Adtran Advice

porengo

What would be a good Adtran (ISDN/T1) for a home lab?

tunerX

If you want to cough up the money then you could get the Atlas 550. The adtran is an actual switch and not a simulator. After you get the chassis, the T1/E1 card and the BRI cards you will be well into 2-3Gs worth of highend switch. A person I work with bought the 550 with with 2 T1 slots and 8 BRI ports, he paid 3Gs for it. He can do more than just practice for the lab and has used if for inverse multiplexing and other things at work.

Another problem with the Atlas is that you need to spend time learning how to work with it (because it is a full featured switch) instead of running through Cisco lab scenarios.

I bought the Vconsole 2PRI-8BRI. It has done everything I needed and cost about 1/3 of the Adtran.

When I was looking I kept track of the Vconsole, Teltone, and Astricom.

Vconsole works well, is moderate in price and can give you PRI and BRI ports. You should expect to get one on Ebay for about 800-1200 USD.

Teltones work well and can be fairly cheap, but then you will need to get a separate box for the PRI. 150-600 USD for 2 BRI ports and 400-600 for 2 PRI ports. A negative with two simulators is that you cannot dial multiple B channels down the PRI trunks.

The Astricoms are expensive and also work well, you can get both PRI and BRI for about 1000-1500 USD.

If you wait long enough you will get one at the lower ranges I have mentioned.

porengo

Thanks TurnerX! I appreciate the information.