Asterisk Hardware - Which would you choose?

June 15, 2007
Last week, I posted a blog entry about how Slacht, an Irish company offering a wall-mounted Asterisk-based PBX chose PIKA’s hardware. I also posted a 'teaser' when I stated, "I have some further thoughts on this news, which I can't get into right now, but I will post a follow-up blog post hopefully later today. Trust me, it will be interesting..." Well, it took me longer than I thought to write about my "further thoughts" but finally I found some time. What I find interesting about this news is that there are now several hardware choices when deploying an Asterisk-based PBX. Sure, PIKA has provided Asterisk-supported boards for some time, but it got me thinking how many brands of cards are supported and how this affects Digium. Let's see -- you have Digium cards, Aculab cards, Dialogic cards, PIKA cards, Rhino, and Sangoma cards that all work on Asterisk-based systems. (You also have ZAPMICRO and OpenVox which are Digium-cloned cards.)



Some cards work more seamlessly and have better driver support than others. For instance, I've heard it is difficult to get Dialogic channel drivers to work on Asterisk. I recall hearing that the Dialogic driver was licensed such that it could only be used with Asterisk Business Edition. In any event, with so much hardware competition for the Asterisk platform, how does this affect Digium, the corporation behind the open source Asterisk movement? A lot of their revenue comes from their hardware business, so with so many choices will this leave Digium "high and dry"?

Case in point, Fonality was Digium's largest customer, buying more Digium cards than anyone else. However, Fonality made the decision to go with Sangoma hardware over Digium because Sangoma hardware was less expensive and until recently, only Sangoma hardware supported the Octasic echo-cancellation for superior VoIP sound quality. I recall Fonality's CEO Chris Lyman a year or two ago mentioning they went with Sangoma hardware because they were sick and tired of all the support issues with Digium hardware. The trixbox appliance, another Fonality product, by default comes with Sangoma hardware, though you can get it pre-installed with Digium cards. There are also many horror stories of Asterisk users trying to get Digium hardware to install properly due to hardware interrupt issues. I compared/contrasted Digium hardware vs. Sangoma hardware last year. It's a bit out of date now since Digium now supports Octasic echo cancellation. Nevertheless, it's worth a look.

As SmithonVoIP points out, Sangoma's stock has been going like gangbusters when he points out, "Sangoma posted their Q3 earnings today, which showed a 24% increase in revenues over the previous quarter of this year, a 68% year over year increase in sales revenues, a 69% year over year increase in net income, and a 56% year over year increase in Net earnings." Relatedly, Rich Tehrani and I were discussing Sangoma's phenomenal stock growth a few weeks ago and both of us planned on writing about it. I believe Rich has an article planned for Internet Telephony Magazine highlighting Sangoma. Obviously, Sangoma has been riding the "hockey stick curve" of Asterisk, which has been dramatically boosting Sangoma's revenue. (they sell other hardware as well)

Then you have OpenVox, a company based in China offering "Digium-cloned" hardware. They use the same hardware reference design that Digium uses. In fact, they look nearly identical. While they also suffer from the same hardware interrupt issues as Digium hardware, they're 20% cheaper - or more. OpenVox was probably the first Digium clone and I believe is the largest. Similarly, another Chinese-based company, ZAPMICRO is also offering Digium-cloned hardware. Then you have cyLogistics, a great online VoIP store, offering OpenVox hardware, as well as Sangoma, Aculab, PIKA, and Digium. I heard through the open source grapevine that Digium is refusing to allow any distributors to carry Digium hardware if they sell OpenVox cloned hardware. But apparently cyLogistics either has a "pass" from Digium or they're skirting the "ban" by purchasing Digum hardware through other resellers. I've heard from my other sources as well that they aren't happy that Digium is forcing distributors to carry Digium Asterisk hardware exclusively.

I say all this to ponder Digium's future. Will the open source Asterisk community have "brand loyalty" to Digium, since Mark Spencer founded the whole Asterisk movement? Or will the open source community, which is notoriously "fickle" when it comes to price choose the least expensive hardware that just plain works? T1/E1 and analog cards that work on Asterisk are becoming commoditized, so if Digium doesn't sell their telephony cards, where does that leave them? They can make revenue on the Asterisk Appliance once it ships, but their core revenue right now is from their telephony cards.

Let me say that I personally like Digium and especially Mark Spencer. I'm met Mark a few times and he even took me out for "linner" (lunch/dinner) at TMC's Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. I want Digium to succeed because it will only help further grow the Asterisk community. Even though a healthy ecosystem of third-party Asterisk-based PBXs now exists and there is still a strong open source community helping to drive the open source Asterisk code, Digium is still Asterisk's champion. Losing Digium to under-priced Chinese cloned hardware or even to tough competition from Rhino or Sangoma would be a tough pill for me to swallow.

If you were to ask me which hardware I would use in an Asterisk solution, well if I think with my "open source loving heart", my choice would be Digium. However if I think with my technical CTO brain, my recommendation would have to be to install Sangoma hardware. It has some key advantages over Digium & Digium cloned hardware, including lower cost, better scalability, and better interrupt handling for a trouble-free Asterisk installation. In fact, you can install a single PCI or PCIx card and then attach daughter cards to it that don’t use a PCI slot and share the same interrupt. And so I ask you open source community and Asterisk-based dealers/resellers/end-users, etc., what are your thoughts on Digium's future? The comment lines are open.

