[Asterisk-Dev] SS7 for *

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Steve Underwood wrote:

> The source code thing varies. When doing telecom approvals, I've been 
> told I could not include various information, such as source code and 
> schematics, in the documentation for the customer. Not always though. I 
> haven't been through this for a while, and things are more relaxed. 
> ISDN4Linux has been approved in the EU, and source is available in the 
> Linux kernel. They just have an arrangement whereby if you modify the 
> code it complains you are not running an approved version. I think they 
> do CRC tagging of the source, or something similar.

Yes, I've seen that too, it's a nice solution.

> Why should they require approval? Its really quite bogus. Hardware 
> approval is important for safety considerations. However, if their 
> network can be harmed by your software they have a terrorist attack 
> problem. Little on the Telco's side has been approved, and they freely 
> change stuff at any time. Telcos have woken up to this in recent years, 
> and attitudes have changed. As I said, its a few years since I put 
> something through approvals. We will see.

When I was talking to my telco about this they got very skittish :-) 
Yes, I understand that the SS7 network (_the_ network in the USA, not 
any provider's particular internal network) should be robust enough to 
handle this sort of thing, but then again if the SS7 network is damaged 
the side effects are catastrophic (little known to the general 
population of this country, and best left that way <G>).

I'd be happy to see your work be usable here, because it would allow me 
to build my own media gateways and not have to deal with $100K+ 
softswitch products.