Any recommendations for FXS/FXO hardware with Cisco Unified CME

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Folks:

Since a lot of NSPs are also in the VoIP business, I was wondering if anyone has specific recommendations for low-density (2-8 ports) FXS/FXO hardware that they are using with Cisco PBX devices. (And I guess T1/E1 as well.)

I know that typical IOS boxes can take modules/interfaces/whatever to handle FXS/FXO/T1/E1, but I'm trying to put some electrical distance between the Cisco PBX and the phone company to keep environmental problems (lightning, mostly) from blowing up the PBX.

Cisco themselves seem to have cancelled almost all of their low-end hardware, leaving us with Sipura/Linksys. I have had good results with Audiocodes+Asterisk, but not in the Cisco PBX environment. Does anyone have boots-on-the-ground knowledge of good analog gateway choices that play very nicely with Cisco PBX?

jms

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You may want to ask on the cisco-voip list as it’s most centrally focused on that.

Do you mean with CM or CME (as suggested in your subject line?)

We have generally been abandoning the Cisco devices as they haven’t released an ‘open’ phone in many years outside of what you mentioned, sipura/linksys. I’m similarly looking for a “good” handset of build quality like the 7940/7960 that doesn’t require CM, handles being behind NAT/nat traversal properly and can provision securely over a TCP transport.

We have been provisioning PAP2T for people who need the single ports and been using the Cisco ISRs to do T1/E1 where we can’t talk SIP directly to someone.

- Jared

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You may want to ask on the cisco-voip list as it’s most centrally

focused on that.
Thanks, will ask on the list.

> Do you mean with CM or CME (as suggested in your subject line?)
In this case, it's CME that I'm asking about.

>I’m similarly looking for a “good” handset

Have you taken a look at the Polycom IP phones? The physical quality is as good or better than Cisco, in my opinion (having used both a lot). And, you can provision with HTTPS secured by username/password, and if you really want you can use client/server TLS (i.e., both ends authenticate each other with certificates) for both HTTPS provisioning and for SIP signalling.

jms