Matthew Fredrickson has posted an update on where he has been and the state of SS7 in Asterisk:

Hey all,

It's been a long time. I apologize for my quietness for the last while here, it has been a very busy year this last year with some of the other projects I've been working on.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still alive, and haven't given up or forgotten about libss7, and Asterisk with SS7.

I appreciate very much Attila's great work on getting libss7 polished up. He's done a very good job taking it to the next level, and has done a great job helping everyone out. Thanks very much Attila.

As far as getting his code merged back in, I was in the midst of this a while ago, but had to stop due to personal time issues as well as some other potentially architectural issues that subsequently came up. Hopefully we can get that moving again in the next little bit though.

I actually have been quite busy, and hopefully have some things to show for it, two things actually.

I'll not go into too much detail tonight (as it's getting quite late) but I'm looking for some hungry testers, that wouldn't mind beating up on some probably alpha level code.

They are:

1.) libss7 point code clustering support.

Basically, you can have Asterisk boxes share signaling links now using this code. Although the signaling links are physically terminated on other machines, you can plug bearer T1s/E1s into other Asterisk boxes and virtually utilize the signaling links of the other boxes.

2.) A new channel driver, called chan_ccs, that allows, among other things, you to control MGCP media gateways for bearer trunks, instead of having to locally terminate them on the asterisk box that's controlling the signaling links. There is also code in the same branch that has chan_ccs that modified chan_mgcp so that Asterisk can act as a media gateway (since I don't have any good real media gateways to test on). This basically means you can have Asterisk TDM channel scalability up to (in the ideal state) the same level as you can do with SIP with no media, per box.

In essence, this is turning Asterisk into a "true" softswitch, allowing native bridging between media gateways and any other RTP endpoint (including other media gateways). This also means that you don't have to terminate bearer T1s/E1s on the main signaling box.

-- So, what does this mean for you, you may be asking?

These are really the next steps in making big SS7 work with Asterisk. They both allow for scaling a point code across multiple asterisk machines, and distribution of bearers on different boxes than the ones that contain signaling links.

Like I said though, most of the work is in a functional but early phase, and so I need some people that are interested enough in the added functionality that they're willing to work with potential hiccups along the way.

Some of the changes I've had to make to libss7 have made it further more difficult to merge Attila's changes back in, which is the other reason why it has been so long and it still has not been merged.

If you're interested, either reply to me or this thread and let me know.

Thanks again,

Matthew Fredrickson
Digium, Inc.

Comments (2 posted)

Come Posso Io Aiutare , DESDE ITALIA
Written by francesco farina - http://telecomi.eu (March 31, 2010, 10:32 am)

Estoy por hacer interconexcion con telecom italia ss7 e1 y no e decidido con quien hacerla , si puedo ayudar en tu proyecto , te puedo poner en contacto con el integrador de sistema de telecom italia para saber detalles del test plant que se necesita y otras informaciones,,, esTOY POR DECIDIR MI PROVEEDOR DE ASTERISK ES AVANZADA 7 DE ESPANA ,, PODRIAS HACER UN TRIO CON ELLOS ,,
SALUDOS

Nice Job Man
Written by MSH (April 16, 2010, 1:56 pm)

You are making some dreams to come true, its a great step making MGCP real on Asterisk this way as you discussed, it could be used for much greater projects. Keep going !

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