[Asterisk-Dev] New ISDN architecture available for asterisk

[Matteo Brancaleoni]

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!