fidzu : mobile

The Lords' Day plunges viewers into a high-stakes nightmare set inside the seat of British power. This British…

15 Oct 2026 3:00pm GMT

Look no further for all the latest Boba Story Lid Recipes. They are all right here!

15 Oct 2026 1:09pm GMT

Get the latest Dice Dreams free rolls links, updated daily! Complete with a guide on how to redeem the links.

15 Oct 2026 1:09pm GMT

Today, we shared how we're taking our "More than a store" vision into its next chapter. From You tab-now a personalized home base for your favorite apps and content-to Play Games Sidekick connecting over 2 billion players, Google Play is meeting users wherever they are. ^[1]

For developers, our goal is to help you connect with your audience and build a sustainable business. Below is a checklist to optimize your apps for our latest discovery features, new tools to deepen player engagement, and updates to our quality programs that reward great user experiences with lower service fees.

Reach the right users on Google Play and in the Gemini app

Earlier this year, we shared how new tools are transforming app and content discovery. Now, we're expanding these features to make it easier for people to find your app.

• App comparisons on Ask Play: Ask Play already helps users find the right app through natural conversation, understanding context and adapting to follow-up questions. Now, it can generate dynamic, side-by-side app comparisons directly in search results. When a user compares details like subscription models or offline capabilities, Ask Play summarizes your store listing and user reviews to help them choose your app with confidence.

• Game finder: Tailored by each player's gameplay habits, favorite mechanics, and community reviews, Game finder explains why a title is recommended and highlights what similar players and profiles you follow are enjoying. It begins rolling out to English-language users in the US today.

• Play in Gemini: People are increasingly discovering apps directly through conversations in Gemini-driving over 6 million app installs in just two months since launch. ^[2] When someone describes a specific need, such as organizing family recipes or finding a collaborative task manager, Gemini matches their request to your store listing and key features, so they can evaluate and install your app with a single tap. And now, with Gemini Live, they can get these same app recommendations through voice conversations.

To make sure your app is represented accurately everywhere users discover content-from Ask Play and Game finder to the Gemini app and Collections on home screens-review the following checklist:

1. Keep store listings and promotional events fresh: Regularly update your descriptions, tags, and events in Play Console to highlight new features, seasons, and timely offers.
2. Upload high-resolution media assets: Use clean images and video previews that look great across different screen sizes and devices.
3. Validate deep links in Play Console: Use the new built-in deep link emulator to preview and test your links without needing a physical device.
4. Integrate Engage SDK: Bring users back to your app by delivering personalized content across surfaces, including Apps Home, You tab, and Android tablets-now supporting 9 categories, including Education and Health & Fitness.

Deepen player engagement with social competitions and rewards

Once players find a game they love, recognizing their progress and connecting them with a community keeps them coming back. We're introducing new ways for players to share their favorite moments, compete with friends, and earn rewards:

• Playbacks in Sidekick: With Sidekick-our in-game overlay now reached over 285M users-we bring Quests, Leagues, Sprints, and community features just a tap away.^[3]

• Sprints: Building on Leagues, which turn in-game leaderboards into month-long competitive seasons, Sprints are fast-paced, 48-hour challenges that match 2 to 5 players of similar skills. It gives players an exciting reason to jump back into your game throughout the week.

• Quests: Beyond competing on leaderboards, players want their time and progress rewarded. We're expanding Quests beyond Play Points to include in-game rewards like character skins, performance boosters, and valuable currencies.

You can turn on these competitive and social features by integrating Game Stats and Play Games Rewards:

• Game Stats: By sharing basic gameplay event signals-such as match completions, score thresholds, or key milestones-your games can show daily Streaks and become eligible for platform-wide competitions like Leagues and Sprints. Game Stats connects seamlessly with your backend data , giving you access to our engagement mechanics without rebuilding matchmaking or leaderboard systems.
• Play Games Rewards: Now generally available, you can set up ongoing in-game rewards that celebrate achievements and sync with Play Points. This helps you grow loyal players and keep them coming back.

