Warning: This message is a valid question, and is also kind of a [RANT] at the end... but I'm high on caffeine and I had fun writing it. The ranting part more or less reflect the state of the Asterisk ecosystem until the end of 2005, which has been getting a little better but a lot of the garbage remains. At least someone answer my questions :-) [QuestionSection] So, I've been reading reading, on and off, for weeks about the *proper* way to set up E1 in Asterisk. I've read all the pertinent mailing list messages since year 2003 to the date, read everything at voip-info.org, AsteriskGuru, Google, etc. I'm still confused. Many questions remain, some of them are: 1) Why do the zaptel and librpi drivers and libraries pretend to "handle" E1 cards, but apparently know nothing about the MFCR2 protocols? Is there any other normal way to use the E1's (with respect to telephony) 2) Why the Unicall package? Not *how* but *why*. 3) Probably 3/4 of the world use E1 with its variants. Why is Unicall not included in the regular Asterisk distribution? Is it *really needed* for E1 or are there alternative ways? [RANT] And I could write a lot about the *hows*. Everything I've read can be summarized in a bunch a of cookbook recipies, quite often ambiguous and even contradicting themselves. It goes more or less like this: Hi, I've finally got it working!! l0lz d00d!!! 1) make this and make that 2) Don't pay attention to all the CVS instructions because now they have changed to SVN 3) Download libXXXPr0C4llz from some mirror 4) Patch, make, edit, repatch, OMG pray!! 5) Go into zapsomething.conf and add the following to the end of the file: # I got this one from voip-info.org/Mexican+Guy # He uses MagicValueY but doesn't seem to work with my kernel version # So I read the source code and found MagicValueX which seems to work at the moment undocumented_param_1=MagicValueX # I commented this one out because it gives errors. Don't ask me why, just do it!! # (Google gives 3 hits when searching for it. Two are Japanese porn pages and the other one gives 404 Not Found) # undocumented_param_2=RangeOfMagicValues # This one is documented in three different e-mails and two blogs!!!! # except some people use it in zapsomething.conf and other people use it in unicallplus.ini # If it doesn't work for you, try 33 or 35 # DON'T USE the 36 that the Asterisk book mentions, it was already obsolete by the time the book hit the shelves!!! documented_param_sigma=34 # Some people use bchan, some people use cas, some people use both, some people use dchan also. # However very few people know what they mean and how they interact. # Your mileage may vary, but nobody will know why! LOL! cas=1-15:1001 cas=17-31:1001 #bchan=1-15:1001 #bchan=17-31:1001 dchan=16 # If you live in Chiapas or northen Kazajkstan change it to 1111. Some guy used 0001 and his dog died. I'll shut up now. BarZ
<snip>> # If you live in Chiapas or northen Kazajkstan change it to 1111. > Some guy used 0001 and his dog died. > > > I'll shut up now.Funny stuff, thanks for the giggles. I don't use E1, but see your points all to clearly. Marty
> 1) Why do the zaptel and librpi drivers and libraries pretend to > "handle" E1 cards, but apparently know nothing about the MFCR2 protocols? > Is there any other normal way to use the E1's (with respect to telephony)Zaptel is the driver code. Does not need to know anything about higher level protocol handling like MFCR2 or PRI. It only handles link level stuff, line coding, framing etc. Zaptel cards can be used for non voip, or telephony purposes, like connecting to the Internet through HDLC.> 2) Why the Unicall package? Not *how* but *why*.You are not forced to use Unicall, but AFAIK, libmfcr2 is the only MFCR2 open source library and since libmfcr2 was wrote by the same guy that wrote Unicall telephony abstraction (Steve Underwood), makes sense to use it. However you can use Asterisk Zapata channels with MFCR2 support, that way you skip the Unicall thing, however, Zapata would still be using libmfcr2, and I think there is even less documentation about using Zapata with libmfcr2 than using Unicall with libmfcr2.> 3) Probably 3/4 of the world use E1 with its variants. Why is Unicall > not included in the regular Asterisk distribution? Is it *really > needed* for E1 or are there alternative ways?Again, you are not tied to use Unicall, but may be you are tied to use libmfcr2 unless you feel like you can write other protocol implementation, or you find other implementation. I dont know why is not included with Asterisk distribution, but one reason could be that Zapata channels already have support for handling MFCR2 if you have installed libmfcr2. Regards -- "Su nombre es GNU/Linux, no solamente Linux, mas info en http://www.gnu.org"
On 20 Jul 2006, at 20:27, Barzilai wrote:> Warning: This message is a valid question, and is also kind of a > [RANT] at the end... but I'm high on caffeine and I had fun writing > it. > The ranting part more or less reflect the state of the Asterisk > ecosystem until the end of 2005, which has been getting a little > better but a lot of the garbage remains. > At least someone answer my questions :-)Ok, I feel your pain, BUT, there is no point in taking it out on the Asterisk community. When I first encountered my local PRI variant (Euro ISDN) 10 years ago I tried to configure a $10k Dialog to talk to it, I couldn't get it to work, until some guy on the Dialogic Forum told me to to use the GUI interface and then take a texteditor to an ini file to change an 0x0C to 0x0A and add a line 0x0A=0ff. That was to make it work with the standard for the whole of western europe! So, what I'm saying is that Telephony standards are messy, and vary from country to country and carrier to carrier, so inevitably you get weird config files. Now, at least with Open source you can find out what options exist from looking at the code, even if you don't have an exact recipe for your carrier. Do I wish it wasn't like that - sure - can it be fixed by developers - no. Tim Panton www.mexuar.com