On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 07:20:35PM -0400, Eran Tromer wrote: > Hi, > > Is there any reliable PC-to-phone VoIP solution for Linux that's > reliable, works while on the road and requires a sane amount of > configuration?
Yes. It is only a matter of what you want. Let's separate the the issue to a number of problems: 1. A convinient client 2. Connecting to a VoIP<->PSTN gateway 3. The gateway itself Let's assume that we'll use some standard protocol. More on that later on. There are a numbe of free clients, and I figure that they'll keep on improving. So let's leave (1) out of this message for follow-ups. As for (3): You can either set up your own gateway if you have a home server with a reasonable bandwidth. A decently compressed line is no more than 20kbps (should be closer to 10kbps, about 2kBps) . But then again, you hould have a permanent address to connect to and a stable enough setup. And I'm not sure you'd want that. Another alternative is to buy a termination account. There are quite a few of those. I'm not sure about Israeli termination because the legal status of such an activity in Israel is still gray (if not black). The main point is to assure that you can connect to that provider using a standard protocol. And here I get to (2). SIP currently the most common protocol for VoIP. It generally works well, except when NAT is concerened. There are some methods to work around that problem (e.g: STUN server as a proxy). This is one route. Another route is IAX2. Originally a protocol used internally by the Asterisk PBX. Generally simpler than SIP[0]. It also sends both control and data through the same UDP ports pair. Thus it easily traverses NAT. > > I know of only two purporting to be such, namely Skype (semi-evil and > chokes on my laptop's sound system) It also means you can't easily move to a different provider. Skype is not just a non-free client (like the "gizmo project") but also a different network. > and GnomeMeeting (which is hardcoded > to a specific H.232-based provider that was happy to charge my credit > card but refuses to reflect this in the account balance). H323 is generally a sane person tries to avoid ;-) > > Free-as-in-beer software loses a bit of its value proposition when you > need to pay the hotel US$1.50 per phone call despite having Net access... Of the free software phones I've tried for Linux, the one I most liked was iaxcomm. It still has to improve, though. Both iaxcomm and kaix got into debian unstable recently. [0] SIP stands for: SCSI-3 Interlocked Protocol Simulated Input Processor SMDS Interface Protocol Strategische InformationsPlanung Symbolic Input Program Session Initiation Protocol But unlike what some people think, S does not stand for Simple. Source: Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [vera], through dict. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