Accelerate business growth with the Apps Experience and Level Up program

These new discovery and engagement tools help you deliver a better user experience while growing your business. For developers looking to go even further, our quality programs - Apps Experience and Level Up reward standout apps and games with lower service fees.

Titles integrating Level Up guidelines, like Summoners War, PUBG MOBILE, and Fruit Ninja are already seeing strong results by polishing graphics performance, integrating Game Stats, and launching Leagues and Quests. For example, PUBG MOBILE drove 22% uplift in new installs from high-value players, and achieved a 62% uplift in spend per buyer among engaged players.^[4]

Both programs are now available in Australia, Japan, the EEA, UK, and US, and will roll out to Korea by the end of the year. We've also made it easier to submit and manage your program enrollment directly in Play Console.

Explore these new tools in Play Console today-where you'll also start seeing a visual refresh rolling out this month to streamline your everyday workflow. Please keep sharing your feedback with us as we build the future of Google Play together.

---

1. Google internal data as of September 30, 2026. ↩
2. Google internal data, May 19, 2026 - July 31, 2026. ↩
3. Google internal data as of September 30, 2026. ↩
4. External partner data, May 12, 2026 - June 7, 2026. Spend per buyer uplift compares League participants vs. non-participants of the game. ↩

13 Oct 2026 5:00pm GMT

As agentic development accelerates, Android engineering is reaching an exciting new frontier: moving from assistive code completion to agents executing end-to-end under your direction. You have total choice and flexibility in the models and agents you use.

Gemini 4 Argon excels at deep work in complex, real-world tasks across domains including coding, finance, legal, cybersecurity, and science.

Starting today, Android developers can access Gemini 4 Argon across their development surfaces, including Google Antigravity (standalone and in Android Studio Canary) for Google AI Ultra subscribers, and in Android Studio and Google AI Studio via the paid tier of the Gemini API.

Velocity & Autonomy: Closed-loop build self-correction

Argon has significant improvements in long-horizon autonomous execution and the ability to plan and run multi-step, complex software tasks over time.

• Self-Healing Build Loops: When a local build fails, the Antigravity execution harness captures error streams directly from Gradle daemons and Kotlin compiler logs. Using this feedback, the model iteratively diagnoses the root-cause of build failures to arrive at a revised solution. Gemini 4 Argon's training dramatically improves on this process. It's engineered to maintain a consistent hypothesis across successive rounds of editing, as well as making use of internal Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) awareness to better inform edits. This means Gemini 4 Argon is more resilient and better able to address the true root-cause of build failures.

UI sophistication: Fluid motion & shader-backed Jetpack Compose

Argon demonstrates exceptional design craft, generating production-ready Jetpack Compose code out of the box:

• AGSL Shaders on the GPU: Argon possesses the advanced mathematical reasoning needed to write complex, production-ready Android Graphics Shading Language (AGSL) directly into Compose Modifier.graphicsLayer blocks and shader brushes. From live frosted glass shaders to dynamic lighting and ripple effects, Argon can handle complicated vector and rendering math that produces lightweight GPU shaders that run alongside fluid 120 FPS Compose animations.

A flexible developer experience with Android CLI

Antigravity operates across multiple surfaces, from the desktop app and IDE extensions to the command line. No matter which surface you prefer, the official Android CLI plugin is the de-facto engine that connects your agent to local Android tools, enabling it to run programmatic commands for common tasks and execute custom developer skills.

Starting today, you can access and configure this agentic workspace in two primary ways:

1. Setting up visually (Antigravity Desktop & Android Studio Canary)
   • In the Antigravity Desktop App: Go to Settings > Customizations > Build With Google Plugins (or the Antigravity Plugin Marketplace), locate android-cli-plugin, and toggle it to Enabled
   • In Android Studio Canary: Log in to your Antigravity account in the agent tool window to enable agentic workflows directly alongside your editor
2. Setting up via the Terminal CLI

   For Google Antigravity, run:

   agy plugin install android-cli-plugin

3. For any terminal agent (via Android CLI), run:

   android init

Availability & getting started

Starting today, Argon is rolling out globally to developers in supported regions. You can access and begin building with the model in your local environment across three primary development surfaces:

1. Google Antigravity: Google AI Ultra subscribers can build with Gemini 4 Argon in the standalone Antigravity desktop app (available for macOS, Windows, and Linux) or directly via the terminal CLI
2. Android Studio:
   • Via Google Antigravity: Google AI Ultra subscribers can build with Gemini 4 Argon by logging into Antigravity within the latest Android Studio Canary.
   • Via the Gemini API: Developers on the paid tier of the Gemini API can build with Gemini 4 Argon in Android Studio.
3. Google AI Studio: Google AI Ultra subscribers or developers on the paid tier of the Gemini API can build with Gemini 4 Argon via Playground and Build in Google AI Studio.

4. Firebase AI Logic: Starting today, developers globally on the paid tier of the Gemini API can use Gemini 4 Argon client-side to build intelligent features in their mobile and web apps via Firebase AI Logic.

To begin building with Argon in your local environment:

We are eager to see the high-craft Android experiences you build at the frontier. Share your projects and feedback with us on X (@AndroidDev) and LinkedIn!

13 Oct 2026 4:00pm GMT

Today, getting the most out of AI workflows requires access to a terminal with a command line, even if someone doesn't identify as a programmer or software developer. With Googlebook, we're excited to help users express themselves and gain access to these tools. Googlebooks come with pre-installed tooling to get you going. In this post, we'll explore the capabilities of our new Linux terminal- now available in preview- share our future roadmap, and invite you to help us shape this ecosystem together.

Entry point for agentic development

AI agents use the terminal to install packages, write files, automate tasks, and create apps based on prompts written in plain language. For Googlebook to be the perfect companion for building and working at the frontier of agentic AI, the terminal needed to be easily accessible.

We understand AI comes with risks. Googlebook OS has been architected with defense-in-depth as a core principle. All terminal commands run entirely inside the Linux VM, creating an isolated sandbox. This design allows users to grant `sudo` (administrator) privileges to AI tools like Antigravity and other agentic AI platforms, that make heavy use of command-line tools, while limiting opportunities for system corruption or unauthorized access to your private files. The VM boundary helps protect the host OS and unmounted files; each directory made available to the Linux VM is only mounted after the user's explicit permission. Best of all, a one-click VM reset makes experimentation stress free because users can easily retain their files on the host file system when they reset the VM. You can even see your Linux files inside the Googlebook Files app, where a user can access local folders - including photos and files synced effortlessly from their Android phone. Using a quick Python script or AI agent, you can batch-process your files in seconds.

Linux VM benefits

The terminal provides users with the freedom to create and use the software that they choose. We're excited to see users build tools that are hyper-specific to their needs as well as prototype apps for broader use. With a Debian Linux environment, users benefit from the mature ecosystem familiar to Linux developers. This means that they have access to the latest CLI tools and common developer workflows like `apt`, `git`, `ssh`, and common compilers and runtimes.

Out of the box, our preview of the terminal on Googlebook has been optimized for rapid prototyping, web development, scripting, and agentic workflows via CLI. There is automatic localhost port forwarding to the host browser, and support for modern runtimes (e.g., Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, Rust). Users can adjust the amount of memory made available to the VM to best suit their workloads. Our own engineers have been using Googlebooks to build a Linux kernel and use the terminal for platform engineering.

