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FONEBridge2 Installation Guide May 2009

FONEBridge2 Installation Guide
Version 1.0 May 2009
Objective
The present document is intended to explain in the greatest possible detail all steps required to install, configure and maintain FONEBridge2® devices.

Intended audience
It is assumed an intermediate knowledge of Asterisk, specially related to TDM Channels, Linux knowledge of basictools is also required.

Software Covered in this guide:
All commands and instructions are based on latest version of Fonulator, for the present document is Fonulator V.2.0.1
How do I know Fonulator installed version? Login onto server(s) running fonulator and type: # fonulator –V fonulator 2.0.1 Copyright (C) 2007 Redfone Communications, LLC. Build Number: 37 The first line shows fonulator´sversion, in this case is 2.0.1. If version is prior 2.0.1 it is strongly recommended to upgrade from Redfone´s support site: http://support.red-fone.com/download/fonulator

FONEBridge2 Installation Guide May 2009

1. FONEBridge2 Overview
Redfone is a hardware and software development Company that created and manufactures FONEBridge2®. FONEBridge2 is a solid state device that converts TDM toTDMoE and is intended as a link between PSTN trunks and Asterisk platforms. What makes Redfone unique is the fact of being a separate device, independent of server’s hardware, making it a better choice for any kind of installations and the cheapest option to create distributed load and high availability systems. Because FONEBridge2 integrates seamlessly with Asterisk TDM channels, it is viewedfrom Asterisk as a typical PCI board.

What is TDMoE?
TDMoE is a data transport protocol intended to send over Ethernet links telephony trunks, as much transparent as possible.

Redfone´s TDMoE
Main limitation in TDMoE is scalability. Due to the fact that TDMoE uses an Ethernet frame per each trunk, so having multiple trunks over same Ethernet segment creates enormous volumes of lan traffic,that can degradate call quality or generate lost of synchronization on Asterisk. Redfone has developed and improved TDMoE driver (ethmf) that improves drastically the amount of traffic over Ethernet. Redfone’s improved TDMoE driver packs four trunks on each Ethernet frame, reducing the total Ethernet traffic in a 1:8 factor. Detailed information of this driver is in www.thrallingpenguin.comSoftware compatibility
FoneBrisge2 tools and drivers are supported for any version of Asterisk starting at 1.2 up to the newest stable version. This means that drivers where adapted both for Zaptel and DAHDI channels.

Repositories and files
All required software needed to compile, run and configure FONEBridge2 is at: http://support.red-fone.com/downloads root directory for downoaldshttp://support.red-fone.com/downloads/dahdi dahdi stack patched with Redfone’s improved ethmf driver http://support.red-fone.com/downloads/zaptel zaptel stack with improved ethmf driver http://support.red-fone.com/downloads/fonulator sources, packed distributions and config examples of fonulator tool.

FONEBridge2 Installation Guide May 2009

2. Installing Software
This section explains how toconfigure and install all required software to run FONEBridge2 into an Asterisk platform.

Introduction
In order to connect to FONEBridge2, Asterisk’s drivers must be compiled again, using the version provided by Redfone’s that includes the ethmf.c driver. Once compiled and installed, timing for Asterisk is derivated from FONEBridge2 devices, so if ztdummy is running on current installation it mustbe removed.
Although not required, it is recommended compile all Asterisk packages, as explained in commonly available Asterisk literature.

Checklist
1. Download zaptel (or DAHDI depending on current Asterisk version) tarball from http://support.red-fone.com/downloads 2. Download fonulator software and utilities from http://support.red-fone.com/downloads 3. Compile zaptel/DAHDI 4. Install...