EVDO Router Design

[leoembedded]

Hi,

We plan to develop an EVDO network access router.
We have googled and came to know about network processors being used in such routers.
The router specs are attached
We are very much new to the networking domain. We have expertise in developing CDMA,GPRS modems and tracking solutions.
Are there any chips that could be used directly in the router?
How much part of the software would be open source?
How do we approach the development of the hardware as well as software

Thanks in advance
Regards,
Samir

[thechief]

I have no idea what exactly you mean by "network access router" - but your document describes something that is readily available, both with and without a modem. Most new system boards for consumer devices are based on a Broadcom or Realtek chipset, although there are also some new ones based on the AR7 chipset. Most firmwares on these boards are based on one variant or another of Linux (meaning opensource) or VxWorks (don't know the licence type). I can't speak for non-consumer devices.

I have no idea what EVDO means, and I have no inclination to seek out that information. So the above is all I can say unless you care to elaborate further on your project (which I am quite aware you might not be at liberty to do, for commercial reasons).

[leoembedded]

Hi thechief,

Thanks for the prompt reply
Routers are now being evolved into the wireless space.
Inspite of your non-inclination towards EVDO i would like to tell you something about it.
EVDO is a high speed CDMA network and there are around 110 commercial 1xEV-DO Rev. A networks (www.cdg.org) . The high speed would allow to stream realtime videos and high bandwidth data.
We plan to develop a router based on the specs shared initially. This router could be used at any place where wired routers are being used today.
There are no commercial restrictions regarding product discussion here.
Hope you understand.

[thechief]

Well, as I said, the specs in your PDF file are bog-standard, and should be supported by most consumer ADSL system boards. I don't know about "Supports APN and VPDN wireless private network", but virtually everything else is supported by the opensource linux-based firmwares for these boards. AR7 and Broadcom are well supported in the sense of freely available GPL firmware source code and various projects based on them. I don't know much about Realtek.

However, AR7 has significant limitations on account of closed source DSP and wireless AP drivers and core logic. However if you are a manufacturer buying system boards from Texas Instruments/Infineon/whoever now owns the AR7 chipset, then you should be able to obtain the full source code for everything (and development tools too).

Conclusion: talk to the Broadcom/AR7 chipset owners, purchase reference system boards and development tools from them, and decide which best suits you. If you don't want to pay up front for these in order to run your pilots, then you can simply purchase some consumer level AR7 and Broadcom devices, download GPL firmware source code and development tools, and run your own tests. When you decide on one, then talk to the chipset/board manufacturers.

Edit: it seems that the AR7 chipset is now owned by Lantiq.

[leoembedded]

Very Thanks for the valuable inputs.
We have approached around 4-5 network processor manufacturers. Like Broadcom, EZchip, Lantiq, Freescale, Realtek. Nobody showed interest in providing support for the complete development.
I guess we need to follow your method to start with.
Pls. point to some good sites where the open source codes for the required protocols would be available

[thechief]

Pls. point to some good sites where the open source codes for the required protocols would be available

RouterTech?

[mstombs]

For balance if you are thinking of custom firmware on a commercial development board OpenWRT or dd-wrt

[thechief]

For AR7, RouterTech. For Broadcom, either of those referred to by mstombs above, or FreeWRT, or Tomato.

[mstombs]

Active development on Tomato with Linux 2.6 kernels on http://tomatousb.org/ with source available in git http://repo.or.cz/w/tomato.git

[leoembedded]

Thanks for the pointers
We plan to design a router hardware in our lab.
In that case how can we use the firmware available on this site or Openwrt or Tomato

[thechief]

These firmwares are based on GPL source code. So all you need to do is to download the GPL sources, get the necessary development tools, build the firmware, test it, add your own customisations, etc., etc.

AND, when you release your product, you must also release the full, compilable GPL sources for your firmware.

There are a lot of "GPL thieves" and copyright infringers around, who use GPL code as the basis of their firmwares, while not releasing the full, compilable sources for the release firmwares (as amended by them) back to the community. Many of them are big router manufacturers, who should know better. Eventually, they will get sued (and some of them have been sued successfully already). So you need to take this into account when basing your firmware on GPL sources. Everyone benefits when the GPL licence conditions are observed fully.

[leoembedded]

From where can we get the hardware design that will be compatible with the available firmware.

We will need some reference designs. We do not plan to use the commercially available routers.

[thechief]

Lantiq, Broadcom, etc.

[leoembedded]

Thats right
But these people ask for number of routers that we can sell, the market and lot of other details

[mstombs]

You must sort your your software licensing issues out up-front. MontaVista and Windriver (VxWorks) both offer build systems that incorporate OpenSource components - but you will find these are not cheap!

Cisco-Linksys are one of the companies who have been subject to legal challenge and now have a dedicated GPL compliance manager. They had prepared a GPL source-code release for their latest home router the E4200 in advance of product launch. It's not so great that they do not publish the source-code on their website, but a personal download link is given to anyone who requests. The source-code release includes all the (possibly modified) GPL sourcecodes and the scripts required to build them into the product. There are quite a lot of non-GPL components, for which only binary blobs are included, these include 'router control code' and Broadcom hardware drivers, which makes making changes to the Linux kernel very difficult. Broadcom have expressed a desire to be friendlier to the OpenSource community and have recently published Linux kernel driver interface code to work their latest wireless chipsets (ie chipsets not yet in common use!), which is very sensible - and will, when properly integrated, enable the drivers to keep step with the latest kernel developments.

The Tomato web interface is not GPL, it is under a more restrictive licence - "Free for non-commercial use" - basically the author is happy to give away his work for home use - but not for others to profit from - but there are already commercial and non-free-source offerings in China ...

dd-wrt also has restrictions on use of its web-interface - because they also sell customized premium versions and did have had problems in past with rip-off merchants selling 'rebadged systems'.

OpenWRT strives to be more "open", and now has its own web interface as well as packages such as Gargoyle:-

http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/dok ... _all_about
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/dok ... ased_under