D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] Asterisk - quiet caller on POTS line

 

On 04/07/13 21:22, Mark Evans wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 04/07/13 11:30, Rob Beard wrote:
Hi folks,

I'm having a few issues with Asterisk and I wondered if someone
might be able to suggest any ideas how I might be able to solve
it?

Basically we've got a machine running Asterisk with a Digium
analogue card with two FXO ports and two FXS ports.  The phones we
use are Grandstream GXP1400/GXP1405 phones and one little
Grandstream DECT IP phone (can't remember the model number off the
top of my head).

Maybe a DP715

Sounds familiar. :-)


The Asterisk box is connected to two BT lines which are located out
in the middle of nowhere (well, at least a couple of miles outside
of Totnes and what I suspect is a couple of bits of wet string).
Due to the location we get a fairly low broadband speed and
considering the other stuff we have going over the connection using
VoIP probably wouldn't work too well (at least VoIP calls between
sites as a test was hit and miss, sometimes worked, other times
didn't), so until BT bring FTTC to the area we're a bit stuck with
what we have.  ISDN is a bit out of our budget too.

SamKnows has a reference to 01/09/2013 for FttC on the Totnes exchange.

Interesting, there is a bit of hope then. I was checking on our head office in Newton Abbot today after spotting more FTTC cabinets, the BT Infinity checker seems to suggest it will happen any time between July and September for the cabinet we're on in Newton.

Fingers crossed once Totnes gets FTTC it won't take too long to get the cabinet enabled, but I guess being in the sticks it could be anything up to 2016 ish.

So the issue we're having is when someone calls in to the site, or
someone calls out the volume of the caller at the office end in
Totnes is quiet.  We can hear who we are calling, or whoever calls
in okay (we did have some echo issues but I think we've kind of
solved them).

We're using Asterisk SVN-branch-1.8-r383667 built from source with
Dahdi 2.6.2 also built from source on Debian 6.0.7.

I've tried adjusting the txgain in chan_dahdi.conf and it doesn't
seem to make much if any difference (I've also restarted dahdi and
Asterisk after making the changes).  It's currently set at txgain =
22.0 (I wasn't sure how high to put it to).

You could try a Zycoo ZX20-A202. Which is an ARM based Asterisk box with
two FXO ports built in. (Around £140).

I don't think that would be an option due to budget constraints :-(

As a last resort we've tried an analogue phone and that does seem a
bit louder, so this makes me think there is something happening in
the phone system to cause it.  At the moment the phone system is in
the office and connected via some CAT5 cable to the phone lines
which terminate in the next office (well one does, the other
terminates at another location and is on a long extension cable).

How long an extension cable? Might be better to run CW1308, even CAT5, t
a secondary socket. Keeping the flex to under 2m.

It's about 10 metres of CAT5 at the moment running up the wall, into the ceiling space and back down into the other office, terminated each end with a CAT5 socket. I haven't actually tried a standard BT extension cable yet, I'll try this tomorrow. :-)

Rob

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq