[Mac-telephony-list] VOiP Gateways / Bridges

[Tom Rymes via List]

On Jun 2, 2007, at 11:54 AM, Flavio Donadio via List wrote:

> I am considering switching from my hardware PBX (which kind of sucks,
> to be honest) to an Asterisk/Afelio/OpenPBX/Whatever-based solution
> for a long time now.

Flavio, this shouldn't be difficult or massively expensive. You are  
smart to try to do it right the first time instead of buying the  
cheap stuff.

[snip]

> We have an E1 with 30 voice channels, digital R2 signalling, supplied
> by Embratel, one of the biggest enterprise-oriented telcos in Brazil.
> Last time I checked, people suggested me a VoIP gateway which, from
> my understanding, is a box that connects to the central office
> through my E1 (which "runs" over a radio link) and communicates with
> a switch or PBX through an IP network, using SIP, IAX, H.323 or
> whatever...

[snip]

It's just my opinion, but I think you are barking up the wrong tree.  
In your message, you mentioned not wanting to skimp on the hardware  
and end up with an unsatifactory phone system, but you are planning  
on using an old Mac G3/350.

I am unsure what you have that is running over a radio link (Your E1  
or your internet?) Anyhow, My suggestions will assume that your E1  
terminates like any other E1 would and that your internet is radio  
based. Here are my thoughts, based on our phone system, which has one  
incoming PRI T1, 60 Extensions, and 20+ concurrent calls, including  
some G729 to ulaw transcoding.

1.) Buy an Intel server: a PC, not a Mac. This will make your life  
much easier. Once OpenPBX gets farther along, a mac would be a good  
choice, but until then, a linux server will be a better choice. We  
use a Dell PowerEdge 840, which was not all that expensive. I'm a mac  
guy, but using a Mac for telephony at this stage in the game is only  
going to make your life more difficult.

2.) Buy a Sangoma PCI E1 card, and plug your E1 in to that. You don't  
need a VOIP Gateway. Get hardware Echo Cancellation if you can afford  
it.

3.) Buy good quality wired ethernet VOIP phones. They will be better  
quality, won't have any battery life concerns, and should be much  
easier to set up and troubleshoot than the Wi-Fi phones. We use  
Cisco, but I have been happy with Polycom, and I've heard good things  
about Aastra and Snom. If you need to have a wireless phone, buy a  
Sangoma/Linksys SPA-2002 (or whatever the current model is) and plug  
a good quality cordless phone into that. (I have always been happy  
with Panasonic cordless phones.) It will be more reliable and should  
have better battery life than the Wi-Fi phones.

4.) I personally like Trixbox for my installations. You could roll  
your own if your goal is to really get into the guts of Asterisk.  
However, if you are looking for a system with a GUI that makes things  
like Adds/Moves/Changes easier (or at least simpler), then I think  
Trixbox is hard to beat. There are others out there that consider it  
blasphemy to use trixbox, but i think you should give it a try and  
see what you think.


Tom