Understanding the Sangoma Naming Conventions – A100

Sangoma is a Canadian based manufacturer of hardware and software components in the VoIP market. This includes a variety of analog telephony, digital voice, data, digital-analog hybrid and transcoding PCI cards but I am going to focus on their A100 digital cards. More specially I am going to take a look at the four parts of the name that help you understand what you’re ordering, making sure you purchase the right card. I am not going to discuss the specs of the card but you can read those on the datasheet here.

Sangoma A100 Naming Conventions

A1 – When a Sangoma PCI card name starts with A1 this lets you know that it is part of their digital series of cards. These cards can be used for either voice or data with the ability to support from 2.048 Mbps to 32.8 Mbps or from 30 to 480 voice calls depending on the number of ports.

A101 – The number that follows the A1 in the name lets you know how many ports or T1/E1/J1 lines the card can support. Your options with the Sangoma A10X cards are 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 ports. It is worth nothing that the 8 port card has 4 physical ports and uses RJ45 port-splitter cables to support the 8 lines and the 16 port card has a 68 pin SCSI type interface.

A101D – The next part of the cards name lets you know whether or not the card has a hardware echo canceller daughterboard. If the card model you are looking at has a D after the number it has an echo canceller if you don’t see the letter D it doesn’t. When the card doesn’t have an echo canceller there isn’t a space left, the absence of the D implies it’s not included.

A101DE – The last part of the cards name lets you know whether the Sangoma A100 card you are looking at is PCI or PCI express. If you see the letter E it means that the card is PCI Express, if there is no E there it means it is PCI. Like with the echo canceller, if there is no E it is implied that it is PCI.

Pulling all of this together it is easy to find the correct card. If you are looking for a 4 port PCI card with echo cancellation you will need to order the Sangoma A104D. If you are looking for a 2 port PCI express card you will need to order the Sangoma A102E. I can go for a while but I think you get the point.

As you can see when broken down piece by piece it is easy to figure out which Sangoma A100 card you need to order and this is important because ordering the right hardware the first time helps you avoid headaches down the line. For more information on the line of Sangoma digital cards and other Sangoma products by VoIP Supply, please visit /manufacturer/sangoma or, call 800-398-8647.