[asterisk-users] Unicall, not HOW but WHY

[Moises Silva]

> 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"