Hi again.
On Sat, Apr 09, 2011 at 10:03:09PM +0200, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 09, 2011 at 08:37:20AM +0200, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) wrote:
> >
> >> this email don't want to be a provocative email but just an opinion
> >> related to the creation of value for GSM TLC stack into the opensource
> >> environment.
> >
> > Sorry, what is TLC?
> I refer to TLC as "Telecommunication" that's the environment and
> industry segment where our so "friendly" mobile industry players apply
> patent and NDA everywhere to restrict access to the technology.
>
> >> Additionally, if i understood correctly osmocom is much more advanced
> >> with broad scope and better design than OpenBTS.
> >
> > I think it is unfair. There are many design decisions, and I don't think
> > you can say something is better or worse. It depends on your purpose. Do
> > you want a sports car or a truck? Depends on your application which one
> > is better...
>
> Absolutely agree, that OpenBTS had very appreciable short term practical
> goals, such as hooking a GSM phone to Asterisk.
it's not just a short-term goal, see David's response ;)
> While Osmocom had very long term goals, like making a overall set of
> technologies and libraries usable to build a complete gsm systems, from
> bsc to baseband, to network analyzer, to ggsn/sgsn, msc, hlr.
Making a GSM network that can integrate with an IMS core network without
any of the usual components (bsc, sgsn, ...) is not a long-term goal?
> So imho current status of OpenBTS is near to stalled, without strong
> opensource improvements.
> While the current status of Osmocom is growing fast, differentiating
> itself in various projects, doing important refactoring to create a
> solid technology stack reusable for most projects.
well, I would be careful regarding the 'solid' part. Large parts are
'proof of concept' or 'alpha' status at this time. The BSC is very stable,
but if you look at the SGSN or the core network parts, it's entirely different
> So most of the community investments sounds to be directed to Osmocom.
Well, there is a community, but it is a small community, isn't it? Basically
Holger and myself on the BSC and core network side, and Sylvain and Andreas
doing the majority of the work on the telephone side. Pablo is sort of an
exceptional case, as he is doing paid work for me to do his cleanups and
improvements. Vance has generously donated his signerl code, for which I'm
grateful, but it was written a long time ago and never really 100% finished, so
we still have to do a lot of work finishing and integrating it with our other
code.
The truth is, I don't think there are significantly more people working on
Osmocom projects than on OpenBTS. Also, the comparison is odd, as you would
probably have to count only the network side projects (BSC, SGSN, ...) on
the Osmocom side.
> Osmocom now it's missing a complete free hardware/software BTS (for
> example based on USRP devices).
>
> Given it's fast growing community we can forecast in the near future the
> need to support also the GSMum on USRP devices?
>From my point of view, there is no 'need' to supoprt the USRP + SDR approach.
Sure, it would be a nice addition, but it's not something that I consider
extremely important. With regard to 'near future': I would say that in
something like six months the osmo-bts (BTS-side A-bis) code will have matured,
and is ready for an relaatively painless integration with OpenBTS.
I personally think the USRP hardware cost is still way too high, and I would
rather want to work on something that puts the financial entrance barrier to
private BTS ownership much lower.
Most of the people using OpenBSC today either use it commercially (and can
afford the nanoBTS units), or they use it private and either with a very
cheap second hand nanoBTS, or with a inexpensive BS-11. The recent work
on supporting the RBS2308 that can be found for < 1000 USD goes into the
same direction.
I think whatever hardware will be affordable to hackers will see OpenBSC
support - just as well as any hardware where we have a commercial customer
will get OpenBSC support.
> > This is where I don't get you. All that needs to be removed is the L3-to-SIP
> > bridge. It doesn't make the vast majority of OpenBTS code disappear,
> > and it does not render that latter part useless. A full-blown GSM network
> > with
> > all its components brings a lot of complexity. The stand-alone OpenBTS is
> > much more simple. And why would you want all the complexity if you don't
> > need to interoperate with legacy GSM?
>
> Well, because the the osmocom-integrated version will be, before or
> later, more full-featured than OpenBTS standalone.
>
> Features such as multi-arfcn, handover, maybe GPRS/EDGE will be usable
> only jointly with Osmocom integration but not by the opensource OpenBTS
> standalone version.
If you use the USRP hardware (or any other SDR hardware), you cannot use
GPRS/EDGE whether you use Osmocom + OpenBTS or OpenBTS standalone. As for
hand-over, you may be right, but I don't know the OpenBTS plans here.
Multi-ARFCN: This is an aspect of the radio-modem. So again, on the same
hardware any OpenBTS/OpenBSC integration will not change this.
> Obviously the community will then use the OpenBTS/OpenBSC integration
> that would reach more features than just OpenBTS in the opensource edition.
well, but you loose the important 'simplicity' feature. Right now I doubt
there are that many people in our community who understand OpenBSC and the
GSM/GPRS network architecture enough to deploy a network (like the burning man
or CCC event networks) with it. We have close to zero documentation, and
unless you know GSM protocol details, you are lost. VoIP is much better
understood in the FOSS and Internet community!
> So the integrated code will grow while the "OpenBTS commercial code"
> will leave behind with less features and more buggy code (because less
> used).
you are making assumptions here. Do you have evidence or at least some
other indication that bug fixes are not being propagated from the commercial
to the free version?
> Osmocom and it's possible future changes to the market of GSM
> technologies could be defined as "the WikiLeaks of the GSM Industry" :-)
I think this is a very bad comparison. We do not leak any proprietary/secret
information. We just break the ignorance of the Free Software community to
ever implement any of those openly-specified protocols. Not different from
Free Software entering any other area of technology.
And while we're doing that, we of course also like to challenge the ridiculous
claims of hundred-man-year efforts that allegedly went into some proprietary
GSM protocol stack implementations, which are often claimed by the existing
carrier equipment industry.
Regards,
Harald
--
- Harald Welte <[email protected]> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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