Looking ahead

We can't wait for the terminal and Linux VM to continue getting more capable over time, including Linux GUI app support with integration directly into the app launcher. Here are some key areas on the roadmap:

• We are working hard to get you building not only on Googlebook but also for your other devices. In addition to the existing network passthrough and wireless ADB, USB passthrough and support for ADB over USB are coming, enabling local device debugging and more from our Linux VM and Antigravity. Learn more about Antigravity on Googlebook.
• Our testers have been eager to run more complex tasks. To make this more seamless, we are adding dynamic memory and storage scaling for the VM.
• We will be adding GPU/NPU hardware acceleration for heavier local workloads, allowing users to leverage the performance and power efficiency of dedicated hardware.
• VM persistence and separation from the terminal window will better support long-running processes, when you want to take on more demanding agentic workloads.

We're looking forward to seeing your creations and will be sharing more soon. Questions? You can reach us here for direct support. We've also really enjoyed hearing your early thoughts and feedback in r/googlebook.

12 Oct 2026 6:00pm GMT

Two months, one chair, and a cushion that had to be replaced - twice. This isn't a review in the strict sense. The only other chair I've used long-term is an IKEA Nominell, so I can't offer broad comparisons. What I can offer is an honest account of living with the Omni SE - plus a few observations most reviews skip.

Where I'm coming from

My background shapes what I look for in a chair, so it's worth stating up front.

I never had back problems with my old IKEA chair, but I credit that to regular exercise rather than to the chair. In my experience, exercise is by far the most effective way to prevent back pain - closely followed by changing posture throughout the day: standing up now and then and putting your leg muscles to work.

The upshot: for me, the specific chair matters less than people assume. What I value instead are quality-of-life features - freedom to move and the ability to recline deeply for a quick moment of relaxation. That's the lens I judged the Omni SE through.

The Omni chairs hardly need an introduction; they're among the most aggressively marketed chairs on social media. So rather than rehash the spec sheet (Dan Ahn's YouTube channel covers that well), I'll stick to my own experience.

Ordering

I paid the 10€ deposit, ordered on 16 June for 589€, and received the chair on 23 June - so about two months of use at the time of writing.

The 10€ "deposit" turned out to be a one-year warranty extension rather than a deposit. Fine by me.

The seat cushion problem

The downside of ordering early and cheap: at least the first batch shipped with foam that was too soft in the seat cushion.

The Omni cushion combines three foam densities, with the firmest section only near the backrest. Even that section wasn't firm enough - once the foam warmed up, you'd sink through to the plastic pan. Steve, the Anthros CEO, summarises the issue neatly - keep in mind though, that this is coming from a rival.

If you're reading this in a seemingly fine Omni and wonder what this feels like, sit on the front edge for a few minutes: the softer foam lets you bottom out. Sit with your lumbar against the backrest and you're on the firm section, where it should feel comfortable.

Customer support assured me that batches produced after early May went through improved firmness testing - which means my chair was made before that. At the time of writing, it's still unclear whether all new deliveries ship with the updated cushion. So if you'd rather not go through the hassle of getting a replacement, wait until that's confirmed.

How support handled it

Sitting with my lumbar against the backrest was exactly where the problem showed up for me, so after a few uncomfortable weeks I contacted support via email. They replied within 24 hours, and their first suggestion was that I should sit closer to the backrest. Once I confirmed I already was, they promised a revised cushion - and noted that my return window would restart on the day the replacement arrived.

A week later a new cushion arrived - the Pro version, sent by mistake. Since the correct replacement was another month out, I used the Pro cushion in the meantime; its firmer foam didn't bottom out. I also received a small compensation package for the inconvenience, including the StepSync Mat, which turned out to be surprisingly handy - more on that below.

The correct SE cushion arrived at the end of August, so at the time of writing I've used the Pro cushion for about a month and the revised SE cushion for three days.

On the two replacement cushions

The revised SE cushion is noticeably stiffer than the one my chair originally shipped with, across all three foam zones.

The Pro uses Gabriel Atlantic fabric, which the active ventilation requires because it allows more airflow. It's also more durable. The trade-off is the coarser weave: less soft and slightly scratchy compared to the standard fabric.

