[Commotion-dev] FYI: Serval & OpenBTS integration

[Alexander Chemeris]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Jeremy Lakeman
<Jeremy.Lakeman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Alexander Chemeris
> <alexander.chemeris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Jeremy,
>>
>> Good work. Could you answer to a few questions from the OpenBTS side, please:
>>
>> How does an OpenBTS user know his number? Do you send a welcome SMS
>> with a number on registration?
>
> That's something we haven't changed from the default install. This
> setup still uses the same database for local number registrations via
> the web UI or SMS message.

I.e. BTS allocates phone numbers by itself and just announce them to
the network? I thought originally that Serval DNA allocates phones
numbers for users.

>> And what will happen with the number if a user moves to another
>> OpenBTS base station?
>
> We've mainly been assuming that the BTS boxes don't trust each other
> and might be administered independently.
> Though if a number of boxes did trust each other, they could use our
> rhizome file transport to share SIM card details and last known
> location, even if the network is not always available.

Indeed, this part may be interesting.

> The basic pieces we've built could probably be adapted into this kind
> of deployment with some scripting and changes to the dialplan.
>
>> Do you think there are benefits of using Serval DNA in a pure OpenBTS
>> multi-site installations, i.e. without other non-OpenBTS Serval
>> devices?
>
> With no single point of failure, one BTS box could still allow local
> phone calls and any two boxes could form a working network.
> Though we still have a lot of work to do, improving codec support and

Do you mean codec support in your Android application? I thought
you're using a normal SIP and thus shouldn't have any issues with
codec support.

> our routing protocol. With servald handling the network routing and
> packet delivery, the network layer has the potential to carry more
> simultaneous calls over a wifi network.

Do you aggregate packets to increase number of voice calls over WiFi?

> We'll need to do a lot more testing to see how well that claim pans
> out in practice.
>
>> Does Serval DNA works well with thousands of users?
>
> Good question, no idea. There will probably be scalability issues
> we'll need to deal with so we don't flood a large network just trying
> to resolve phone numbers. Probably some kind of election process to
> pick a small number of network nodes to collect and search the entire
> phone directory.

Ok.
GSM network may easily cover thousands of users, even with a single
base station and thus scalability is an issue.

>> Does Serval support SMS messages?
>
> We have a text messaging solution for android, where we can assume
> that one identity is only reachable via one instance of the software.
> We'd need to build something a bit different to deliver messages to
> users roaming between BTS boxes. We haven't tackled that yet, but we
> might get around to it eventually.

Would be a great thing.

--
Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.
CEO, Fairwaves LLC / ООО УмРадио
http://fairwaves.ru