Asterisk hardware

This page is a reference page of hardware that is known to work with Asterisk.
For finding out how to determine the hardware sizing needs of your Asterisk system see Asterisk dimensioning. For appliances see Asterisk Appliances.

For phones to use with Asterisk, including VoIP phones (both hard and soft phones) and Analog Telephone Adapters, see Asterisk phones.

PSTN Interface cards (analog, GSM, ISDN-PRI and R2/MFC)

This section contains hardware for connecting analog or digital phone lines from the Public Switched Telephone Network to your Asterisk server.

Asterisk.PBX.In

Single port FXO Card

• https://asterisk.pbx.in/x100p-card-in-india Enterux X100P – Authentic X100P Wildcard OEM 1 Port FXO for Asterisk,
• One Year Limited Warranty, https://asterisk.pbx.in/x100p-order-form Buy now from here – Delivered anywhere in India only

Atcom

• AX-1E: One PRI port 30 channels
• AX-4E: Same as Tormenta2 and Digium’s E400P cards
• AX-4S: 4 Basic Rate Interface ports (I.421) for TE and NT mode
• AX-4T: Same as Tormenta2 and Digium’s E400P cards
• AX-100P: one fxo pci card, compatible digium x100p
• AX-400P: Suitable for SOHO PBX application.
• AX-1600P: 16 ports anolog pci board
• IP04: 4 ports fxo/fxs asterisk embedded ippbx
• IP08: 8 ports fxo/fxs asterisk embededded ippbx

ChinaRoby

• FXO card,FXO module:FXO module for asterisk card X400P
• RX-1E1: 1xE1/T1 PCI interface card for Asterisk
• T1 card,E1 card: ISDN PRI PCI card with 1/4 ports
• X400P-40: PCI interface card for Asterisk with 4 FXO modules
• X400P-31: PCI interface card for Asterisk with 3 FXO+1 FXS modules
• X400P-22: PCI interface card for Asterisk with 2 FXO+ 2 FXS modules
• X400P-13: PCI interface card for Asterisk with 1 FXO+ 3 FXS modules
• http://www.chinaroby.com/english/pbx1u-4os.htm: IP PBX with 4 FXO/S modules
• http://www.chinaroby.com/english/pbx1u-1e.htm: IP PBX with 1 E1/T1 ports
• http://www.chinaroby.com/english/pbx1u-8os.htm: IP PBX with 8 FXO/FXS ports

Digivoice

• VB0404FX – 4 FXS, with built in aLaw, uLaw and GSM codec, Echo Cancelation into DSP
• VB0408PCI – 4/8 FXO, with built in aLaw, uLaw and GSM codec, Echo Cancelation into DSP
• VB3030PCI – 1 E1, with built in aLaw, uLaw and GSM codec, Echo Cancelation and R2D/MFC protocol into DSP
• VB6060PCI – 2 E1, with built in aLaw, uLaw and GSM codec, Echo Cancelation and R2D/MFC protocol into DSP

ELGATO Communications

• VoIP-GSM card (Asterisk, SMS), 4/8-ports, PCI-series 4/8 GSM-modules (900/1800/1900 Mhz), 1 SIM-card per channel (and SIM-Server support), DTMF receiver, Digital sound processing (with possibility of hardware compression: G.729, G.726, G.723), Light-emitting diode indication of channels activity
• VoIP-WCDMA(3G) card (Asterisk, SMS), 4/8-ports, PCI-series 4/8 WCDMA(3G)-modules, 1 SIM-card per channel (and SIM-Server support), DTMF receiver, Digital sound processing (with possibility of hardware compression: G.729, G.726, G.723), Light-emitting diode indication of channels activity

IXC hardware/software manufacturer.

Ukrainian telecommunication company, which develops and manufactures a wide range of contemporary information systems and technologies for communication enterprises.

• Flexible, efficient, scalable PSTN to VoIP box – $300 Budgetary solution of PSTN DSS1 – SIP gateway, connected via Ethernet.

