Finally: PC-to-Phone Calling from Linux

Greg Herlein writes "There is finally a way to do direct PC to Phone calling from linux: GnomeMeeting now supports decent quality, low-cost VoIP calls to any real phone in the world. It's about time." The calls are through a company called MicroTelco; read this FAQ page to learn more about it. (And don't forget TheKompany's approach to IP-telephony-with-Linux, using a Sharp Zaurus plus Net2Phone.)

Comments

SpeakFreely's been around for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it supported strong encryption on the phone calls, too...

Admittedly somewhat less user friendly, but it's been around for years.

GnomeMeeting has potential, too.

Re:SpeakFreely's been around for years.

[JimDabell]

Speak Freely is a program for communicating between two computers. See the FAQ.

GNOMEMeeting lets you phone normal telephones.

Magazine article too

[syphoon]

Linux Journal had an article covering this in its Jan. edition.

No big deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

ET got there first and all he had was a Speak 'n' Spell...

You have to buy a card though

[fruey]

There is finally a way to do direct PC to Phone calling from linux: GnomeMeeting now supports decent quality, low-cost VoIP calls to any real phone in the world. It's about time.

What is lacking is the use of your soundcard + software codec to do this. I understand there are patent problems, but the best solution would be a net2phone-style software solution, ported to Linux.

Windows for net2phone is one of the few uses I have left. Living in Morocco, it saves me $$$ every month to call Europe.

Re:You have to buy a card though

[Anonymous Coward]

I have worked for Net2Phone for years. I can tell you that if enough requests came in, they would gladly make a Linux client. It is a simple cost/benefit equation.

A lot of our hardware runs embedded Linux.

What I want to know is....

[KCardoza]

It seems nice to be able to make phone calls from my linux boxen, but what I want to know is, when will I be able to _recieve_ calls? I couldn't find that answer in the FAQ. Also, is it possible to have, say, more than one of these cards, to get the VoIP equivalent of multiple phone lines, using a broadband connection?

Re:What I want to know is....

[Sho0tyz]

The site is very low on details, but on the linuxjack site it says that you can receive calls. It does not explain how this works though. Do you get a real phone number? Can you only receive calls from other microtelco users? I would use this in a second if you could get a real phone number in the country/area of your choice.

Re:pc to pc

[Max Romantschuk]

What tools can i use to do pc-pc calls over linux?

GnomeMeeting itself... it supports the H.323 standard, which for example NetMeeting supports aswell.

This means that you can do PC-PC as in GnomeMeeting-GnomeMeeting, GnomeMeeting-NetMeeting, GnomeMeeting-AnyH.323CompliantSoftware. In theory at least...

The PC-Phone thing is an additional service.

Re:pc to pc

[MagicFab]

Well...

I attended a demo/conference about this this weekend and there was WiFi access in the room. I connected to the same (external, public ils.seconix.com) server as the presenter's and we were visible to see each other's presence/config, while he was chatting with another GnomeMeeting user using video (both of them on Mandrake Linux). I was using Netmeeting under Windows 2000 pro.

It's my understanding that GnomeMeeting is originally for PC to PC text/audio/video conferencing, compatible with H.323 clients (like Windows Netmeeting ), but has been extended for PC to phone calls. GnomeMeeting however didn't seem to have the following features Netmeeting has:

• remote whiteboard
• remote desktop control

I also like all the configuration options, though somewhat too advanced for beginners.

Cheers,

F.

Remember to check if it's legal.

[WanderingGhost]

... your relatives and friends live in a country with decent network infrastructure.

And if your ISP's terms of service do not prohibit voice over IP...

For those living in Brazil (and other countries, maybe?): most DSL providers (the one which offers the DSL link, not the ISPs who authenticate you and offer e-mail, DNS servers, etc) won't allow you to use voice over IP. Reasons seem to be:

• They can't guarantee all the bandwidth they have announced. (Read your contract: how much of the bandwidth do they guarante? 10% in case of Telefonica's "home" service). Ther are some other technical reasons too (like, having ADSL or DSL makes a considerable difference);
• Most companies offering DSL are also telcos... And voice over IP would certainly cut their revenue.

Serious Poll Question...

[stev3]

How many people ACTUALLY make calls from their computer? Although I understand it is free, the quality still doesn't compare to a regular phone (not even a cell phone -- don't get me started on those).

