voip cards

e24ohm

I am looking at building an Asterisk box, but i am unsure which card i need to connect my machine to a "comcast" Cable line. Can anyone recommend a card to imlement this, so i can test and learn at home?

currently i am look at the following which will provide me with the needed resources. for a my PTSN provider. http://www.voiplink.com/Digium_TDM400P_p/digium-tdm400p.htm, but i will purchase the card with 1xFXO and 1xFXS ports.

thank you,
E

kalebksp

What are your goals with Asterisk?

I surmise from your post that you want to connect Asterisk to your regular home phone line. Are you also going to connect it to a standard phone? Or are you going to get an IP phone?

I'm not a fan of Digium's cards, they're the low end of the spectrum. They may have gotten better now that they have optional on-board echo cancellation. Sangoma is my preferred card vendor. If you want the cheapest route get a Digium card, if you want something better I would go for a Sangoma with the echo cancellation option.

Echo cancellation is important in analog to digital telephony equipment, you'd be surprised how awful it sounds without it. Asterisk itself can do some amount of software EC, but hardware is better.

Are you compiling Asterisk from source or using a distribution? If you're using a distro I would recommend keeping your distance from Trixbox, it is not a well managed product.

e24ohm

kalebksp wrote: »

What are your goals with Asterisk?

I surmise from your post that you want to connect Asterisk to your regular home phone line. Are you also going to connect it to a standard phone? Or are you going to get an IP phone?

I'm not a fan of Digium's cards, they're the low end of the spectrum. They may have gotten better now that they have optional on-board echo cancellation. Sangoma is my preferred card vendor. If you want the cheapest route get a Digium card, if you want something better I would go for a Sangoma with the echo cancellation option.

Echo cancellation is important in analog to digital telephony equipment, you'd be surprised how awful it sounds without it. Asterisk itself can do some amount of software EC, but hardware is better.

Are you compiling Asterisk from source or using a distribution? If you're using a distro I would recommend keeping your distance from Trixbox, it is not a well managed product.

Wow, you just lost me with the last para. Thanks for the insight on vedor of cards, and their quality. I am currently trying to learn the system, and play with it at home just so i can learn and better myself...lol...my current job, doesn seen the need for VOIP, nor do they want to invest in a test lab, so i am force...to build my own....lol...i'll just write everything off in taxes at the end of the year as education or job related expence...lmao...or something like that...

kalebksp

If you just want to play around with Asterisk, the cheapest way would be to get a cheap voip account that supports Asterisk and a softphone (IP phone that runs on your computer), you'll be able to make and receive calls on your computer.

For a free softphone I recommend zoiper: http://asteriskguru.com/idefisk/index.php

I haven't used voip in a while (my last system used a T1 line), but I've heard good things about http://vitelity.com/.

Here are a couple of good resources:
http://nerdvittles.com/ (Lots of good information and they have a distribution called PBX in a Flash, which is supposed to be good.)
http://voip-info.org/ (Anything you've ever wanted to know about voip or Asterisk is in here.)

If you have any other questions I'd be happy to help.

e24ohm

kalebksp wrote: »

If you just want to play around with Asterisk, the cheapest way would be to get a cheap voip account that supports Asterisk and a softphone (IP phone that runs on your computer), you'll be able to make and receive calls on your computer.

For a free softphone I recommend zoiper: http://asteriskguru.com/idefisk/index.php

I haven't used voip in a while (my last system used a T1 line), but I've heard good things about http://vitelity.com/.

Here are a couple of good resources:
http://nerdvittles.com/ (Lots of good information and they have a distribution called PBX in a Flash, which is supposed to be good.)
http://voip-info.org/ (Anything you've ever wanted to know about voip or Asterisk is in here.)

If you have any other questions I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for the help mate....cheers!!!!