Slightly off-topic, but this may be of use when testing OpenBSC...
Some mobiles made by Pantech have an engineering mode built in -
displays various parameters of the network like LAC, BSIC, ARFCN and
signal-strength (C1 value) of serving and neighbour cells, TMSI assigned
to phone, timing advance etc. The two models I've played with are:
PG-C3 - very comprehensive data (10 screens of it!), engineer mode
persists when power-cycled, but US tri-band, so does not cover 900MHz band.
PG-C520 - quad-band, but data not so comprehensive (e.g. no timing
advance), engineer mode does not persist
I bought mine from an Ebay shop in the USA:
http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Khala-Ki-Dukan__W0QQ_armrsZ1
Both models were < 100 Euro, even with postage from the States and
import tax. If anyone's interested, email me and I'll post some
screenshots.
Does anyone know of other phones with built-in net-monitor / engineer
functions (other than the old Nokias!)?
Thanks, Mike H.
Hi Sylvain,
I asked a colleague of mine about nanoBTS model-numbers, he gave me a
list of available models that he got from IpAccess when he was looking
to buy some BTSs from them a while ago. They seem to use different
internal and external model-numbers for the non-EDGE oval models, maybe
not for the EDGE models; I've put in the three external->internal number
correspondences I know for definite:
Model no. IpAccess ref. Description
108B 1800MHz single-TRX BTS GPRS - OLD
108D 1800MHz multi-TRX nanoBTS
139U 108DU 1800MHz multi-TRX nanoBTS
108E 1900MHz multi-TRX nanoBTS
108EF 1900MHz multi-TRX nanoBTS
108ER012 1900MHz multi-TRX nanoBTS
178U 108GU 900MHz BTS RoHS-compliant
108H 850MHz BTS - pre-release product
108HU 850MHz BTS - pre-release product
165AU 165AU 1800MHz EDGE BTS
165B 1900MHz EDGE BTS
165BU 1900MHz EDGE BTS
165CU 900MHz EDGE BTS
165DU 850MHz EDGE BTS
165 E012 1800MHz extended temperature EDGE BTS Pre
Custom
165FM 1900MHz temperature-hardened EDGE BTS module
I know there are also models 110A and 140, both 1900MHz oval models, but
don't know what internal refs they correspond to.
HTH, Mike H
Hello again,
attached patch adds support for 1900MHz nanoBTS - use one bts_type
GSM_BTS_TYPE_NANOBTS to refer to all variants of nanoBTS, and rely on
the band specified in the config file when bounds-checking the specified
ARFCN.
At last getting the hang of git...
Best regards, Mike H.
Sorry about that Holger, another lesson learned - I'd manually edited
the patch to remove an extra line. Now recreated from scratch.
Very much like Harald's idea of reading the model / frequency-band from
the unit - may end up with GSM_BTS_TYPE_NANOBTS_OLD and
GSM_BTS_TYPE_NANOBTS_NEW or similar?
Best regards, Mike H.
Hi all,
Patch-file is attached - addresses a FIXME in abis_nm.c, parsing the
parameters passed by a Software Activate request. I've tested this on
three different IpAccess BTSs (including one which didn't work with the
original code), would be good if someone could check it on a BS11.
Best regards, Mike H.
Hey guys,
back in January I added ref-counting to the lchan and it has worked to some
degree, and we have seen ref-leaks as well (fixed thanks to Andreas). Currently
I'm working on integrating OpenBSC into a real MSC at on-waves.com and this
has made me read the GSM08.08 specification a bit more.
I would like to implement the following.
- Remove the refcount from lchan
- Replace it with the "transaction" concept. On certain 04.08 messgaes
(e.g. paging response, various MM messages) open a transaction
from BSC to MSC code. The channel is bound to the transaction.
The lchan is getting released when the transaction is finished, in
case of the "RSL chan" is going away too early there will be a
"clear" signal/method called from the BSC and the MSC side is asked
to let it go.
The benefit of this:
- BSC and MSC are better separated
- My MSC code could wrap the transaction into a SCCP connection
- Channel leak == transaction_free not getting called.
regards
holger
Hi Zecke,
I've been reviewing some of your patches:
> commit 45f9b3d3fc47074652be951eb74df2b0be2a230f
> Author: Holger Hans Peter Freyther <zecke(a)selfish.org>
> Date: Fri Aug 21 05:30:19 2009 +0200
>
> [paging] Use one of the two reserved LAC to page every BTS
>
> For the on-waves.com MSC case we want to page every BTS reached
> of the network. Our gsm_subscriber entry does not have a LAC
> entry set and defaults to zero. Use the reserved 0x0000 to
> indicate that we want to use every bts in the network.
>
> This will influence the paging code to start and stop paging.
The problem is that in the current code, we use LAC == 0 to indicate that the
subscriber has sent an IMSI DETACH message, i.e. switched his phone off.
You are now redefiniing the LAC 0 to something like the opposite case, which
I don't particularly like. Is there some alternative solution?
Regards,
--
- Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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