Magiclink

• Magiclink Asterisk Appliance – AADK compatible Embedded Asterisk Box – 8 FXO/FXS port

Parabel

• Asteroid – The voice channel bank of FXS/FXO ports (up to 30), connection to Asterisk server through E1 or Ethernet ports (TDMoX).
• ELF2-AE – External E1 interface device for Asterisk, connection to Asterisk server through Ethernet (TDMoX) with Hot-plug support.
• Quasar E1 – 4/8 E1, PCI/PCIe or PMC interface cards.
• Quasar M – 1/2 E1, PCI/PCIe interface cards.

Positron Telecom

• • The V-Series from Positron is the ONLY PCI card on the market where you don’t need a ZAP/DAHDI driver as the cards all install as Ethernet adapters. Suitable for all SIP-based applications, the V-Series provides all the telephony needs for enterprises and makes it easier and faster to use than any other adapter.

• V-114 PCI – 4FXO, 1 FXS, Ethernet, Echo Canceller – no ZAP required, connect with SIP
• V-214 PCI – 4EURO ISDN BRI, 1 FXS, Ethernet, Echo Canceller – no ZAP required, connect with SIP
• V-310 PCI – 1E1/T1, 1 FXS, Ethernet, Echo Canceller – no ZAP required, connect with SIP

Sangoma cards

• Digital-Analog Hybrids
  • FlexBRI FlexBRI Hybrid Voice Card
• Data Networking
  • S519 ADSL2+ S519: ADSL2+ Modem Card
• NetBorder Express

SIPbase

External solution for connecting every VoIP-PBX with ISDN-Network (BRI or PRI). 100% reliable, no hardware and software conflicts and very easy to setup.

• ISDN-BOX BRI/PRI External solution for BRI or PRI connections

Sirrix AG

• Digital Interface Cards
  • Sirrix PCI2E1 2 Port PRI-Card (NT/TE) w/hardware echo cancellation with conference bridge and optional link encryption

Varion

Zapata Telephony T1 and E1 cards: http://www.govarion.com

Voicetronix cards

• OpenLine4 4 FXO PCI card
• OpenPCI-4 & OpenPCI-8 4 and 8 FXO/FXS PCI cards
• OpenPRI Single and dual E1/T1/J1 PCI cards
• OpenSwitch6 & OpenSwitch12 6 and 12 FXO/FXS PCI cards

Xorcom

Asterisk Telephony Interface Modules and Stand-alone iPBXs

• Astribank: External, USB 2.0 connected, supports combinations of FXS, FXO, BRI ISDN, E1/T1 PRI, E1 R2, T1 CAS — up to 32 analog ports per chassis.

Voxzone.com

Single port FXO Card

• Voxzone X100P 1 Port FXO for Asterisk
• One Year Limited Warranty
• Analog Interface PCI cards
  • ZMA100P – Single port analog interface card
  • ZMA400P – Quad port analog interface card series: With SoftEcho Echo Cancellation Software
  • ZMA800P – Octal port analog interface card series: With SoftEcho Echo Cancellation Software
• Digital Interface PCI Cards
  • ZMD110P – Single port Digital interface E1/T1 card
• Analog Modules
  • ZMX100P – Single Port FXO module
  • ZMS100P – Single Port FXS module

X100P clone cards.

These are voice WinMODEMs marked with Intel 537, Ambient MD3200, or Motorola 62802 chipsets. These cards install and behaves exactly like a Digium Wildcard X101P card. (There are problems with intel 537EP & FA82537EP chipsets, but the 537PU & 537PG should work.) OEM X100P “clone” cards are sold based upon this soft modem chipset. People report very mixed results. Most start their Asterisk learning with these very inexpensive cards.

There are some possible Caller ID issues: Getting the following checksum error on the CLI, but the information is still passed correctly.

• • • NOTICE[-1252213840]: callerid.c:238 callerid_feed: Caller*ID failed checksum

Actual Caller ID problems are confirmed on one particular Motorola based card.

