[Asterisk-Users] Re: 4 port BRI options ?

[Armin Schindler]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 02:39:48PM +0100, Gavin Hamill wrote:
> > On Friday 03 June 2005 14:28, Nardis Dome wrote:
> > > --- "Brett, Gary" <gary.brett at cetelem.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > Is the Eicon that much better ?
> > >
> > > sorry, i have only experience with Eicon... maybe
> > > someone else is able to give a feedback...
> > 
> > Aside from paying for a recognised brand name, with Eicon you get on-board 
> > DSPs and firmware, as well as software to make the card appear as a series 
> > of /dev/tty devices (and/ or CAPI) under Linux.
> 
> With kernel 2.6 you only get ISDN tty devices through the capidrv
> module, no more analog modem login support with the obsoleted diva2i4l
> module.

The 'obsolete' driver diva2i4l is not in the kernel 2.6.x by default, but 
the driver exist and can be used.
 
> > We use an Eicon Diva Server 4BRI for our fax server because of the TTY 
> > interface for Hylafax - the DSPs themselves do all the fax negotiation / 
> > compression and it works extremely well.
> 
> It works, but when ISDN channels are busy faxing, asterisk has no way to
> know which outgoing channel is free: users get a congestion when trying
> to call out (unless you program some channel testing logic/loop inside
> your dialplan). This is a major bummer in production.
>
> > However, we're also running * on that machine via CAPI, and the board
> > gives us the flexibility to share 8 channels between * and Hylafax
> > really easily :)
> 
> There is no sharing, they contend for the channels, even thought they
> both use the capi layer. Go figure.

This problem is always when using different applications on CAPI. So using
Asterisk for 'all' would be a good idea.

Unless I find a better way, I plan to implement a checking of
'free b-channel' on dialout inside chan_capi. So if there is another 
application using a channel, chan_capi would temporarily mark this interface 
used and try another interface in that group.
 
> My experience with both cards is that the Diva is a waste of money. It's
> better to go with the Junghanns card and do faxing from inside asterisk,
> which works very well in the latest versions.

Even faxsend?
Faxreceive works with Diva Server as well (latest changes on sourceforge 
chan_capi).

Armin