[Bradford] Fwd: VOIP Investigations

[Martyn Ranyard]

I guess I could do a talk on the client-side voip stuff, but it would be
best coordinated perhaps with someone doing a server(switch) talk the same
month?

Anyway, the below was supposed to go to the list. :-)

--
Martyn

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Carpenter <david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk>
Date: 24 May 2010 08:01
Subject: Re: [Bradford] VOIP Investigations
To: Martyn Ranyard <ranyardm at gmail.com>


Thanks for that Martin.

Y'know me, people mention phones and I glaze over, but all this SIP/VoIP
stuff is pretty interesting.

Is the basis of a talk/meeting soon? I know other people are into this
and setting up asterix systems etc. I'd be interested in 'phones' for
home users - 'phones' if you're coming off windows onto Linux, and I
guess people might also be interested in business solutions...

Any one want to pick this up?

Cheers
David


On Thu, 2010-05-20 at 10:24 +0100, Martyn Ranyard wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
>   I thought I'd put together a quick email to the lists to chat about
> my recent experiences with SIP and VOIP.
>
>
>   I really like the idea of having a SIP system (freeswitch or asterix
> etc.) and having a uk geographical number that resolves to it (ideally
> 01274, but not essential), but what I don't like is the idea of paying
> through the nose for said number.  So I started researching VOIP
> providers to see if I could find one that works and gives a UK
> geographical number at low cost.
>
>
>   Imagine my surprise when I found sipgate.co.uk that not only
> provides a working SIP system (albeit with very little documentation,
> as they're aimed at having a hardware phone) but provides a free
> geographical number also.
>
>
>   Now, for basic purposes I don't really want to have to set up a full
> switch yet, so I started looking at the softphone options.  I use a
> ubuntu derivitive that is based on 10.4 so I'm pretty up-to-date and I
> use Gnome at the desktop fwiw.  Here's a round-up of what I tried :
>
>
> Ekiga : Obviously the first choice is Ekiga as it is prolific and
> available easily.  Unfortunately I was getting hangs whenever I
> attempted to connect to a number on Ekiga.  So I dropped Ekiga and
> tried Twinkle next.  Later I realised these hangs were pulseaudio/alsa
> related, so this is an option, but only if run via pasuspender, which
> for day-to-day use is pretty poor.
>
>
> Twinkle : the SIP phone that uses the telepathy stack, sort of
> Empathy's SIP phone.  This too had hangs on connect/disconnect.
>
>
> X-lite for Linux : Ugly as it was I instantly realised it would not be
> pulseaudio aware so used pasuspender and it worked right away.
>  However I don't like closed-source binary-only software running
> constantly on my machines, so next up, I picked up my android phone.
>
>
> SipDroid (Android) : installed SIPDroid and followed the guide
> at http://www.hutsby.net/2010/03/how-to-sipgate-and-sipdroid.html .
>  To my joy and amazement it worked first time!
>
>
> I also looked at kphone but it has even less options than Ekiga and
> just "didn't work" either.
>
>
>   So it appears the softphone situation on Linux is rather dire.  I
> also tried Gizmo but although that appeared to work (I think my
> pulseaudio has gotten messed up and I need a reboot), you need a
> pre-existing gizmo account to allow the sipphone part of it to work,
> and registrations are closed.
>
>
>   There's also one thing I wanted to mention that I found rather
> useful for people wanting to use SIP for business -
> switchboardfree.co.uk - two 0844/0843 numbers sans subscription that
> can be directed to a geographical number with full call waiting,
> analytics and other good stuff for free.
>
>
>   Anyway, that's enough rambling for now, just thought I'd share my
> experiences.
>
>
> --
> Martynfun -
> _______________________________________________
> Bradford mailing list
> Bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bradford

--
David Carpenter

nornir

E: david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk
Skype: carpenter.david

Please save paper and only print this email if you have to.
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