I remember making calls back in... '98 when this was a new technology, and I stopped after about 2 weeks.

Poll Question - Do you really make calls that often from your computer?

Re:Serious Poll Question...

[fruey]

I make calls all the time. If you live in a place where international calls cost too much, then a quality sacrifice is fine.

In my experience, net2phone is as good as some international phone calls I have made with a regular phone anyway. You *must* have good ping times to the phone provider's gateway though, otherwise it sucks. Also, a decent modem or broadband is needed. Software modems (winmodems) give crappy quality.

Re:Serious Poll Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used GnomeMeeting and the quality was just excellent, much better than a conventional phone.
But it is true that it strongly depends on the codec used and your bandwith.
As an example, I am sitting in Sweden and I did a call to a guy in Japan (he was using a 56K POTS modem), and the sound was perfect, he could even see my video!

I use it regularly to connect to many friends outside the country, saving a lot of money on calls, it is just a great use of both your computer and the internet.

Re:Serious Poll Question...

[JanneM]

A major - and often overlooked - factor is the quality of the microphone used. The build-in mics of webcams or the mic of cheapskate headsets are really too lousy to make for decent sound quality, as they introduce so much distortion and noise that the codec is ill-equipped to handle.

Re:Serious Poll Question...

[Lumpy]

I do every day.

Although I use the much better solution using fobbit and the Creative VoIP blaster. a small pentuim computer with USB, and fobbit+ linux in a self boot stuffed in my closet and plugged into my phone system gives me free internet calls to friends in other states and cities that are as good as my cellphone in sound quality.

the hard part, getting the voip blasters... cince creative in their wisdom dropped them and morons on ebay have the prices too high.

Gateways outside the US?

[egghat]

Does anybody know of any IP/POT-gateways like the one mentioned in the article, that are outside the US? For example in Germany? In the UK?

TIA

egghat.

Re:Linux is still just a kernel.

[termos]

I have been rated down a lot now, and I am no longer sure who acually did read on their web-page. Quote:
The libraries and applications should also compile on Windows 95/98, BeOS (thanks Yuri!), Linux PPC, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86 (thanks Roger!) and Solaris Sparc & x86.
It should mean that it available for many other systems than just Linux, I would claim my first comment to still be 100% true.

Killer App

[Anonymous Coward]

A killer app would be PDA-PDA calls encrypted over IP.

buying hardware, ew =/

[truffle]

I don't mind paying service charges for VOIP, but I'm surprised I need to buy hardware.

Even if it doesn't work as well, VOIP should be accessible with a soundcard and a microphone. I'm not so excited by this announcement.

Mitel Networks doing some cool stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Mitel Networks is doing some cool stuff with VoIP and Linux. They're not very good at marketing it, but still, check it out. Especially the tie-ins with their SME Server product (Linux-based small office server - see E-Smith's old site.

Unfortunately, most of it is commercial ... although the SME server software is open source and available from the E-Smith developer site. Still, their voip stuff looks standards-based, so hopefully it interoperates with other stuff.

why computer?

[qoncept]

Linux? Great. When is the hardware coming out? Forget pc based calls. When am I going to be able to plug a phone in to my router and call around the world for free?

Card v/s software-only

[sonamchauhan]

From the article:

5.2. Why do I currently have to buy a Quicknet card if I want to do PC-To-Phone calls?

All providers need the G.723.1 audio codec to be able to do PC-To-Phone calls. That codec is patented and can't be added directly into the GnomeMeeting code. However, buying a Quicknet card offers you other features that will also be useful if you are not doing PC-To-Phone calls.
(Emphasis mine).

Hm, only one vendor is listed on the Gnome meeting website -- their cheapest card is US$109.

On a Windows PC, you don't need a card - the soundcard and CPU are sufficient for PC-to-Phone.
I guess Microsoft pays the codec royalties -- and a copy of Windows XP Home off pricewatch.com is US$90.

*Grin* I think only hardcore Linux users will followup on this article.

I wonder if it's possible to convince the telcom company they're using as their gateway ("MicroTelco") to accepts voice calls using a free codec (the new Ogg Vorbis voice codec comes to mind).

security flaw in linux?

