[Asterisk-Users] E1 R2 on Asterisk

[Steve Underwood]

John Todd wrote:

>> LQ (Asterisk) wrote:
>>
>>> Dear fellows,
>>>
>>> I need to use Asterisk with an E1 card with CAS R2 signalling for 
>>> Argentina.
>>> I know that the E100P don't support it right now.
>>>
>> Correct
>>
>>> Does anybody developing R2 drivers?
>>>
>> Yes.
>
>
> Interestingly terse reply; perhaps you can be more specific?
>
> I have an interest in the same drivers, and there was some discussion 
> a week ago (two weeks?) on the topic, specifically about how a driver 
> might be written, but I heard no confirmation that there was progress 
> or any timeframes.
>
> Anyone have any encouraging updates for those of us waiting for R2?

I've been more specific in the past. This was just a brief recap, since 
its the same question each time (OK, the country varies, but not much else).

The work was held up by SARS, as the testing has been done in China. Now 
the SARS threat has abated, I hope we will see a polished China R2 soon. 
Every other country requires modifications, as no two countries 
implement R2 in quite the same way. However, the software has been 
written with all the variants in mind, and completing support for other 
countries should be pretty straightforward, once it is a proven platform 
in China.

You will find some elements of R2ness in CVS. That is work I did over a 
year ago, then left unfinished. The DSP part of that is OK, although I 
have improved it recently. The rest was a lash-up, which has now been 
totally replaced by a solid implementation. I have a new channel driver 
for Asterisk, which supports R2 and PRI with the Zaptel drivers. My 
intention is to add other protocols, so this becomes a replacement for 
chan_zap. The way chan_zap works had some flexibility issues for me, so 
I have tried to steer everything through a generalised signalling API. 
On one side are plug in protocols - currently PRI and R2. On the other 
side is Asterisk. Hopefully, this will allow new protocols to plug in 
with little or no change to anything in Asterisk. This is somewhat like 
Dialogic's GlobalCall, but hopefully without so much of their 
clunkiness. :-)

FAQ: Can I help with testing, and be an early adopter?

No. I have all the testers I need right now. Until I have it well 
proven, with E1's full of calls pumping through it, I am not interesting 
in having other testers involved. I expect the assistance of other 
testers will be needed later, to deal with issues arising from the local 
variants of R2. Help at that time will be most appreciated.

Regards,
Steve