How Linksys & Obihai ATA's work differently when things go wrong

As of writing (July 2011), Linksys and Obihai VoIP adapters behave differently when provisioned with our custom NBN firmware and the primary server is unavailable. The following information will allow you to balance call quality against failover capabilities and help you decide which device is best suited to your particular circumstances. This will have a lot to do with how your alarm panel is programmed and whether or not you have the ability to change that programming.

Call Quality & Bandwidth Management

We have greater control over how Linksys devices consume bandwidth and this greatly affects call quality and our ability to optimize calls for alarm monitoring. If your decision was based solely on call quality/reliability, then Linksys devices would be the recommended choice. Consider also that our primary network runs over ten or so servers and is in the primary Optus exchange in Sunshine, Melbourne. Everything has built in redundancy and the Optus datacentre is a carrier class facility.

Network Redundancy

This is the ability of a device to switch over to a backup network if the primary service is unavailable for any reason. If your alarm panel is only capable of dialing a single phone number then the Obihai devices have an advantage over Linksys devices in this area as they have the ability to switch to our backup network as soon as it detects that our primary network is down. Linksys devices cannot switch IP networks if your alarm panel has only a single phone number programmed into it.

If you have the ability to program a second phone number into your alarm panel, then Linksys devices can detect when the backup number is dialed and send the call via our backup IP network.

Failover to an analog line (PSTN or GSM)

The Linksys SPA3102 and the Obi110 models both have an FXO (analog) port that can be connected to a backup device like a cellular GSM dialer. Both will automatically switch to using the FXO(analog) backup port if power to the device is lost. If required, the devices can be programmed in such a way that when an alarm panel dials a secondary phone number, the call can be switched to the backup FXO(analog) port as opposed to trying a backup IP server.

Please note that the PAP2T (or any other model of Linksys ATA) and Obi100 do not have backup FXO(analog) ports.