Monday, September 14, 2009

Progress with new IRLP/EchoLink Integration.

Spent yesterday working on the new reflector, adding EchoLink integration to the system. These modifications will bring integrated conferences in line with the current IRLP reflector design. The changes that are being implemented are:

New security model. The new reflector handles security differently, so the integration scripts need to work with the new security subsystem. This work is complete and in beta testing. The integrated conferences may be even more secure than regular IRLP reflector channels. They are more particular about the correct node ID being used on a link.

Multiple integrated conferences per reflector host. The new system uses a set of common scripts to implement multiple integrated conferences. The scripts detect whether a channel uses tlb or tbd, instead of the normal sfreflect, then by loading a local environment, they tailor their behaviour for each integrated conference. The only constraint is that there must be an IP address available for each integrated conference. This support is working and is in final beta testing, with two tbd channels running, and plans for a tlb transcoding channel for future tests.

Integrated multiconference control scripts. The "conference killer" scripts, which have featured on some reflectors and EchoLink conferences have been modified to work under the common script model, and manage multiple integrated conferences. This feature can be enabled or disabled on a per channel basis. The conference killer is running, and is under beta test.

Management of IRLP nodes from EchoLink - EchoLink users with sysop and admin privileges will be able to kick, ban and unban IRLP nodes from their EchoLink client, using commands similar to the ones they already know. The scripts to manage IRLP nodes have been written, but the EchoLink event handling has to be added, so that the new commands will be recognised and the scripts triggered.

Support for listen only channels. The new reflector code from VE7LTD supports listen only channels. The new integration code supports this feature, so that integrated channels will become listen only, if the listen only flag is set. Both IRLP and EchoLink nodes will be muted on connection, when listen only is activated for an integrated conference. This feature has been implemented, but needs to be tested. I would also like to add mute list and unmute list features, so specific nodes can be listed as muted on a regular channel, or unmuted on a muted channel. These extra features will be specific to integrated conferences.

Transcoding and full duplex conferences. The new integrated conferences can be configured to support both transcoding between codecs and full duplex. This feature requires tlb to be used in a specific configuration, and support is activated by a symbolic link to the port linking scripts in the conference's channel directory. Support is yet to be implemented. The port linking scripts will be ported from the exp0018/VK3JED-R experimental node. Transcoding conferences are inherently full duplex (this has been proven through testing on exp0018).