One of  hardest things to find in VoIP hardware is a good low cost FXO gateway. The FXS gateways and ATA’s are easy to locate. Finding an equivalent FXO has been a never ending task. I have tested Patton, Audiocodes, Linksys/Cisco, and Grandstream gateways.

Audiocodes MP 118

After posting the initial stats I have noticed much more interest than I expected. Here is again more stats over a two month period.

This is one of those things that shouldn’t bother me but it does. Every time I see an online reference to Asterisk but spelled Asterix I really want to shake that person. It’s not that hard to get the name right. It’s Asterisk just like the * symbol it was named after. There are over 500 references to Asterix  in the forums and other user generated content at asterisk.org.

Digium ADA

Although still in beta this little app can be very useful in an Asterisk/FreePBX deployment. It is a Windows application that allows you to see call pop ups bound for your extension and perform click to call from Outlook. The admin documentation for ADA is just hard to follow. This setup was tested with a compiled from source Asterisk installation and manual installation of FreePBX.  It should also work with distros like Elastix, trixbox, and PIAF (Pbx In A Flash.)

Cisco SPA8800

As someone who has used the Linksys SPA400 in a number of solutions I was curious to see how Cisco SPA8800 compared. Now there are some major differences here. First the SPA400 is just a 4 port FXO analog gateway. The SPA8800 is a 4 port FXO and 4 Port FXS. This means you can connect 4 analog lines and 4 analog phones to this device.

 I have used and installed Asterisk for the good part of the last three years. I have tested numerous configurations and I know what works in the SMB space and what doesn't. I have not done anything with call centres or large volume call handling but I have learned enough to know what Asterisk is good at and what it's not.