Xorcom Astribanks Now Available

PSTN Connectivity and Failover Solution For Asterisk

Open source based VoIP and telephony solution continue to grow in popularity with businesses of all sizes.

Blending flexibility with low cost, open source based systems have enabled many a business to take advantage of the greater benefits of IP communications. Though, flexible, low cost and packed with features, open source based solutions also come with their own set of concerns and hurdles.

Two of the most common concerns that come up when discussing open source based solutions are PSTN connectivity and failover. Both of which are address quite nicely by the Xorcom product line.

PSTN Connectivity

The Xorcom Astribank product line are USB based Telephony modules that have been specially designed for open source systems like Asterisk. Xorcom’s Astribank uses industry-standard USB 2.0 ports to communicate with the Asterisk server. Housed in an industry-standard 19″ rack/wall-mountable chassis, a single Astribank supports up to 32 analog ports (FXO/FXS), 4 PRI’s or 8 PRI ports.

Utilizing USB 2.0, which can support up to 2,400 concurrent calls per port, eliminates the need for intermediating PCI cards which can drain open source telephony system resources and can be difficult to field upgrade if the telephony server does not have open PCI slots.

In addition, the Astribank driver is included in the standard DAHDI (Zaptel) release, making integration with Asterisk based systems a breeze.

Failover Solution

The Xorcom Astribank can be used as a PSTN connectivity solution, but also excels as a Failover solution.

Utilizing two Xorcom XR300 servers (correctly configured), one can have full dual-server redundancy for complete Asterisk PBX systems (including telephony interfaces, FXO, FXS, PRI, IP Telephones and SIP Trunks), automatic detection of server failure and switching to backup server (within 15 seconds) and firmware-based switching mechanism that is not network-dependent

Leveraging built-in firmware, the Astribank continually monitors the primary server to ensure proper functionality. If the firmware mechanism detects a problem with the function of the primary server, it immediately passes control to the backup server. All telephony lines are automatically recognized and activated by the backup server, and all communication in the organization is re-established within 15 seconds.

For more information about Xorcom and the Astribank solution, please visit the Xorcom page here or contact one of the experts at VoIP Supply via phone at 800.398.8647.