Nokia InSite multiple BTSs with OpenBSC

[Sipos Csaba]

Hi Holger,

> please create a wiki account (by mailing laforge) and add your additional
> information there.

Will do. I am going to write a complete guide for InSite, how to setup
the BTS, DAHDI, OpenBSC and the cross connections, and will share this
with the community. MOst Nokia units uses the very same interfaces so
it could be a help to others too, not to mention these indoor
picocells are much easier to access, than talk, metro, felxi and other
Nokia units.

> Can you try to come up with a patch to make this VTY configurable
> for the BTS type? In gsm_data.h we already have vendor specific fields
> and you could add one to the nokia section and add reset interval field.

I think it is not a problem to simply raise the already existing
RESET_TIMER from 15 to 25 seconds, because it is not a problem if the
code waits for all the BTSes 25 seconds. THe init will take a little
longer, but with the longer RESET_TIMER every BTS will have the time
to perform the initial reset and wait for the LAPD connection (OMUSIG and TRXSIG)
to be started. Will read that part of the code you mentioned.

>> The third thing is multiple BTS operation. As I mentioned I want to
>> use two InSite units with OpenBSC. But at the beginning of
>> bts_nokie_site.c there is a big warning: I most certainly going to

> I can't help on this part

I am reading the relevant code parts for a while but I am not a
professional programmer. This is what the warning message sais:

> TODO: Attention: There are some static variables used for states during
> configuration. Those variables have to be moved to a BTS specific context,
> otherwise there will most certainly be problems if more than one Nokia BTS
> is used.

I don't know what it means "move to a BTS specific context", but based
on the fact I was able to set up two units with only the modification of the
RESET_INTERVAL, it does not seems that much of a work, because it almost works well
as it is. Because BS11 unit uses E1 and there is multi-unit support
for that, I started to read the code for that type of BTS, but I don't
see the difference between the insite and at BS11 code, where this "BTS
specific context" lies. If you could just browse through the
bts_nokia_insite.c code at least you could evaluate how big this work
is, or how hard to do this task, because I can't determine that. I am
happy to contribute with testing or remote access to the equipment. In
a different post I will try to evaluate the difference between the
successful and unsuccessful multi-unit startup, and provide the traces
for these attempts, gather all the infos available to one place.

BR,
Csaba