Digium releases new firmware

Digium Inc., the creator of Asterisk and pioneer of open source telephony, recently announced the availability of its second generation firmware for Digium. According to Digium, their new firmware increases quality, performance, and reliability. The new firmware solution relies less on the server's CPU for the operation of the Digium card, therefore reducing CPU overhead and improving performance and increasing channel processing. For example, a dual-processor, 3-GHz 800FSB Intel XEON server with 1MB L2 cache, and a Digium 4-port T1/E1 card, can now convert 120 SIP channels with G.729 compression to the PSTN without Digium's echo cancellation module and 150 channels with G.729 compression with the Digium echo cancellation module.

"This development is significant for Digium's Asterisk customers," said Mark Spencer, president of Digium and creator of Asterisk. "There is always room for improvement in technology and we are dedicated to providing our customers with solutions that offer higher quality and reliability than our competitors. Our second generation firmware results in up to a 67% performance increase over previous benchmarks."



Additional improvements in the firmware include hardware TDM channel alignment (instead of software channel alignment) resulting in greater voice integrity and reliability, master clock source distribution for synchronized timing across multiple cards, assuring synchronization of clocks and increasing reliability and quality of data transmission, zero-latency TDM direct hardware-level cross-connect, support of new echo cancellation module resulting in increased performance, hardware DTMF detection with echo cancellation module and field upgradeable firmware for future updates.

Support and Availability

The Second Generation Firmware for Digium quad-span and dual-span T1/E1 cards is now available. For more information, please contact sales@digium.com or call 1-256-428-6262. All Digium products are warranted and include installation and troubleshooting support.

Improvements in the firmware include:

• TDM channel alignment now done in hardware (instead of software), for greater voice integrity and reliability
• Master clock source distribution for synchronized timing across multiple cards, assuring synchronization of clocks and increasing reliability and quality of data transmission
• Zero-latency TDM direct hardware-level cross-connect
• Supports new echo-cancellation module which further increases performance
• DTMF detection can be done in hardware with echo cancellation module
• Field-upgradeable firmware for future updates

• TE411P—Quad-Span PCI T1/E1 termination with on-board echo cancellation for 3.3-volt PCI slots
• TE406P—Quad-Span PCI T1/E1 termination with on-board echo cancellation for 5-volt PCI slots
• TE410P—Quad-Span PCI T1/E1 termination for 3.3-volt PCI slots
• TE405P—Quad-Span PCI T1/E1 termination for 5-volt PCI slots
• TE210P—Dual-Span PCI T1/E1 termination for 3.3-volt PCI slots
• TE205P—Dual-Span PCI T1/E1 termination for 5-volt slots