ISDN-BRI Interface cards (can be used as PSTN cards, or as terminal equipment)

Atcom

• • AX-4S:4 Basic Rate Interface ports (I.421) for TE and NT mode

Eicon

• • Diva Server V-Series provides a dedicated range of telephony adapters that provide rich media processing capabilities for enabling voice, speech and conferencing applications.
  • Diva Server V-BRI- Connects to 1 BRI Line
  • Diva Server V-4BRI – Connects to 4 BRI lines
  • Diva Server provides a set of robust all-in-one communication adapters for the integration of multiple applications, including Fax, Unified Messaging and Voice – all on a common hardware platform.

Junghanns

• • 4-port ISDN (NT (for isdn phones) or TE (for isdn lines)) interface cards manufactured by junghanns.net. See also zaptelBRI. Some comments about the difference between Junghanns and Beronet BRI cards.

Xorcom

• Xorcom Astribank BRI. May also have FXS modules.
• any cheap HFC-S PCI chipset based ISDN card, can be used in either TE or NT mode – see zaphfc as part of zaptelBRI
• any CAPI compatible passive ISDN card (popular example: AVM Fritz! PCI) – see chan_capi

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PC/Server Motherboards

While Asterisk will run on many different systems, the limitations will be determined by what type of interface cards you choose for connecting to phone lines or phones.

PCI Slot Requirements: Carefully check what the requirements are for any PCI card you select in terms of PCI slot type, 5 volt vs. 3.3V, 32 bit vs. 64 bit, 33 Mhz or higher. The X100P clone cards require 5 volts and won’t work in motherboards that can’t supply 5 volts. The cards should be keyed so they will only fit in 5V slots, but at least some of the clone cards have the notch in the PCI connector that will allow them to fit into 3.3V slots. Symptoms of putting a 5V card in a 3.3V only slot is that the system won’t power up.

Pictorial guides to identifying types of PCI slots:

• From CERN

The Digium TE410 PRI card requires a motherboard with a 64bit 3.3v PCI slot. Given the bandwidth requirements, it would be better to have a 133Mhz slot if available.

The newer Digium TE405P PRI card uses the more commonly available 32bit 5 volt PCI slot, so you have a wider selection of motherboards for this card. Other than the PCI slot type, this board is virtually identical to the TE410P.

Note: Some cards like the TDM400’s are 3.3V cards, but to make up for their higher power requirements, they require an available hard drive power connector in order to get 5V or 12V. If all of your connectors are in use you may require a Y (splitter) cable.

PCI interrupts: A lot of issues are reported with MB’s that share interrupts on a single PCI slot, with the Digium hardware. Better quality MB’s allow BIOS specification of the IRQ to a PCI slot to avoid this issue.

See also: Asterisk hardware interrupts

You can use the command “cat /proc/interrupts” to see the interrupt allocations and possible conflicts.
The command “lspci -bv” can also provide additional information regarding IRQs.

If you find the interrupts are not shared but hear ticking noises in your digium hardware anyhow, I’ve discovered the IDE harddisk write can be the cause. Digium support suggested the following command. $ hdparm -u1 /dev/hda This command sets “get/set unmaskirq flag (0/1)”. By default, the disk will ask for interrupt priority to write to the disk. Changing this setting hardly affects performance, but the sound problems go away.

The Digium T100P has issues with at least one chipset (the SiS 740) with shared-memory onboard video. If you’re trying to run a T100P or TE4xx on a board with shared-memory video, and the zaptel driver locks up the computer soon after you configure the spans with ztcfg, try adding a PCI or AGP video card, then go into the BIOS setup and disable the onboard video. The theory is that the T100P is too “busy” a device for the 740 to cope with, and causes the chipset to lock up. Machines that use dedicated-memory video (where the video chip has its own memory, just as if it were on a card) are apparently not affected. If you have this problem with another shared-memory chipset, please note it here.

There has also been trouble with the Tyan S2466 Athlon MP motherboard. When running more than two T400P boards, the system will lock up soon after starting the zaptel drivers. No workaround has been found.