In terms of firmness, the two replacement cushions feel about the same to me - the fabric is the main difference. Upgrading to the Pro just for the fabric isn't worth it in my view.

Backrest and recline

The backrest is what LiberNovo builds its marketing around, and deservedly so. Sitting down for the first time, it was the most noticeable difference to my IKEA chair: it hugs you around the lumbar region and you immediately feel supported, without limiting your range of motion.

The second standout is the recline. If you've ever wanted to lie back for a moment of relaxation and quick back relief, that's what the 160° position gives you. Even at maximum recline the chair feels stable - but to be genuinely comfortable, you'll want to raise your legs. Whether that calls for the official footrest is up to you; I put the StepSync Mat on the subwoofer under my desk and called it a day.

Day to day, though, I keep the chair locked at 135° with the tension tightened up - that lets me move freely back and forth while still getting the back support.

Armrests

These get called out as a weak point, so I'll say plainly that I like them. Yes, they slide forward and backward very easily - but for me that's an advantage: I can pull up to the desk and the armrests simply move out of the way. If you prefer them to stay put, I can see it being annoying.

The one real drawback: at the two narrowest width settings they collide with the backrest unless fully extended forward.

Material-wise, the firmness and smooth surface are pleasant. Keep in mind, though, that my old chair had no armrests at all.

The standout: parts availability

The cushion swap points to what I consider LiberNovo's real strength - not the chair itself, but what you can do with it after you buy it.

Competing brands may advertise a 12-year warranty instead of six, but their spare-parts selection is very limited. With LiberNovo you can order every individual component - and, unusually, at fair prices: building an Omni SE from parts comes to €681, against €679 for the finished chair (current price). Most brands price their spares steeply enough to make that comparison absurd.

What that enables is customization: want a headrest in a different colour? Order that spare part. Worried about the motorized lumbar? Swap in the manual one from the SE.

Verdict

After two months, I'm happy with the upgrade. The Omni SE is far more comfortable than my IKEA chair, and I use the recline often - reading a book, or just taking the load off my back.

The biggest drawback is probably the fixed seat depth. You can change it later by buying the 45 cm / 48 cm cushion replacement, but that still doesn't let different people share the same chair.

LiberNovo recently extended the warranty to six years for everyone, which makes seven with my deposit. Since the SE has no electronic components, that covers the whole chair in my case.

My cushion wasn't right out of the box, and it still took two months and two shipments to sort out. But the parts availability and the support response mean you're not stuck with a problem you can't fix - and that, more than any spec, is what won me over.

I'll update this post if anything changes.

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29 Aug 2026 11:27am GMT

It all started innocently enough: sometime last summer, I ran into the blog post Start your own Internet Resiliency Club on Hacker News.

…communicate with each other across a few kilometers without any centralized infrastructure using cheap, low-power, unlicensed LoRa radios and open source Meshtastic text messaging software.

The idea of a local, infrastructure-free communications mesh sounded useful, especially as we were about to sail into the Pacific.

Meshtastic

While conflicts and natural disasters are hopefully far away, on the smaller atolls there is no cellular network. With Meshtastic we could communicate over LoRa.

Over the hurricane season, the Meshtastic setup became quite extensive. Our boat has a Meshtastic node, plus a mast-mounted solar repeater. We both have Meshtastic cards that we carry with us. With these we can communicate with text messages over quite a long distance. And we get telemetry and alerts from the boat.

In Cartagena, Colombia we could hear the boat pretty much across the city. And since some of our buddy boats also run Meshtastic, we've even had conversations while offshore.

While the existing Meshtastic setup is serving us well, there is always room for improvement and new ideas.

Reticulum

Reticulum is a project that seeks to take this to a whole new level. It is a whole decentralized networking stack that allows anything from instant messaging and voice calls to full-on SSH sessions to be carried over a multitude of different interfaces. You can transport Reticulum over LoRa, Bluetooth, and also over regular TCP/IP networks. And if authorities didn't take a dim view on encryption in ham radio, it would also work over our HF radio. With store-and-forward mechanisms it can deal with intermittent connectivity.

