Category Archives: Projects

Here is the OS X Asterisk 1.2.0-beta1 installer as promised, for those of you who don’t want to install the developer tools just to use this awesome sofware. It includes asterisk-sounds and an uninstaller that it sticks in /etc/asterisk. Make sure you copy that somewhere else before you use it. Enjoy

I am going to create an OS X installer for asterisk. It has been done before but their efforts are severely outdated. I will also be posting the file here as well as a how to and source for asterisk OS X address book integration.

I ended up buying a soekris net4801 + case + power supply + 512 MB compact flash card, and going down the list of distributions designed for it trying to figure out what to do with this really nice hardware now that I had it. I tried pebble linux, m0n0wall, pfsense, and astlinux, I also looked into setting up a stompbox but there is no EVDO or even EDGE in my area so “F” that. I got bored, sold the soekris on ebay and bought a bluetooth keyboard and mighty mouse for my ibook. We officially have two ibooks in the house and my wife couldn’t be happier. Good investment, no more showing her where the openoffice icon is under gnome 2.10. I still need to set up the software raid 5 box as a backup machine + fileserver. As far as finding a phone that sync’s with isync goes…. I’ll wait for the Motorola apple collaboration. Links coming later…

I guess this is what it’s like to be an adult. I have NO time for personal projects. I have a list of shit I want to do, but have no time to do. Here goes.

Shit I want to get done.
1.Set up a software RAID 5 box as a file server and backup machine.

2.Get a soekris box and set up m0n0wall instead of the relatively crappy linksys solution I’m using now. (I bought a 4801, case, and power supply yesterday.

3.Create an real plan for our WiMAX rollout.

4.Get a phone that sync’s with isync, and will function as a bluetooth modem under Tiger.

5.Finish reading the latest edition of make magazine.

6.more…

The whole point of WiMax was for carriers not to need as massive a fiber build out. It appears to have arrived too late for those kind of ambitions because telco’s and cable operators are already in the middle of the massive fiber build out that will be needed for next generation, high bandwidth applications. Time Warner had to upgrade 60% of the head ends and cabling around here before they could gauruntee the QOS they needed to meet Sprint’s minimum requirements. This cost them tens of millions of dollars. The thing WiMax has on fiber is cost. Imagine how much it cost time warner to wire up all of those houses, keep the coax maintained, service calls because of cable problems, etc… trust me its alot. By beginning with a high bandwidth wireless architecture you can provide the same services at a fraction of the costs. I can’t even quantify how much it costs to build and maintain a cable network, but I know a guy that can and the answer is tens of millions per year. What WiMax allows us to do is directly compete for the same market with a much smaller initial investment. My plan is incomplete because I have spent all of my time on the viatalk project but here is how things can work.

Data -this is easy WiMax CPE works in a similar manner to cable modems, the spec was built on the DOCSIS spec which is basically MAC authentication with provisions for encryption, and different levels of service provisioning (one guy can get 1 MB down, and another 3MB for instance)

Voice -also relatively easy, we can simply stick a pap2 on one of the ethernet ports and QOS sip traffic to the highest priority, then we set the accounts up as we normally do

IPTV -this is a little newer, there exists (1)CPE, designed (2)for this. To get the content, you set up a reseller account with the national programming service, get a C band satellite (these toss you mpeg2 video) NPS is something like 10 cents per channel per customer, and it goes down the more customers you get. That is exactly what cable companies do which is why if you drive pas a headend you see a bunch off satellites pointed to different transponders.

New Services – What will really set a provider apart is new services that don’t yet exist.

OK. I got a little off topic last time. I’ll try to stay on topic and simply discuss the technologies that have, and will make the triple threat possible. By triple threat I mean the IPTV, VoIP, and high speed data services I spoke about in my last article. First off there is fiber optics. Fiber is really nothing new. Telco’s have been using it as far as I can remember to trunk between themselves. Everyone knows the physical properties of fiber, good stuff like 0.0009% (made up number), attenuation for every one thousand miles, and damn good resistance to electromagnetic interference. The amount of bandwidth that fiber can carry is truly ridiculous. So there is one route, and thats the route the the major telecommunications providers are taking now, running cables. It will cost billions, they will make billions more, and it will protect us against terrorist attack (*I just threw that one in there*).

What is IPTV? Thats what people ask me when I bring up the topic in conversation. Basically, its just as it sounds. In the same manner that voice services are making the transition from traditional analog implementations to digital communications over existing networks (think voip), the time has come for our traditionally analog cable networks to not just go digital, but for the services they provide to be moved to an existing network. The problem is that our existing high speed internet connections simply don’t provide enough bandwidth to carry all of those channels, well not at the same time. But thats not the end of that story. There is a massive fiber optic build out going on in this country. Right now, as I type this article, cable companies are racing telcos to get fiber to your door so that they can sell you the big picture. Voice. Data. Video. Whatever else. Cable companies want to sell you VoIP. Telco’s want to sell you video. Apple’s using x86. I keep looking up for the flying swine. I’ve strayed. I’ll explain more tomorrow.