[asterisk-dev] MFC/R2 Asterisk Channel Driver

[Steve Underwood]

Caio Begotti wrote:
> On 28/03/2008, at 21:57, John Todd wrote:
>   
>>    Testing this code presents another headache,
>> since many of the testing folks for Asterisk live
>> in ISDN worlds and R2 is not common.  Do you have
>> a testbed, or do you know a lot of R2 people in
>> the Americas or central Asia who might be able to
>> test different versions?
>>     
>
> That's definitely not a problem, at all, IMHO.
>
> Here in Brazil we still have to handle absurd situations regarding R2  
> signaling. In fact, that's the very reason why Digium, Sangoma or  
> whatever company does not sell more boards around here. Just a tiny  
> fraction of people here can afford and easily get a decent ISDN  
> connection. I've worked on a project that even used Steve's Unicall  
> in the great majority of clients (like... 150, yeah). And that was a  
> Telco company.
>
> It's really really great to hear about Moises plan, though I'm not  
> sure if a software based R2 solution is the best approach and I'm  
> taking it with a grain of salt. There are at least 3 companies  
> selling Asterisk-compatible boards with R2 done builtin, in hardware,  
> witch has proved to be much more stable, well supported and scalable  
> than anything else.
>   
Well, supported is the key issue here, not software on the host vs 
software on the card. These Brazilian board vendors support their local 
customers, and non-telco people do need support with R2. They especially 
need Portuguese speaking support in Brazil.

I have worked with several Brazilians who speak English to get their 
setups running, but many many people have teething troubles because the 
telco has not installed the line properly. Although enabling debug in my 
Unicall R2 code provides a very detailed log of what happens, it takes 
some expertise to understand what the output means. Very often new lines 
do not work, and it takes feedback of information from the debug log to 
kick the telco, and get them to sort out their end.
> Moises, do you already have something for testing or have you just  
> started thinking about it? Vapourware or real stuff, another  
> brazilian guy monitoring this list has already forward your message  
> to the Asterisk Brasil list :-)
>   
Unicall R2 appears to be used in a huge number of countries, from the 
feedback I have had. In fact, through this feedback I have added R2 
support for countries I had no idea used it. Countries with well 
developed infrastructures, like Australia, where most people tell you 
everything is 100% ISDN/SS7. I have no idea how many lines in total run 
the code.

Regards,
Steve