Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 12:45:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "John T. Farmer" <jfarmer@goldsword.com> To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: jfarmer@goldsword.com Subject: Re: Looking for... Message-ID: <199810051645.MAA24917@sabre.goldsword.com>
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On Sat, 3 Oct 1998 22:18:33 -0400 (EDT) Andrew Webster said: >On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, John T. Farmer wrote: [snip] >> >> Read the question again. He's looking for a box that will physically >> connect to an ISDN BRI line _and_ accept ISDN or analog calls (upto v.90) >> as a host. As a "modem box" the nearest equiv. is the 3com/USR MP-8/i >> box. Handles 4 BRIs, accepts ISDN or analog calls & presents them on >> 8 async serial ports. The nearest "ethernet" box that I know of would >> be the Ascend Max1800 with a digital modem card in it. > >The only snag with these products are the huge pricetags attached to them! >Looking at the small number of chips involved in the Portmaster-3, it >can't be all that expensive to make a 2 port version. This would fill an >idea niche between dropping tonnes of cash on a PM-3 when you only need >2 or 3 of these boxes attached to BRIs. Well, the problem is that the chipsets _aren't_ where the expensive part of the PM-3 or the MAX series is... You start looking and it's quickly obvious, even at qty 1 pricing, that there's probably less than $1K(usd) of componments in one of these boxes. The _real_ cost is in the engineering, both hardware and software. And those cost's are going to be nearly the same for a 2 port server box and the 48 port server box. Of course, Ascend _could_ capitolize on soon of the work that has been done on the Pipeline 50/75/85/130/220 series and the Max series to bring out such a unit. Pipe50 sized, 1 or 2 BRI's, ethernet port, 2 or 4 HLDC and modem DSP chipsets. Call it a "Mini-Max." The problem is that such a box would have to be priced in the $1K(usd) price range to sell. Used Max1800's with Digital 56k modem cards are selling in the $4k to $5k range... Given Lucent's focus, I doubt that they would be interested in creating such a product. That's why I was asking if anyone has done any work with FreeBSD and Computer Telephony applications. Given the hardware tools (ISDN BRI card, MVIP bus, DSP-based modems, comm channel processors, etc.) that are available for the ISA & PCI buses, then the "Pico-BSD" efforts would make an excellent and _flexible_ approach to this. I know it can be done, there is at least one WindowsNT based product that I've read about. John <Who would raither design new toys than mail invoices today...> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- John T. Farmer Proprietor, GoldSword Systems jfarmer@goldsword.com Public Internet Access in East Tennessee Office: (423)691-6498 for info, e-mail to info@goldsword.com Network Design, Internet Services & Servers, Consulting To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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