[asterisk-users] North American voice BRI - Informal survey

[Stephen Bosch]

Dave Donovan wrote:
> On 7/5/07, *Stephen Bosch* <posting at vodacomm.ca
> <mailto:posting at vodacomm.ca>> wrote:
> 
>     > I would be willing to help out with a driver, but without a line and
>     > card I am not sure how productive that would be.
> 
>     As I've already said, I can get one, and it's not a big deal, so
>     I'll be
>     the test case.
> 
>     -Stephen-
> 
> 
> Ok, how about this for a scenario:  We could order a BRI from Bell at
> Stephen's location.  We could get a Sangoma card (or some other piece of
> hardware that we determine) and put it in some vanilla box.  I guess it
> would be best to isolate that from Stephen's production network and then
> just let the developers tunnel into it by some means.
> 
> I'd be willing to bend some ears and see if Sangoma would put up the card.

Okay.

> I wonder if we need piece of reference hardware.  Imagine this scenario,
> we order the circuit and Bell wants to turn it up.  What do we turn up
> with?  It would be great if we had something that we could plug into it
> and get that working just to establish that the line is delivered
> correctly and functioning.
> 
> Another option is to buy something that would provide BRI service on
> site.  I'm thinking maybe an old PBX system or something.  I'm not sure
> what this stuff would be worth.  I saw this simulator on Ebay but I
> don't know enough to say whether it would be suitable for testing voice
> services:
> http://cgi.ebay.ca/Lucent-ISDN-simulator-8-BRI-4-T1-NICE-Document-CD_W0QQitemZ120136665085QQihZ002QQcategoryZ51268QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
> <http://cgi.ebay.ca/Lucent-ISDN-simulator-8-BRI-4-T1-NICE-Document-CD_W0QQitemZ120136665085QQihZ002QQcategoryZ51268QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem>
> 
> I'm not in the biz but I'd be willing to contribute some $$$ toward the
> project.  I'll talk to some other folks in the Toronto Asterisk User
> Group. I know there are quite a few consultants/installers in the group
> and maybe some will see the benefit of supporting this kind of work.
> 
> Has anyone got a PBX with spare BRI ports in it?  Maybe that's a cheap
> way to get started.  We could just hook a box up to that and work out
> some of the early stage stuff.  I know that people with Polycom (and
> other) video/teleconferencing equipment often have BRI cards in their
> Nortel PBX or Avaya gear.
> 
> It looks like we have the nucleus of a project here.  Let's keep the
> ball rolling.

Brilliant, Dave.

I'm inclined to say that a real-world service from the telco is
important for testing, but it's also true that there would be a lot of
messing around in the beginning, so the first few months of service
would be a bit of a waste. If we can simulate the environment, that
would be wonderful -- as long as it can be done with current equipment.
I wouldn't want to be solving against hardware running an older standard.

I would also be interested in contributing to such a project. The caveat
is that I'm not a programmer -- we will need some programming talent on
this to make it succeed.

-Stephen-