Choosing a PRI Card

[CALLINGUSA]

Hello,
i have used vicidial with voip lines, on SIP as well as IAX, but now we are getting an assignment to install a 50 seater call center in india, where the trunk lines would be E1 Pri's, customer has taken 3 E1 pri's from a service provider called bharti in india, and now we need to configure that with vicidial.

First question comes to my mind is, will E1 PRI's function the same way, voip lines do, likewise instead of sip lines, i will just configure zap lines and will that do the magic to make it work?
Does zap lines put more load on server instead of SIP or IAX?

Another thing, since customer has taken 3 E1 PRI's, which cards are best to use, so that we don't run into any issue, servers are with intel motherboard only, if anyone from india has used any PRI card with bharti, please recommend.

*Customer need cards with echo cancellation support, money is no issue in buying the cards, but customer wants the best.

And how many servers with what configuration are recommended for this setup,

[Michael_N]

I would recomend you to ask the question in forum.digium.org

But digium and sagoma provide pri cards but its 4 ports

[CALLINGUSA]

Thanks for the reply, i have already got the reply for sangona from digium forum, but i need to understand the compatibility with vicidial, befor i can ask my customer to go ahead and purchase the same.
Need to know, if vicidial works effectively well with PRI cards, and trunks as PRI lines only, is there any siganalling issue we get while dealing with carriers in india, if anyone earlier has dealt with them.

[ramindia]

Hi

with PRI you should not have any problems.

ram

[CALLINGUSA]

Anyone already used a PRI card with vicidial for outbound dialing, can i know the model number, we can also buy the same, if there is no issue with that.
And as the PRI card, i'll get be of 4 E1, can we configure vicidial/asterisk in such a way, that it should send its calls to only 3 E1's which are active.

[Op3r]

you can get at least a te410p or what ever 4 port e1 pri card from sangoma or digium. and create a gateway for it. create an iax or sip account for your vicidial servers. thats the best way to do it unless you can fit 50 agents on a single machine which I seriously doubt any one who is really knowledgeable on what they are doing will do it.

[CALLINGUSA]

Thats a very nice suggestion, making a separate gateway, will be really helpful.
Thanks for the advice.