Building a Community VoIP Directory Server?

Christopher Rath asks: "Earlier this month, a reference to Clay Shirky's piece on ZapMail was posted as a Slashdot article. An obvious (to me) next step, which was hinted at in a couple of the postings which followed, was for the Internet community---you and me---to put up a VoIP directory server. I want to use an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), like the Cisco ATA or The Kompany's new tkcPhone, to talk to other guys who have ATAs too; I have very little interest in making a local call using the ATA (for that I've still got my Bell land-line). Surely someone has already started such a project, if not, why not?"

"To make investing in an ATA worthwhile, I need an easy method of establishing a connection. In the current broadband environment, where most of us don't have static IP addresses, this means that we need our ATA to register itself with some VoIP directory server that can be used to assist with "dialing the number": as a user I want to remember my friend's ATA number, and then the directory server maps this to the ATA's current address. Once my ATA has the other ATA's address, the call should be ATA-to-ATA without any burden on the directory server."

Comments

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[Lionel Hutts]

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Re:http://www.freeworldialup.com/

[austad]

Interesting. This thing died off a couple years ago, but it looks like they relaunched it with a few changes. Originally, they handed out Cisco ATA182 devices to us (the beta testers), and you hooked it up to your phone line, a broadband connection, and a phone. When you made a long distance call, the unit would search for another device in the area code you were calling, and then tell the remote device to dial the number and then connect you. This way, you avoided long distance charges. It actually worked very well, I talked with a guy on a satellite link in Austrailia with it, and it didn't sound worse than my land line.

There were some glaring problems with this setup though. Say I decided I wanted to go on a prank phone call binge, the owner of the remote phone line could be blamed for my rampage of personal insults and threats. Plus, there were some serious security issues with the original version of the software running on the ATA device, like being able to connect directly to it with a SIP client and get dialtone, which allowed you to dial anything you wanted unfiltered (911, 900 numbers, etc).

It looks the the reincarnation of this is simply a removal of the PSTN capabilities. You can make calls to other people on the FWD network, but that's it. No land line access.

Kind of odd this story would come up today... I just took out the old ATA to try to upgrade the software on it and get it to work with Asterisk. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to reset it to defaults as it won't let you do anything at all until it finds the Gatekeeper that is programmed into it.

How does FWD plan to make money to stay afloat? Obviously, if this catches on, they will need to invest money in hardware and bandwidth. Where will the cash come from? The calls are not routed through them, but the directory services are run by them.

Also, unencrypted SIP traffic can be sniffed, and there are SIP reassemblers out there that will allow you to listen to the conversations you capture. Bored tech monkeys at ISP's are going to have fun with this. :)