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Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

projects.osmocom.org

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Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#11

Post by yokem55 »

alex_young wrote: post #2

Can one still order a T1 line? 1.54mbps isn’t so fast these days in most places...

We still sell and use them (small B2B focused clec/isp in Oregon). We use them fairly commonly as dedicated voip links, or for PRI phone systems where the customer insists on avoiding voip. Also in some places they are about the best connectivity you can get when the only alternatives are way oversold dsl or trying to aim a wisp antenna though some trees to catch a signal bounced off a mountainside. And, if you have the means, (and ILEC cabling facilities), the circuits can be bonded together to arbitrary numbers. So, yeah, it's slow. But it's better than nothing. That said I fully expect Starlink to take that ultra-rural business in the coming year or two.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#12

Post by jasonjayr »

alex_young wrote: post #2

Can one still order a T1 line? 1.54mbps isn’t so fast these days in most places...

I was still using one until recently. We do inbound phone support and had 24 lines on a T1, because I wanted to make sure I had SLA'ed last-mile connectivity. Previous iteration of this was a 24 line PRI directly into a Sangoma T1/SIP Gateway. After a move + installation, I had an Adtran device that was IP based. It is my understanding that that it was more or less VOIP over a data T1, and the on-premise Adtran device turned it back into a voice T1 for the benefit of our T1 Gateway.

Recently I've switched it to a metro fiber ring + SIP trunking.

It's surprisingly difficult to get SLA'ed SIP trunking in the SMB market.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#14

Post by pickle-wizard »

alex_young wrote: post #2

Can one still order a T1 line? 1.54mbps isn’t so fast these days in most places...

A few years ago we had one put in for a connection to VisaNET. ISO8353 messages are really small so 1.54Mbps was plenty fast for the number of transactions we were sending.

I'm trying to remember the exact number, but IIRC it was good for a couple of thousand transactions a second.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#15

Post by LaF0rge »

Please note that the icE1usb in its final incarnation with the FPGA based approach was almost entirely done by Sylvain Munaut, not myself. So please give credit to him, and not to me. I only contributed a bit in testing, some patches here and there in the firmware, and the new experimental DAHDI driver for it.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#16

Post by LaF0rge »

ajb wrote: post #3

Link isn't too informative, the product page may be better: https://www.sysmocom.de/products/lab/icE1usb/ Given osmocom's focus I guess the main point to this for them is talking to base stations that have an e1 port.

Indeed, interfacing legacy GSM base stations is the primary use case. However, you can jsut as well use it to interface any other type of E1 equipment, like PBXs etc.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#18

Post by gorkish »

xellisx wrote: post #13

When I dealt with creating/supporting an answering service setup, the one thing that was needed on the T1 cards was echo cancellation.

I have used Digium's T1/E1 cards with VPMOCT or VPMADT hardware echo cancellers, but I have since switched to using https://www.rowetel.com/wordpress/?page_id=454 OSLEC for EC as it is simply better and requires much less tuning.

Re: Osmocom icE1usb: Open hardware USB E1/T1 adapter

#20

Post by xellisx »

gorkish wrote: post #18
xellisx wrote: post #13

When I dealt with creating/supporting an answering service setup, the one thing that was needed on the T1 cards was echo cancellation.

I have used Digium's T1/E1 cards with VPMOCT or VPMADT hardware echo cancellers, but I have since switched to using https://www.rowetel.com/wordpress/?page_id=454 OSLEC for EC as it is simply better and requires much less tuning.

Well the answering service sold itself to a larger answering service, so I no longer work on that. I may one day finish the V2 of my software. The original one was done in 2007 using Asterisk, PHP and COMET (HTTP long polling) and was banged out in 72 hours. It was an emergency situation, where their old setup finally died (circa 1986).
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