[(rypto*]

"H.323" gnomemeeting is it gona be a security threat

H.323 is more complicated than other protocols because it uses two tcp connections and several UDP sessions from a single "call".Only one of the tcp connections goes to a well known port; all the other ports are negotiated and thus temporary. Furthermore the content of the streams is far more difficult for firewall to understand than existing protocols, becuase h.323 encodes packets using Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1)

Re:security flaw in linux?

[(rypto*]

1) About the ports that are used by GnomeMeeting and Netmeeting.

* What ports does GnomeMeeting use for H.323 if H.245 Tunneling is
enabled?

- 1720 TCP for the H.225 and H.245 Channels
- Random UDP port for audio (it will take the first free port above
5000)
- Random UDP port for video (it will take the first free port above
5000)

Those ports are used for incoming calls, i.e. if you receive an incoming
call from a GnomeMeeting user using H.245 Tunneling, that remote
GnomeMeeting will open those ports.

If the user doesn't use H.245 Tunneling for some reason, another random
TCP port will be used for the H.245 Channel.

If the user uses H.245 Tunneling (the default in the preferences), it is
enough to allow TCP port 1720 and UDP ports 5000-5004 on your firewall
(for a single call).

* What ports does Netmeeting use for H.323?

- 1720 TCP for the H.225 Channel
- Random TCP port for the H.245 Channel (Netmeeting doesn't support
H.245 Tunneling)
- Random UDP port for audio
- Random UDP port for video

That is for incoming calls, i.e. if you receive an incoming call from a
Netmeeting user, that remote Netmeeting will use those ports. Most of
them are totally random, so if you want a secure firewall, you will have
to forget about the idea to be able to be called by remote Netmeeting
users.

Time to blow the dust off the VoIP Blaster

[linux11]

Well, for those of us that got sold on the Slashdot article on the Creative Labs VoIP Blaster, I have good new! The diary for Damien Sandras (the author of the GnomeMeeting project) indicates that GnomeMeeting supports VoIPBlaster which provides GM access to the patented G.723.1 audio codec without having to buy a $100+ LinuxJack card. If only MicroTelco could convince SB to mass produce the VoIP Blaster again...

Already possible

[supz]

This was always possible, using a Cisco 3660 with a voice card, and SIP.

Simply dial sip:1800429739@1.2.3.4:5060 with any software SIP phone for Linux, and you're good... granted the hardware would cost you around 10,000 plus the monthly service fee for a 4 channel BRI (at least).

Not ready yet.

[Penguinoflight]

PC-to-Phone calls are still not ready on Linux, and they cost money to do. According to the GnomeMeeting FAQ: Step 3: Register a MicroTelco account on http://www.linuxjack.com.

However, when you go to linuxjack.com, it says that they will be adding accounts for MicroTelco on their site SOON (marketing word for "whenever"), and you can't just use a regular MicroTelco account like you would on Windows.

This is only really good news if you'd use voip-voip, or if all this proprietary technology actually works.

Re:Marketing Genius

[Xerithane]

The chick in the screen shots is hot.

Here's some links:

• # 1
  
• # 2
  
• #3
  
• #4
  

And she is visibly more literate than Ellen Feiss. Now I'll stop posting pictures before Jonita kicks my ass.

Jonita, you've been on slashdot and you are prettier than Ellen Feiss. I should apologize for subjecting you to geek-fantasy love, but you will be petrified shortly, and you won't care.

Why use a desktop computer at all?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Why use a desktop computer at all? I'm more impressed by services like Vonage. They give you a little POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo that you plug in anywhere behind your firewall, and you just connect any phone to it. Pick up the receiver and you hear a dial tone. Dial a number and it goes out over the Internet. You never have to bother with the computer. The computer doesn't even have to be turned on. Let's face it, if you're a geek, or even a lesser gadget freak, you've already got multiple computers sitting behind a firewall or mini-router on a broadband connection. So you just plug this thing in and go.

QuickNet's service appears to be cheaper. I was going to sign up for it, but I don't like the idea of having to have a program running on a desktop to keep the dial tone available. That's the problem with most Windows-based programs that do things like this, and it's no better when someone does it on Linux. (Ok, it's a little better, but this type of thing belongs either in a daemon or in dedicated hardware.)

Re:Marketing Genius

[jonita]

Well, first of all I'm really Jonita! Yes, I created an account in order to answer to some comments on here! Then, I thanked you because you said that I'm prettier than Ellen Feiss... That was all...