[tlug] Re: Asterisk and ISDN

[Tobias Diedrich <ranma@example.com>]

Patrick Niessen wrote:

> If it could be made to work with ISDN it would be great, as I am
> looking for a cheap solution for our office (4 ISDN line = 8 parallel
> conversations).  Unfortunately Japan is famous for using own
> (incompatible) standards, so its not guaranteed that it works.

Some googling suggests that the japanese Ins64-Protocol (Or
InsNet64-Protocol) ist at least very similar to the EuroDSS1-Protocol.

The isdn4linux-FAQ claims support for Japan whithout any special
notes, so it really may work (A quick grep didn't show anything
Ins64-Related).

Apparently you have two options with Asterisk.  You can either use
the zaptel/zaphfc driver or the misdn linux-2.6 driver.  Both are
not included in the standard kernel.  I couldn't get the zaptel
driver to work, so I'm currently using the misdn driver with one
card (HFC-chipset) in NT-Mode and the other card (some Winbond
chipset) in normal TE-Mode.

pbx4linux (http://isdn.jolly.de/) is easy to configure (at least in
comparison to Asterisk) and works much like any Hardware-ISDN-PBX.
But it only supports H323 for VoIP.

Asterisk works too, the necessary asterisk-chan-misdn package is
already in at least Debian testing and unstable. :-)
But it is not as transparent as pbx4linux.  At least I could not get
it to directly connect to the local loop line on 0, AFAICS it has to
get the whole number first and will then decide how to route it.
Maybe a future chan_misdn version will fix that.

Specialized Hardware (4 ISDN BRIs on one Card and onboard ISDN power
supply support) is apparently available from Beronet.

-- 
Tobias						PGP: http://9ac7e0bc.uguu.de