[VoIP] More "Authentic" CNET

[Keelan Lightfoot]

Something that has bothered me about the current direction that CNET  
is taking is that it is really just a collection of Asterisk servers,  
with some extensions that happen to point at some old switching  
equipment. Or recordings of old equipment. It's hard to tell. It is  
lacking an interactive component, and it isn't really a network in  
the "classical" sense of the term, where the telephone network  
existed as a hierarchy of tandem switches. Placing a call meant  
connecting through multiple switches and trunks to reach your  
destination.

What about the possibility of using a computer's sound card as a 4  
wire trunk? Audio could be passed using a simple streaming audio  
application (something like IHU - ihu.sourceforge.net). Answer  
supervision/dial pulsing could either be passed as out of band "DC"  
signals created or received by extra hardware plugged into the  
server, or as in band SF tones with detection either handled in  
hardware or software. The interface between sound card and switch  
could be executed using something like a Zarlink SLIC or COIC to do 2- 
wire to 4-wire conversion, and handle signaling.

Just a thought.

- Keelan