Post a comment

See this page in TechnoratiTechnoratibook mark in del.icio.usDel.icio.usSlashdot.comSlashdotSubmit to Digg.comDigg

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Search Technorati: , , , , , , ,
Related Tags: , , , , ,

Listed below are links to sites that reference Asterisk Hardware - Which would you choose?:

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/mt3/t.fcgi/32759

Comments to Asterisk Hardware - Which would you choose?


  1. Ryan Thrash :
    June 15, 2007 1:50 PM

    I'd have to say give the Rhino guys a very hard look. They did have some issues early on with their hardware echo cancellation, but they more than did the right thing and their products just work, and are free of the design issues that cause problems with the Digium/clone cards.

    They're hard core hardware guys, and they get how to engineer boards right. Rumor has it that they also have some very interesting kit coming down the pipe that could even be considered disruptive in the card space...

    To top it off, their Ceros Asterisk server is a tremendously compelling solution as well. Rhino ships and supports an end-to-end solution today that fits a ton of scenarios from 4-channel hardware echo can PSTN cards to multi-T1 cards to channel banks to Asterisk servers. Their hardware echo 4 channel PSTN FXO card is about half the price of Sangoma's offering.

    Fonality is also a great vendor that I have a tremendous amount of respect for and that offers a solid product, and they voted for Sangoma obviously.

    If I were in Digium's shoes, I'd extend considerable energy to build support services around Asterisk which has a tremendous ecosystem indeed. That way if they wind up on the short side of the hardware race, they've got a profitable and stable business unit on which they could regroup and rebuild. But I'm just a silly redneck from East Texas playing armchair quarterback so what do I know?wink


  1. Prashant :
    June 18, 2007 6:50 AM

    Hi,

    I am trying to build a PBX which will replace my existing legacy analog PBX.
    What I intend to do is :
    1. Replace the legacy analog PBX with new feature rich PBX.
    2. The new PBX must have support for GTalk, VOIP, etc and would have a max of 1000 extensions.

    With these 2 in mindset, please guide me which h/w and s/w combination should i opt for.

    Thanks & Regards
    Prashant


  1. Matt :
    June 18, 2007 5:45 PM

    We just bought a bunch of cards and chose Sangoma. The two driving reasons:

    1. Sangoma has a PCI-X interface option for all the T1/PRI cards.
    2. They do not have the Interrupt sharing issues that Digium has.

    The Sangoma cards have been working flawlessly so far.

    I wonder if the future is things like the Asterisk appliance. Companies like Nortel, Lucent, NEC are scrambling to keep the low end. Their model includes making a lot of money on handset sales. As the intelligence is pushed farther up the network, the PBX has a smaller and smaller role. If you look at the migration from a 10A2, where a tremendous amount of switching was done in the desk set, to a analog/digital key system, where the relay/TDM switching moved to the KSU, to a hosted environment where the KSU is eliminated....but I could go on for days.

    -Matt


  1. Filein Rommel Leon :
    June 30, 2007 4:48 AM

    Interesting your post about that hardware to choose with Asterisk, from my technical point of view I agree also that Sangoma have better electronic than digium.

    Greetings from Mexico..


  1. Ryan Thrash :
    July 11, 2007 5:47 PM

    Well I guess Digium's acquisition today makes for good armchair quarterbacking after all!


  1. Matthew Fredrickson :
    October 13, 2007 5:46 PM

    I don't think it has been publicized as much as it should have been, but over the last year or so we (at Digium) have spent an enormous amount of effort to eliminate interrupt sharing and system compatibility issues. With the current versions of our cards and drivers, they should be gone. In fact, I would like to put a challenge forth, that if there's anyone out there that has *ANY* kind of problem with a Digium card (not just compatibility) please bring it to my attention and I will see that it gets fixed as soon as possible. We are very, very interested in keeping our current customers and earning anybody that has moved to competitors' products back and we would be very grateful to have an honest chance to do so.


  1. Tom Keating[TypeKey Profile Page] :
    October 15, 2007 11:17 AM

    >>I don't think it has been publicized as much as it should have been, but over the last year or so we (at Digium) have spent an enormous amount of effort to eliminate interrupt sharing and system compatibility issues.

    Matthew - thanks for the update on Digium improving interrupt handing and compatability issues.

    I'm very glad to hear that and you're right, it hasn't been publicized very much. Perhaps Digium can put out a news release stating before & after improvements in interrupt handling + system compatability. Might go a long way to changing perceptions.


  1. Redfone Support :
    October 16, 2007 5:42 PM

    Although not a traditional PCI card mfr. which this article focuses on, Redfone's line of T1/E1 TDMoE appliances are also making waves in the Trixbox/Asterisk world. Many a Sangoma, Digium customer has chosen our devices for the most demanding call system environments in the world. PCI,PCIe,PCI-X, no PCI? We just need a nice ubiquitous Ethernet interface. Price point is about the same as Digium and Sangoma as well. Need high-availability and quick failover capability? You won't find that with a PCI card.


  1. Mohammad Elkersh :
    March 4, 2008 6:11 AM

    is asterisk support Cisco ip phone Models


(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)