asterisk users - Oct 2005 - New ISDN architecture available for asterisk

Hi to all,

sorry for crossposting the -dev and -user lists, but I think this could
be quite interesting news for EuroISDN people, expecially BRI owners.

A new ISDN architecture, called vISDN, has been developed to fully
support EuroISDN protocol with HFC based cards: HFC-S PCI, HFC-4S and
HFC-8S (with HFC-E1 and HFC-S USB support coming soon).

vISDN is not based on Zaptel, libpri, chan_zap, zaphfc, qozap, etc...
but has been designed from scratch to be a standard compliant EuroISDN
implementation plus a channel crossconnector, plus protocol analisys
support thru Ethereal, plus a ppp terminator, plus other stuff :)

Main features:

- Open, modular, flexible and versatile architecture
- Fully GPLed
- Full support for PRI and BRI
- Full support for Network and Terminal Equipment role
- Traffic analisys with (patched) Ethereal
- E-channel sniffing
- D-channel sharing between applications (in TE-multipoint mode)
- Good integration with latest 2.6 kernels and extensive usage of their
newer features (e.g.: sysfs)
- Protocol stacks are implemented following the finite-state-machine
models described in the ETSI specification for better
compliance/debuggability.
- Termination of PPP connections without exiting from the kernel
- Takes advantage from HFC's framer for HDLC traffic
- Preliminary/experimental support for hardware PCM bus
- Preliminary support for hardware channel bridging
- Support for dynamic (optionally automatic) activation/deactivation of
layer2 (DLC connection)
- Unintrusive with respect to the Linux kernel and Asterisk (no patches 
needed)

Missing features:

- Echo cancellation (likely going in in the next release)
- Explicit Call Transfer

Please note: This is a Linux-only, 2.6-only architecture which supports
only EuroISDN. It is currently in beta-stage, brave testers will be more
than welcome; people who want to contribute will be welcome too. You
will not need to sign a disclaimer to partecipate but you will receve
good and valuable consideration, plus discrete amounts of beer :^)

vISDN will undergo a layer2/layer3 certification by an independent lab
and will have a "Declaration of conformance" valid in the EU
territory.
AFAIK, the declaration is valid for the product as a whole, so, it is to
be seen if the declaration could be extended to "mixed" products.

Please see http://www.visdn.org/ for further informations. If you are
near Milan, Italy, vISDN is live at SMAU expo. We will be happy to show
the driver working live and exchange comments and ideas about it
(Voismart - hall 12 booth H22)

Bye!

Hi Matteo,
it looks really promising. I'll give it a try!
l.


On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:38:00 +0200, Matteo Brancaleoni  
<mbrancaleoni@espia.it> wrote:
>
> Hi to all,
>
> sorry for crossposting the -dev and -user lists, but I think this could
> be quite interesting news for EuroISDN people, expecially BRI owners.
>
> A new ISDN architecture, called vISDN, has been developed to fully
> support EuroISDN protocol with HFC based cards: HFC-S PCI, HFC-4S and
> HFC-8S (with HFC-E1 and HFC-S USB support coming soon).
>
> vISDN is not based on Zaptel, libpri, chan_zap, zaphfc, qozap, etc...
> but has been designed from scratch to be a standard compliant EuroISDN
> implementation plus a channel crossconnector, plus protocol analisys
> support thru Ethereal, plus a ppp terminator, plus other stuff :)
>

-- 
Loway Research - Home of QueueMetrics
http://queuemetrics.loway.it

>Hi to all,
>
>sorry for crossposting the -dev and -user lists, but I think this could
>be quite interesting news for EuroISDN people, expecially BRI owners.
>
>A new ISDN architecture, called vISDN, has been developed to fully
>support EuroISDN protocol with HFC based cards: HFC-S PCI, HFC-4S and
>HFC-8S (with HFC-E1 and HFC-S USB support coming soon).
>
>vISDN is not based on Zaptel, libpri, chan_zap, zaphfc, qozap, etc...
>but has been designed from scratch to be a standard compliant EuroISDN
>implementation plus a channel crossconnector, plus protocol analisys
>support thru Ethereal, plus a ppp terminator, plus other stuff :)

Very, very nice.. I am looking forward for test it.
Further, I hope that ecgo cancelation will be implemented also in near
future, as it is very important in most cases.

Are there maybe some HFC (both BRI and PRI) boards with hw echo cans, or
they are all passive?

For small Euro BRI installations we are using at this moment HFC with
bristuff. But where E1 is involved, we are trying now to avoid E1 cards
without HW echo cans integrated. At this point we are considering between
Sangoma and Digium with hw cans... but who knows what HFC boards would
bring. Beronet and Junghanns are here to be observed..

Kind regards,
Goran

Hi. see my comments inline.

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 11:41 +0200, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > 
> > vISDN is not based on Zaptel, libpri, chan_zap, zaphfc, qozap, etc...
> > but has been designed from scratch to be a standard compliant EuroISDN
> > implementation plus a channel crossconnector, plus protocol analisys
> > support thru Ethereal, plus a ppp terminator, plus other stuff :)
> 
> Ironically, the bristuff patch has currently (AFAIK, and not including
> vISDN which I haven't yet read much about) the best eauroisdn support
> and supports hfc hardware as well.
yes the "best" that is "available". but please compare it to
ETSI specs.
and in zaptel based... which means broken frames under load (and not
only...)
> > 
> > - Open, modular, flexible and versatile architecture
> > - Fully GPLed
> 
> What are the plans about commiting code to asterisk? openbpx support?
with openpbx the support is coming.
With asterisk only if digium will accept non disclaimed code, which I
don't expect to happens. But if they want, they can add it.
> 
> > - Full support for PRI and BRI
> > - Full support for Network and Terminal Equipment role
> > - Traffic analisys with (patched) Ethereal
> > - E-channel sniffing
> > - D-channel sharing between applications (in TE-multipoint mode)
> > - Good integration with latest 2.6 kernels and extensive usage of
their
> > newer features (e.g.: sysfs)
> 
> With which versions of 2.6 should it work? With which versions was it
> tested?
tested with 2.6.8-13 both vanilla and suse 9.3 patched and centos 4.1/2
patched.
currently is developed and tested under suse 9.3 and centos 4.1.
AFAIK has been tested also under fedora core 4.
> 
> > - Protocol stacks are implemented following the finite-state-machine
> > models described in the ETSI specification for better
> > compliance/debuggability.
> > - Termination of PPP connections without exiting from the kernel
> > - Takes advantage from HFC's framer for HDLC traffic
> > - Preliminary/experimental support for hardware PCM bus
> > - Preliminary support for hardware channel bridging
> > - Support for dynamic (optionally automatic) activation/deactivation
of
> > layer2 (DLC connection)
> > - Unintrusive with respect to the Linux kernel and Asterisk (no
patches
> > needed)
> 
> Requires extra kernel modules? Extra asterisk channel modules?
> Oh well, I'm already building an extra zaptel-modules package...
kernel modules like zaptel... the drivers :)
for asterisk there's a new channel driver, which doesn't require
any asterisk patching

Greetings, Matteo.