[asterisk-dev] Zap channel naming is way too confusing

[James Harper]

> 
> My thoughts along the lines of a fully sysfs/hotplug enabled Zaptel
> include supporting 'named' spans... this could help in that area.

I'd like to add my vote to this, or something like it. I've just started
toying with the 'dynamic' spans and it gets confusing as hell. And even
without hotswap, the coldswap of a card might muck up your whole
dialplan!

Maybe the channel number could look like this:
Zap/ASSCCC
A = adapter number
SS = span number
CCC = channel number

Where the adapter number is configurable in the conf file somehow (see
below), the span number is unique within to adapter, and the channel
number is unique within the span.

Do any of the Digium adapters have unique id's like Ethernet adapters
do? Otherwise I guess you could describe them by PCI bus or something.
Maybe like this:
adapter=<#>,<module>,<uniqueid>
where # is the adapter number you are defining, module is the zaptel
module name, and uniqueid is some per-module way of uniquely identifying
an adapter, be it PCI bus address, Ethernet ID (for dynamic spans), or
other id.

Then spans could be defined with reference to the adapter, and the
channels (with my proposed channel numbering scheme) would self describe
the adapter and span they belong to.

That's my AUD$0.02 fwiw.

James