I'm looking at a new sister company we just took over, their remote
village has 1700 analogue phone lines to the workers huts, but they go
nowhere past the MDF.
The office runs voip, now i'm told i have to get phones to the workers
because the <lots of explicit words> AKA previous owners of that
business stopped the build when they ran into financial problems.
So my plan is to utilize the existing many miles worth of copper pairs.
I'm looking at throwing them into Versa Dslams that use pppoe pass
through, throw in a mikoTik 1036 as pppoe server, and we got spare
R710 i can use as radius server, and by my limited knowledge this
works.
OK data done, but... now all those pots out lines need to go somewhere
that can handle 1700 or more lines, I am looking at either grandstream
48 port FXS gateways or sangoma vega 50 ports (which Ill use as 48 so
theres a 1:1 match with dslams) the vega 3050 probably wont be used
because they are more than twice the price of grandstream.
But this all results in a sh1te load of 48 port gateways (power is not
a concern), but wondering if there is another solution that is more
cost effective? Seems the regular NEC's Siemens and so on might have
an option but I can imagine it will be far more expensive than a bunch
of individual gateways.
This project is in my mind workable, but i've not done such a thing on
a large scale.
Those who have experience in this field care to chime in? is my method
acceptable or not for such a project size?
most pbx's I've done are only few hundred analogue lines where
gateways are more suited and definitely more cost effective, at all
our locations we use freepbx which works perfectly, and we know the
beefyness of the box we'll need to install to handle this load, thats
not a problem if we go down the gateway method.
thoughts?
Look at MSAN solution. Like Huawei UA5000 or similar solutions from other vendors.
Regards,
Andrey
What’s the average loop length? Grandstream is probably OK to 5+ kfeet but you will lose CID before that.
As the low cost option don’t expect them to be trouble-free (or have particularly good vendor support), but they might work in your application if cheap is what makes sense.
My $.02
Jeremy Austin
hey,
But this all results in a sh1te load of 48 port gateways (power is not
a concern), but wondering if there is another solution that is more
cost effective? Seems the regular NEC's Siemens and so on might have
an option but I can imagine it will be far more expensive than a bunch
of individual gateways.
Huawei was already suggested and Nokia ISAM also works very well for your application
Majority of the small consumer gateways (including the 48p ones) will not work on long loops, they are ment to be used inside a building etc.
Innomedia is decent as well, but again it all depends on loop lengths.
Might want to look at more of a carrier system. Something like a Calix E7, E5 or C7 line. You could probably pick up a C7 chassis on the used market and fill it up with ADSL or VDSL cards that will push dial-tone at least 2x as far as they will push DSL. At least in the 10 mile rage. Although at some point, when you’re out past DSL range things like old-school load coils will help with call quality.
There’s likely an enormous amount of ADSL\VDSL DSLAM blades and chassis out there that you can pick up for a song. Buy the ones that do POTS and DSL in one.
Thank you, will do, but I am to assume that this MSAN devices combine
the dslam and voice, like the gateway and dslam all in one? That we
point the dsl to the mikrotik asnd teh voice to our freepbx box?
I have zero experience with high end gear 
The huts or cabins whatever you want to call them, are right behind
the admin building at entrance, so first is about 300 meters and the
furtherest is just under 1 mile
Cost will be an issue, Im sure I will have no problems if I have to
install a full rack of gateways and another full of dslams if it costs
150K, over something 1/5th the size in one rack that will cost 200k -
since the company is not charging them for internet or voice.
Thanks, I know the vega marketing says 7 kilometers, I've used them
before at 4 kilometers with at 4REN, I agree the grandstreams are
cheap and as someone pointed out not very good for line length, I
planned to get my hands on one and test it at furthest location, the
Versa dslams (which are re badged planet's) are running from a private
reply I got run up to at least 3.5 miles with speeds averaging 16mpbs
down and 1 up, so cheaper gear sounds ok, and my understanding of the
dslams a child can enable it, its very user friendly and I've used
both types of gateways before and both are easy 3 minute setups.
I dont envision huaweis or nokias being 3 step user friendly
If you were to outfit them with three chassis of Calix\Occam B6-252s, you’d be under $25k for the whole thing and get ADSL2+ speeds. You would need most of a rack to do it.
Other platforms may or may not be more cost effective or a better solution. Just throwing the idea out there.
We’ve been implementing similar DSL systems at large campgrounds for years. There are a huge number of high-density DSLAM solutions out there, and DSL CPE cost practically nothing. As you say, $25K is plenty to pay for the hardware, and a rack is plenty of space. The most time consuming part is wiring the existing POTS lines into amphenol connectors to plug into the DSLAM, 25 pairs at a time.
In addition to Calix\Occam, Adtran‘s TotalAccess solution is worth looking into for their carrier-class support.
-mel beckman
Agreed I would do the Adtran Total Access 5000. What you want is the “combo” cards. They combine a SIP FXS gateway and DSL port on one port, aka a Combo port. This would be the way to go, as it doesn’t require external splitters to combine a DSL and Voice signal as you are talking about with two separate modules.
If cost is a concern, look at Zhone. They have carrier class gear on the cheap.
BTW, some of these chassis can support like 1000’s of lines out of 1 box. Could do the whole village on a single rack quite easily.
...
The most time consuming part is wiring the existing POTS lines into amphenol connectors to plug into the DSLAM, 25 pairs at a time.
...
-mel beckman
You may already be familiar with this, but leaving it here in case it helps..
..Allen
Yes, that’s what we use. But it means punching down all the wires all over again, or running jumpers if you don’t have enough spare service loop.
-mel via cell
Thanks, this seems far more cost effective.
But what about configuration, is it easy enough to configure?
I'm told it must be simple to config and understand and if possible
web based (im told because I may not always be available they want
their basic IT staff to be able to understand and if need be make
changes - which that alone scares me none of them understand anything
other than windows)
Thanks for all the suggestions
Thanks for suggestion, as per previous, how easy it to configure?
It needs to be understood by laymen if possible, i'm no layman, but
im no carrier grade networking guru either, most my setups are 300 odd
users, where the gateway and dslam method is cost feasible, but not
when your looking at the numbers of this project - hence reason for my
post
Cheers
I've not used Calix gear, but the Adtran TA5000 supports a Cisco-like CLI. It can also be provisioned entirely using SNMP, if that's more to your liking, and in fact that is how Adtran's in-house provisioning suite works. It also has some TL1 support if you really must...
The CLI has some necessary deviations from Cisco IOS, of course, as almost all "industry standard" CLIs do, but you can probably pick it up pretty quickly.
If you buy new/prime gear directly from an authorized Adtran disty you also get their provisioning and monitoring suite (AOE) "free" as long as you maintain a support contract (which isn't particularly expensive). It's kinda blah (and Flash-based, but I'm told that's changing by the end of the year...) but does work.
The Calix and Occam systems are web based. I find the Occam interface easier, but I’ve used it longer.
Adtran has a built in web interface too. I it slow, but it does work. I like CLI better.
Overall, the SIP configuration is easy, and ideal for large setups. You define a sip trunk (not system only supports 1 unfortunately) and then each port you just add the sip username and password to that port.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. It does work for most day-to-day tasks, though there are some things you can't do from it and have to drop to the CLI for. Overall, I prefer the CLI.