Because your identity is portable, your connectivity can be fluid. You can be sitting at a desk connected to a fiber backbone one moment, and walking through a field connected only to a long-range LoRa mesh the next. To the rest of the network, nothing has changed. Your friends do not need to update your contact info. The messages they send do not bounce back. The network senses the shift in the medium and reroutes the flow of data automatically.
You are no longer a stationary node in a fixed grid. You are a wanderer in a fluid medium.
- The Zen of Reticulum

As it stands now, Reticulum is still quite an early system with rudimentary and tech-heavy user interfaces. But that seems to be about to change: the Columba app for Android seems about as user-friendly as Meshtastic or something like Signal. There's a lot of potential in that once it reaches a stable version.

Distributed development over Reticulum

In the meanwhile, there is one aspect of Reticulum we developers can benefit from immediately: Distributed development. With it, any rngit node running on Reticulum can be your "GitHub". Git history, issue tracking, release distribution is already there.

I recently switched my various programming projects over. We have rngit running on the boat NAS, and VPS running a mirror behind more consistent connectivity. And for now I also mirror the work periodically to GitHub for backwards compatibility.

Reticulum for software

What I think is worthwhile to explore is having machines interface with Reticulum. Just like we can tell our boat to switch lights on via a Meshtastic message, we should be able to do the same with Reticulum. And maybe there should be a NomadNet "site" for the boat showing status of the various systems.

Going further, maybe boats could share chart data, depth soundings, weather information with each other over this. The promise of VDES, but built from the grassroots perspective.

And maybe things like NoFlo should be able to communicate over Reticulum? Reticulum implementations exist for multiple programming languages, but for this we'd need a JavaScript port.

There's still a lot to study and to think about. Watch this space. Last time I noted that something is interesting, it took me to a ten year rabbit hole.

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04 Jul 2026 12:00am GMT

Now that 2025 is over, it's time to look back and feel proud of the path we've walked. Last year has been really exciting in terms of contributions to GStreamer and WebKit for the Igalia Multimedia team.

With more than 459 contributions along the year, we've been one of the top contributors to the GStreamer project, in areas like Vulkan Video, GstValidate, VA, GStreamer Editing Services, WebRTC or H.266 support.

In Vulkan Video we've worked on the VP9 video decoder, and cooperated with other contributors to push the AV1 decoder as well. There's now an H.264 base class for video encoding that is designed to support general hardware-accelerated processing.

GStreaming Editing Services, the framework to build video editing applications, has gained time remapping support, which now allows to include fast/slow motion effects in the videos. Video transformations (scaling, cropping, rounded corners, etc) are now hardware-accelerated thanks to the addition of new Skia-based GStreamer elements and integration with OpenGL. Buffer pool tuning and pipeline improvements have helped to optimize memory usage and performance, enabling the edition of 4K video at 60 frames per second. Much of this work to improve and ensure quality in GStreamer Editing Services has also brought improvements in the GstValidate testing framework, which will be useful for other parts of GStreamer.

Regarding H.266 (VVC), full playback support (with decoders such as vvdec and avdec_h266, demuxers and muxers for Matroska, MP4 and TS, and parsers for the vvc1 and vvi1 formats) is now available in GStreamer 1.26 thanks to Igalia's work. This allows user applications such as the WebKitGTK web browser to leverage the hardware accelerated decoding provided by VAAPI to play H.266 video using GStreamer.

Igalia has also been one of the top contributors to GStreamer Rust, with 43 contributions. Most of the commits there have been related to Vulkan Video.

In addition to GStreamer, the team also has a strong presence in WebKit, where we leverage our GStreamer knowledge to implement many features of the web engine related to multimedia. From the 1739 contributions to the WebKit project done last year by Igalia, the Multimedia team has made 323 of them. Nearly one third of those have been related to generic multimedia playback, and the rest have been on areas such as WebRTC, MediaStream, MSE, WebAudio, a new Quirks system to provide adaptations for specific hardware multimedia platforms at runtime, WebCodecs or MediaRecorder.

