP processing' too :-) -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
----- Olivier Krief <olivier.krief@gmail.com> wrote:> Could you elaborate ? > Any schedule ?No, there is nothing really to elaborate... and this is not a commercial mailing list, so I'm not comfortable talking about it more here anyway :-) If you need more details, contact our sales department. -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
----- Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@mikefedyk.com> wrote:> Will it have a 1024 tap echo can on all 96 channels? What about 8 T1 > support like sangoma?Those are completely unrelated questions; there is no need for an 8-span echo can module when there is no 8-span T1 card :-) It uses the identical Octasic part as the Sangoma board does, so the capabilities will be the same in that regard. -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
Kevin P. Fleming wrote:> ----- Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@mikefedyk.com> wrote: > > >> Will it have a 1024 tap echo can on all 96 channels? What about 8 T1 >> support like sangoma? >> > > Those are completely unrelated questions; there is no need for an 8-span echo can module when there is no 8-span T1 card :-) > > It uses the identical Octasic part as the Sangoma board does, so the capabilities will be the same in that regard.Have you seen the A108? http://www.sangoma.com/press/corporate/2006_04_05_A108_Card
Kevin P. Fleming wrote:>----- Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@mikefedyk.com> wrote: > > > >>Will it have a 1024 tap echo can on all 96 channels? What about 8 T1 >>support like sangoma? >> >> > >Those are completely unrelated questions; there is no need for an 8-span echo can module when there is no 8-span T1 card :-) > >It uses the identical Octasic part as the Sangoma board does, so the capabilities will be the same in that regard. > > >Does anyone have any material properly describing the algorithms Octasic use? They are supposed to have one or more patents on methods of making their canceller robust, but the paper on their site which is supposed to describe them just describes a very standard double buffered coefficient scheme. Steve
Kevin P. Fleming wrote:> According the Sangoma data sheet, the Octasic part _is_ the DSP (whichit> is, in a logical sense). The board does not relieve Asterisk/Zaptel ofany> additional burden beyond echo cancellation and tone detection at this > time; Asterisk/Zaptel don't know how to take advantage of any of themore> advanced Octasic features yet. >"Yet" being the key word. Digium is wise to take advantage of on-board/hardware DSP where possible. Many so-called "high-end" card manufacturers (e.g. Natural Microsystems) have DSP built right on to their cards. As a consumer using two separate systems that use these "high-end" cards I can tell you that there is an industry bias against "the little guy with no DSP on his T1 card." (This bias reminds me of the Microsoft snobbery against Linux in the late 1990's.) Some industry players, including vendors who create apps using these high-end T1 cards, think that a Digium or Sangoma card without DSP on the card itself is just a toy. Their thinking is like, "Well my NMS Quad T1 board costs US$15000 - it must be WAY better than a $2500 card from Digium/Sangoma/whomever." Now that Sangoma, with Digium hot on their heels, have T1 cards with some on-board muscle, it is getting more difficult for the big boys to dismiss "those annoying open-source geeks." (Just like Linux, eh?)> And yes, when Digium's Octasic-based module starts shipping (currentlyin> beta testing), it will offer the identical functionality, so I guesswe> can say our boards have 'DSP processing' too :-) >Again, a good thing to put on the sales collateral, if for no other reason than it lets potential clients know that Digium/Asterisk can play with the big boys. I definitely like it. On-board DSP has advantages in higher-end applications where clients are willing to spend $, whereas the "dumb" cards also have a wide range of applications that will fill the needs of the budget conscious consumer. Kudos to Digium on this one! Keep us posted on the progress - I think this will be a quantum leap forward for the open-source telephony community. -MC
----- Michael Collins <mcollins@fcnetwork.com> wrote:> Kudos to Digium on this one! Keep us posted on the progress - I > think > this will be a quantum leap forward for the open-source telephony > community.I think you are overstating the idea here. While the echo canceller is technically a 'DSP', it is not a _programmable_ DSP like you find on the $10K boards. These parts will never be able to do speech detection, call progress analysis, codec transcoding, etc., and they are not intended to. Using the term 'DSP' for these parts seems a bit disingenuous to me, since it implies in the reader's mind a great deal more capability than they actually have. The whole concept of 'put the complex burden on the host CPU' is still valid here; the reason that the echo cancellation is being moved to the cards is one of quality (host CPU-based cancelers are not yet as good as the available hardware choices) and 'closeness' to the TDM interface (which also can impact quality). The other functions that can be done by the DSPs on boards like the Aculab Prosody X don't actually benefit from being 'on the card'; they can be done equivalently on the host CPU (except for capacity differences, of course). It's up to the customer to decide which way they want to spend their money. -- Kevin P. Fleming Senior Software Engineer Digium, Inc.
> But the high dollars don't generally get you the high processingpower,> or a solid quality product (cough, Dialogic, cough). >Agreed. It's another case of perception vs. reality. Having "some" processing power on the card is "always better" than "none" - or so many vendors would have us believe. I see this kind of attitude out there a lot: "Hey, this card has XXX number of MIPS for its DSP handling - what does that Digium card have? None? Well, hell! That makes our <fill-in-vendor-here> 4-port card infinitely better than theirs! So what if it's 4 times the price! And we'll even throw in a cheesey SDK for building Windows apps! You do know MFC, right? Everyone who's anyone knows MFC..." Uh... yeah. I'm looking forward to OSS telephony software (and the "little guys with their little cards") taking the next step. The possibilities are intriguing, to say the least. -MC
>What I'd love to see is a reasonably grunty DSP available on the cards >that is _user programmable_. There's some stuff a host processor isn't >particularly good at (at least at present... most CPUs have an inbuilt >FPU, but when do we get an inbuilt DSP?), and wouldn't it be nice to >have 100% stable fax reception because all the time-critical processing >is done in the DSP?Interesting...I wonder what Transmeta Crusoes are going for these days? Probably $15 per thousand. And programmable. And with more than enough grunt (DSP or not) to echo-can or recieve fax. digium are you listening?