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VOCAL: Open Source VoIP Software for Linux
An Anonymous Coward writes: "While most Open Source projects are applications and utilities intended for single users, David Bryan and David Kelly did something different.
They created an infrastructure project -- a VoIP phone system that either can run on a single box attached to a couple of IP phones or can scale up to a network of hosts processing hundreds of
calls between thousands of users. In this informative technical article at ELJonline, Bryan and Kelly detail the 'Vovida Open Communications Applications Library' ('VOCAL') project, a fully functional phone system that can run on either Red Hat Linux or Sun Solaris."
(Funny, this is the second post of mine that has that title)
Yahoo Broadband is offering VoIP Internation Telephony at 7.5 yen/ 3 minutes. Very good deal.
It's very clear as well.
I have been pwned because my
Instead os using the SII protocol as VOCAL does, you could also use H.323 for example the OpenH323 Gatekeeper, now called The GNU Gatekeeper.
What about open h323. Wasn't that a standard for making reliable phonecalls over packet streams?
Time to go with industry standard people. Last
place I worked at, we have implemented H.323 gateway
and it worked like magic, coupled up with outher
gateways.
... dunno, looks like guys reinventing the wheel all over again.
p.
Why wasn't a link to the project's actual webpage in the submission? Here it is.
We ha d a go and tried the H.323 to ISDN gateway in our company. It worked like a breeze, right out of the box.
.
We were able to connect M$ Netmeeting directly to the server as well as the minimal phone application for windows (yes there is one avail. at Open H.323 Org).
I am sory to say that calling the communications prgramm under Linux froze my box completely -- it was probably the soundcard. But when I look an the Gnome or KDE application which are available I think Unix users have a good option to participate.
When it comes to Mac I must say I have no access to one, so I cannot verify the availability/functionality of any app for MacOS. I do beleive though that under MacOSX the above Unix versions should run very well ?
When it comes to SIP we do have linphone (Gnome) available as well as a whole rack ot libraries for different languages. All found on Freshmeat Net with the simple query "SIP"
No idea about MacOS SIP apps, but the same though as above: MacOSX and Gnome ?
Don't forget to check out the speak-freely internet telephone. It's audio only, but is availible for both Unix and Windows. The unix version is via a command-line interface, but there are java and Tcl/Tk front ends. (I gave up and stuck with the CLI)
Not a polished product to wow the boss, but it works. well.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/
apt-get install speak-freely
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
The version of MSN Messenger that ships with XP talks SIP (I'm not sure if the downloadable version of Messenger for earlier operating system does support SIP, I guess not because XP has SIP built in to the operating system).
Microsoft seems to be taking the view that SIP is the way to go and is down playing H.323.
Messenger is preconfigured to talk to several different ITSPs (internet telephony service providers) that provide worldwide PC to phone services. I know of one of these CallServe that have some information on their site.
IP telephony may not be sexy any more but it is still building rapidly in usage. A lot of "cheap" international phone to phone calls now use IP without the users necessarily being aware of the fact.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip lists implementations. There aren't many for Unix-related systems, but our CINEMA sipc tool does run on all common Unix/Linux platforms and supports audio, video and other conferencing functionality. It is not free software.
Most SIP tools allow direct communications. Some may need a proxy server. A proxy server is somewhat similar to an H.323 gatekeeper. The VOCAL set includes this, but there are many others, too, listed at the URL above.
let me start by saying that SIP is very, very good. all of Cisco's IP telephony products are based on SIP now, instead of their previous mucky protocols. many larger vendors are also supporting SIP, as it an RFC and other goodness. VOCAL, which I have had the pleasure of working with recently, is very well designed, and (in my biased opinion) is nice because it's not really "linux centric". we did a test deployment on several FreeBSD systems functioning as a Vmail system, inter-office IP phone calls (to both Cisco SoftPhone clients and actual cisco IP phones) and working with a cisco 3640 router with two VIC-2FXO cards (which provides 4 lines out to the PSTN through our PBX). the mapping is pretty easy from cisco VOCAL, and the VOCAL user agent piece is pretty cool, although right now it's just a very basic CLI tool under windows. We really haven't tried using a unix system as there are few end users at a brokerage firm who actively use unix as a client desktop!
definitely check out the cisco SIP offerings, as well as the excellent vovida project and tools. they have a lot more to offer as well, including some frivolous PSTN gateway stuff using those internet linejack bits. I personally agree with what they've been doing, which is building an enterprise-class IP telephony infrastructure, rather than wasting time on stuff for college kids to avoid phone bills. but then again your needs may differ from ours. YMMV!
EOM
It's called Free World Dialup, and was featured on slashdot about a year ago. It seems to have disappeared though. I was a beta tester for it, and I must say, it was pretty cool. Basically, you plugged a Cisco ATA-182 device into your network, and into a PSTN line. Then you plugged your phone into the other side of the box. When you made a call, the box would check a central database to see if another box existed in the area code you were calling, and it would instruct the remote box to dial the number you want and route the call via SIP over the internet. If no box existed in the area code you were calling, it would just use your landline to make the call. Pretty cool idea.
But, if you want something similarly cool, check out Vonage. $39 a month for unlimited long distance, you choose your area code, and it routes all of your calls over your broadband connection. Someone I work with has had it for a month, and it works flawlessly. I'm looking at getting them for remote datacenters too since it gets kind of expensive to have business lines running in each one that only get used a couple times a year.
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