We're happy about what we've achieved along the year and look forward to maintaining this success and bringing even more exciting features and contributions in 2026.

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26 Jan 2026 9:34am GMT

I've mentioned some of my various retronetworking projects in some past blog posts. One of those projects is Osmocom Community TDM over IP (OCTOI). During the past 5 or so months, we have been using a number of GPS-synchronized open source icE1usb interconnected by a new, efficient but strill transparent TDMoIP protocol in order to run a distributed TDM/PDH network. This network is currently only used to provide ISDN services to retronetworking enthusiasts, but other uses like frame relay have also been validated.

So far, the central hub of this OCTOI network has been operating in the basement of my home, behind a consumer-grade DOCSIS cable modem connection. Given that TDMoIP is relatively sensitive to packet loss, this has been sub-optimal.

Luckily some of my old friends at noris.net have agreed to host a new OCTOI hub free of charge in one of their ultra-reliable co-location data centres. I'm already hosting some other machines there for 20+ years, and noris.net is a good fit given that they were - in their early days as an ISP - the driving force in the early 90s behind one of the Linux kernel ISDN stracks called u-isdn. So after many decades, ISDN returns to them in a very different way.

Side note: In case you're curious, a reconstructed partial release history of the u-isdn code can be found on gitea.osmocom.org

But I digress. So today, there was the installation of this new OCTOI hub setup. It has been prepared for several weeks in advance, and the hub contains two circuit boards designed entirely only for this use case. The most difficult challenge was the fact that this data centre has no existing GPS RF distribution, and the roof is ~ 100m of CAT5 cable (no fiber!) away from the roof. So we faced the challenge of passing the 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal reliably through several steps of lightning/over-voltage protection into the icE1usb whose internal GPS-DO serves as a grandmaster clock for the TDM network.

The equipment deployed in this installation currently contains:

• a rather beefy Supermicro 2U server with EPYC 7113P CPU and 4x PCIe, two of which are populated with Digium TE820 cards resulting in a total of 16 E1 ports

• an icE1usb with RS422 interface board connected via 100m RS422 to an Ericsson GPS03 receiver. There's two layers of of over-voltage protection on the RS422 (each with gas discharge tubes and TVS) and two stages of over-voltage protection in the coaxial cable between antenna and GPS receiver.

• a Livingston Portmaster3 RAS server

• a Cisco AS5400 RAS server

For more details, see this wiki page and this ticket

Now that the physical deployment has been made, the next steps will be to migrate all the TDMoIP links from the existing user base over to the new hub. We hope the reliability and performance will be much better than behind DOCSIS.

In any case, this new setup for sure has a lot of capacity to connect many more more users to this network. At this point we can still only offer E1 PRI interfaces. I expect that at some point during the coming winter the project for remote TDMoIP BRI (S/T, S0-Bus) connectivity will become available.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank anyone helping this effort, specifically * Sylvain "tnt" Munaut for his work on the RS422 interface board (+ gateware/firmware) * noris.net for sponsoring the co-location * sysmocom for sponsoring the EPYC server hardware

18 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

Almost one year after my post regarding first steps towards a V5 implementation, some friends and I were finally able to visit Wobcom, a small German city carrier and pick up a lot of decommissioned POTS/ISDN/PDH/SDH equipment, primarily V5 access networks.

This means that a number of retronetworking enthusiasts now have a chance to play with Siemens Fastlink, Nokia EKSOS and DeTeWe ALIAN access networks/multiplexers.

My primary interest is in Nokia EKSOS, which looks like an rather easy, low-complexity target. As one of the first steps, I took PCB photographs of the various modules/cards in the shelf, take note of the main chip designations and started to search for the related data sheets.