• Production Tested Compatible Server boards (64bit 3.3v)
  • Dell
    • WARNING – many Dell motherboards use the e1000 gigabit ethernet chipset, which has been known to cause random locksup – if you plan on using a Dell server, disable the onboard controller and purchase an addon ethernet card.
    • Dell PowerEdge 1750
    • Dell PowerEdge 2650
    • Dell PowerEdge 2850 – When using the 2800 or 2850 server you will find they don’t ship with internal molex connectors. If you expect to be using a card such as the Digium TDM2400P and FXS modules then you will need internal molex connectors to power the FXS modules. You can order Item number G2536 for the 2800 or H2188 for the 2850 from dell and this connection will provide you with internal molex connectors. The item description is listed as “ASSY;CBL;PWR;PBAY;2DROP;PE2800”
    • Dell Poweredge 750 (TE110P) Kernel 2.6.9, must use SMP kernel for APIC and X Windows not running, otherwise frame slips occur
  • HP
    • Compaq ProLiant DL380 G3
    • HP DL320 (TE410P, TE110P) Kernel 2.6.5, 2.6.9 uniprocessor and SMP kernel
  • IBM
    • IBM X300 Series
  • Intel
    • Intel SE7501HG2
  • Tyan
    • Tyan 7500i(S2721)
    • Tyan GX15 B2723T15/B2723T15M
    • Tyan Thunder i7501 Pro (S2721-533)
    • Tyan Tomcat i720 S5112
    • Tyan Trinity GC-SL (S2707)
  • Supermicro
    • Supermicro 7043A-ib, 614H-Xi, kernel 2.6.9 uniprocessor and Supermicro 6014H-X8 kernel 2.6.9 SMP – T100P, Sangoma A101, 102, and A104
    • Supermicro PDSME, Intel E7230 chipset, Dual LAN, 2x 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X, 2x 64-bit 100MHz PCI-X, Sangoma A200D, 3ware 8006-2LP SATA RAID 1, kernel 2.6.9 SMP
  • Unknown
    • Crystal CS100 with single PIV SBC running kernel 2.6 and a single T100P – Asterisk 1.0 stable
• Other Production Tested Compatible Server boards
• Other Production Tested Desktop boards
  • • Asterisk hardware Soekris: Soekris Net4801 boards
    • ABIT IS-10
    • Asus A7V-333

   

Complete systems

IBM NEBS compliant Blade Server for Telco applications.

• Have successfully run multiple Asterisks with HA fail over. (without dropping connected SIP calls)
• Up to 4 processors x 8 Blades (32 3GB Xeon processors)
• Up to 8 GB per Blade.
• 2 1 gigabit builtin switches.
• Redundant power supplies
• Redundant Managent Modules

Sun Netra T1 AC200

Specs:

• Around $150 – $300 on eBay for maxed out configurations.
• 500 Mhz UltraSparc IIi.
• Usually 512MB – 1GB of RAM.
• Usually two 18GB hot swap SCSI drives.
• One PCI slot.
• Two 10/100 ethernet ports.
• Two serial ports, one of which is a “lights out” port and lets you remotely power on and power off the machine.

Positives:

• NEBS compliant.
• Lights out management.
• Great interrupt handling.
• Surprisingly capable processing power.

Negatives:

• The Zaptel drivers aren’t ported to Solaris (not that I care, but you might).
• The Zaptel drivers are not ported to mixed 32/64 bit userspace/kernelspace.
• So you need to either run a 32 bit kernel (and 32 bit userspace) or run a 64 bit userspace (on a 64 bit kernel).

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Channel Banks

• See: Asterisk Channel Bank

Cable Info T1, Amp50, Punch Down etc

• See: Cable Info

Paging Systems

• See: Asterisk Paging and Intercom

GSM and other cellular networks

• See: Asterisk Connecting to the Cellular Network

See also

• Asterisk phones: Soft and hardphone configurations and recommendations
• Interface boards
• Telephony Cards
• Asterisk hardware recommendations: Recommended configurations
• Discussion of analog hardware for small home systems.
• Used terms: FXO, FXS, PSTN, POTS, CallerID, ISDN, PRI
• Voice Cards