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distributed GSM / some thoughts
by Harald Welte 13 Dec '19

13 Dec '19

Hi Oliver, Neels, community, I had some comments on the D-GSM work that didn't really fit directly to the gerrit code review, and I thought I'd post it here. == DNS zone / .msisdn suffix === One question I had was regarding the use of the .{msisdn,imsi} TLD. I would argue it is probably besser to use something that fits within the existing DNS hierarchy without contesting IANA's authority on gTLDs. Historically, ETSI/3GPP made the mistake of using ".gprs" for resolving APNs on the GRX. This was later changed to something with 3gppnetwork.com or the like, hwere that domain would actually be registered by 3GPP with normal domain registrars, but without any publicly accessible zone records. This way the name is reserved in the public hierarchy and no risk of clashes. I'm not sure how much of a concern this is to us, given that our use case is much more niche than the GRX. However, the "cost" is probably rather small to change this to something like .{msisdn,imsi}.dgsm.osmocom.org ? Sure, the packets will get larger by a few bytes, but given all the other overhead I think it's not really going to have any impact? What are your thoughts on that? == MSISDN format == Another thought is whether or not there are any concerns regarding the MSISDN format. Historically, this is one of the weaknesses of OsmoMSC, inherited from the OpenBSC days where we just thought in terms of PBX extension numbers. In reality, a MSISDN consist of a TON (type of number), NPI (numbering plan indicator) and the related digits. IIRC, in the TON one can also specify if it's supposed to be national or international, i.e. if it's prefixed with the country code or not. It would be great to make sure that the format used in the mDNS queries is somewhat standardized, if not at least only by the documentation requiring that all queries should be done in fully qualfiied form with country code present. NPI is sort-of bogus as IMOH E.164 is the only one applicable for MSISDN. Any thoughts? == The use of 'age' vs. absolute timestamp == In my original D-GSM idas I always thought we'd send an absolute UTC timestamp when a given HLR/MSC has ever seen that subscriber. The idea here being that any rural GSM network will have some kind of GNSS recevier for clock stability in the BTS anyway, and one can hence assume that timestamps are synchronized. The advantage of a relative 'age' is obvious: You don't care about the absolute clock value being correct anymore. The potential downside is that propagation delay might matter. If you have a rather slow / loaded geostationary sattelite link from one village, but a faster terrestrial link from another village, the 'age' will be ambiguous while an absolute timesetamp wouldn't have that. Given that the delays we're talking about are probably all sub-second or maybe possible about 1s, it's probably not a problem. == GSUP keepalives / connection loss detection == In the presence of unreliable back-haul mesh between villages, the GSUP connection can also not be seen as reliable. We would expect to see TCP stalls due to packet loss, etc. Have you considered this in your implementation and/or done any testing based on simulated lossy networks to ensure we properly use either TCP keepalives or IPA application-level PING/PONG to detect lost connections and recover from such situations (by closing the old and re-establishing)? Unreliable networks can be easily simulated by Linux built-in 'tc netem' for providing configurable packet loss / latency / jitter. I also saw some comments / code related to "if a second connection using the same IPA ID arrives, we're screwed" (paraphrasing here). I would expect this not to be uncommon even if every MSC/HLR out there is configred correctly exactly because e.g .the remote MSC/HLR has already decided that the TCP/GSUP is dead and starts to reconnect by performing a local-end release, while the "local" MSC/HLR still thinks the old connection is alive. If the old connection "wins" (i.e. is preferred) I see potential trouble here. Situations like that probably warrant some carefully designed tests to create exactly those situations. Regards, Harald -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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Re: [osmocom-event-orga] 36c3: GSM base stations wanted - Handing out 1 NanoBTS
by circle 04 Dec '19

04 Dec '19

Hey, yes, I ll drop one NanoBTS in Berlin, at Afra or Sysmocom before the first day of the conference. Im not sure, if Ill be able to do so this week. It actually belongs to Sysmocom / Harald. Best regards, circle ------ Dear all, 36c3 is going to happen soon, and as usually we're planing to setup our own GSM/UMTS network (LTE is to be discussed). While we do have enough UMTS NodeB units, we're looking for heroes who could sacrifice their GSM base stations (preferably sysmoBTS or nanoBTS) for the duration of the congress. Note that we're not considering SDRs (unless somebody with a strong aspiration wants to ensure proper clock distribution, filtering, power amplification, etc). Please let us know 1) how many (and what kind of) units we could borrow from you, 2) can you bring them to Leipzig before the first day, or can you drop them somewhere in Berlin (Sysmocom? AfRa?). Thanks! On behalf of the GSM team, Vadim Yanitskiy.

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OsmoDevCon 2020 registration
by Harald Welte 01 Dec '19

01 Dec '19

Dear fellow Osmocom developers, I would like to invite all developers and contributors to Osmocom [sub]projects to register for OsmoDevCon 2020 (held on April 24th-27th, 2020 in Berlin). For details known so far, please check http://osmocom.org/projects/osmo-dev-con/wiki/OsmoDevCon2020 Please enter your name at https://osmocom.org/projects/osmo-dev-con/wiki/OsmoDevCon2020#Requested in case you would like to attend. Registering early allows proper planning. Thanks! Looking forward to meeting old and new Osmocom developers in April 2020. Regards, Harald -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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request: osomocom git repo branch cleanup
by Harald Welte 30 Nov '19

30 Nov '19

Dear Osmocom developers, the number of branches in many repositories (most notably libosmocore) is growing to a rather large number, and I would like to encourage everyone to have a quick look about which branches can be deleted by now (and delete them, if no longer needed). Thanks! Regards, Harald -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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36c3: GSM base stations wanted
by Vadim Yanitskiy 28 Nov '19

28 Nov '19

Dear all, 36c3 is going to happen soon, and as usually we're planing to setup our own GSM/UMTS network (LTE is to be discussed). While we do have enough UMTS NodeB units, we're looking for heroes who could sacrifice their GSM base stations (preferably sysmoBTS or nanoBTS) for the duration of the congress. Note that we're not considering SDRs (unless somebody with a strong aspiration wants to ensure proper clock distribution, filtering, power amplification, etc). Please let us know 1) how many (and what kind of) units we could borrow from you, 2) can you bring them to Leipzig before the first day, or can you drop them somewhere in Berlin (Sysmocom? AfRa?). Thanks! On behalf of the GSM team, Vadim Yanitskiy.

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Build failures of network:osmocom:nightly/osmo-hlr
by Harald Welte 12 Nov '19

12 Nov '19

Somehow osmo-hlr is no longer building in OBS for a variety of targets -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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osmo-msc: repeatpaging?
by Neels Hofmeyr 04 Nov '19

04 Nov '19

I noticed the MSC test that wants osmo-msc to repeat a Paging to the BSC and hNodeB. After fixing the Iu tests, I wanted to get this last ttcn3-msc-test working, so I was about to implement repeated Paging from osmo-msc, but the more I think about it, the less it makes sense to me. The commit log in osmo-ttcn3-hacks says: Repeating will improve the reachability of MS when a Paging is lost or not received because the MS is moving between states. This reasoning seems flawed to me, because the BSC / hNodeB is between the MSC and the MS, and the BSC *does* repeat Paging. That should cover MS moving between states. The link between MSC and {BSC,hNodeB} is considered reliable, and AFAICT nothing really gets better when repeating a Paging request to the BSS. It could make sense to maybe repeat Paging with a larger/more general Cell Identifier List? But why not send the full list in the first place? Also 3GPP TS 48.008 3.1.10 Paging says: A single PAGING message across the MSC to BSS interface contains information on the cells in which the page shall be broadcast. I interpret the "A single" as: there is no repetition of Paging requests toward the BSS, and that's also what makes most sense to me infrastructurally. Is there any spec indicating repeated Paging from the MSC? I would actually remove the test TC_lu_and_mt_sms_paging_repeated. If that's the wrong call, we should specify how osmo-msc should repeat Paging. Before that, having the test makes little sense... What do you guys think? ~N

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contrib: alternative ladder diagram format
by Neels Hofmeyr 01 Nov '19

01 Nov '19

Hi all, I wrote a script and am wondering whether it makes sense to publish it in libosmocore/contrib/. For codec negotiation patches, I was writing ladder diagrams manually in the mscgen format, and it was so annoying to type "[label=]" all the time, that I decided to write a script that parses a leaner ladder diagram format and converts it to mscgen format. I was going to use this format in osmo-msc.git, but actually, after I wrote the first osmo-msc codec ladder diagram, I went a step further and automated the process by transcribing an osmo-msc log output directly to a ladder diagram. That script can output to mscgen format, so in the end there is no dependency on that simpler ladder format from my osmo-msc patches. When writing ladder diagrams manually in the future, I'll probably choose my simpler ladder format. I could always submit the converted format instead of that, i.e. keep the simpler format to myself entirely. I could publish the script privately... Any opinions? Does it make sense to put this in libosmocore/contrib/ before any Osmocom git trees actually depend on it? See branch neels/contrib http://git.osmocom.org/libosmocore/commit/?h=neels/contrib&id=f1ec9483de0f9… ~N

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massive VTY related master-osmo-{msc,sgsn} build failures
by Harald Welte 29 Oct '19

29 Oct '19

Dear Osmocom developers, please see the attached messages. I'm getting dozens of these since yesterday, it appears likely some regression was merged? Any help is appreciated. Regards, Harald -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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build2.osmocom.org hardware replacement
by Harald Welte 28 Oct '19

28 Oct '19

Hi all, during the past couple of days, there have been a high number of build failures due to 'illegal instruction'. I checked about a handful of them, and they all happened on build2.osmocom.org. On the machine nothing strange could be observed, i.e. no oopses or the like. Also, debsums didn't report any broken compiler binaries. I've taken the builds slaves offline and asked for the machine to be replaced (disks will be moved so no data loss expected). Let's hope that fixes it. If not, I guess a full re-install of OS + lxc's (via ansible) is up next. -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)osmocom.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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