The results can be found in the Osmocom retronetworking wiki, with https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Nokia_EKSOS being the main entry page, and sub-pages about

• Node Control Unit

• 16x BRI Uk0 Line Card

• 32x POTS Line Card

• Line Measurement Unit

• Shelf

In short: Unsurprisingly, a lot of Infineon analog and digital ICs for the POTS and ISDN ports, as well as a number of Motorola M68k based QUICC32 microprocessors and several unknown ASICs.

So with V5 hardware at my disposal, I've slowly re-started my efforts to implement the LE (local exchange) side of the V5 protocol stack, with the goal of eventually being able to interface those V5 AN with the Osmocom Community TDM over IP network. Once that is in place, we should also be able to offer real ISDN Uk0 (BRI) and POTS lines at retrocomputing events or hacker camps in the coming years.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

If you have ever worked with Digium (now part of Sangoma) digital telephony interface cards such as the TE110/410/420/820 (single to octal E1/T1/J1 PRI cards), you will probably have seen that they always have a timing connector, where the timing information can be passed from one card to another.

In PDH/ISDN (or even SDH) networks, it is very important to have a synchronized clock across the network. If the clocks are drifting, there will be underruns or overruns, with associated phase jumps that are particularly dangerous when analog modem calls are transported.

In traditional ISDN use cases, the clock is always provided by the network operator, and any customer/user side equipment is expected to synchronize to that clock.

So this Digium timing cable is needed in applications where you have more PRI lines than possible with one card, but only a subset of your lines (spans) are connected to the public operator. The timing cable should make sure that the clock received on one port from the public operator should be used as transmit bit-clock on all of the other ports, no matter on which card.

Unfortunately this decades-old Digium timing cable approach seems to suffer from some problems.

bursty bit clock changes until link is up

The first problem is that downstream port transmit bit clock was jumping around in bursts every two or so seconds. You can see an oscillogram of the E1 master signal (yellow) received by one TE820 card and the transmit of the slave ports on the other card at https://people.osmocom.org/laforge/photos/te820_timingcable_problem.mp4

As you can see, for some seconds the two clocks seem to be in perfect lock/sync, but in between there are periods of immense clock drift.

What I'd have expected is the behavior that can be seen at https://people.osmocom.org/laforge/photos/te820_notimingcable_loopback.mp4 - which shows a similar setup but without the use of a timing cable: Both the master clock input and the clock output were connected on the same TE820 card.

As I found out much later, this problem only occurs until any of the downstream/slave ports is fully OK/GREEN.

This is surprising, as any other E1 equipment I've seen always transmits at a constant bit clock irrespective whether there's any signal in the opposite direction, and irrespective of whether any other ports are up/aligned or not.

But ok, once you adjust your expectations to this Digium peculiarity, you can actually proceed.

clock drift between master and slave cards

Once any of the spans of a slave card on the timing bus are fully aligned, the transmit bit clocks of all of its ports appear to be in sync/lock - yay - but unfortunately only at the very first glance.

When looking at it for more than a few seconds, one can see a slow, continuous drift of the slave bit clocks compared to the master :(

Some initial measurements show that the clock of the slave card of the timing cable is drifting at about 12.5 ppb (parts per billion) when compared against the master clock reference.

This is rather disappointing, given that the whole point of a timing cable is to ensure you have one reference clock with all signals locked to it.

The work-around

If you are willing to sacrifice one port (span) of each card, you can work around that slow-clock-drift issue by connecting an external loopback cable. So the master card is configured to use the clock provided by the upstream provider. Its other ports (spans) will transmit at the exact recovered clock rate with no drift. You can use any of those ports to provide the clock reference to a port on the slave card using an external loopback cable.

In this setup, your slave card[s] will have perfect bit clock sync/lock.

Its just rather sad that you need to sacrifice ports just for achieving proper clock sync - something that the timing connectors and cables claim to do, but in reality don't achieve, at least not in my setup with the most modern and high-end octal-port PCIe cards (TE820).

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT