Re: Has anyone tried Ekiga for VOIP?

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>]

On Saturday, August 1, 2009, Kathleen MacDowell wrote;

>>From Geoff's response, it sounds like there are quite a few, once you can
> acquire the knowledge to understand what you're doing. (I tend to be a bit
> lazy about technology unless I'm documenting it...).
---

At least Ekiga is non-proprietary, since it uses H323 and SIP. So,
unlike Skype, Ekiga is compatible with most of the VOIP world. I
haven't looked very closely at it but the FAQs tell me that it's
basically a softphone. So futher alternatives might be CounterPath's
X-Lite (http://www.counterpath.com/), SJPhone (http://www.sjlabs.com/)
or Zoiper (http://www.zoiper.com/). IIRC, Ekiga is also the standard
softphone that comes with Gnome Desktop on Ubuntu and other Linux
distributions.

FWIW, I use X-Lite with SIP and a USB handset on my desktop computer
and Zoiper with IAX2 on my laptop. The latter lets me receive calls
coming in to my home office from almost anywhere with an Internet
connection - and IAX2 easily handles NAT traversal (double NAT
traversal if I happen to be behind a client's firewall) without the
shenanigans necessary with SIP.

BTW, Asterisk and Ekiga serve different purposes. Asterisk is a PBX
whereas Ekiga is a softphone. Most softphones are fairly easy to set
up. Of necessity, they're not usually as easy as Skype - but that's
because you've got a much wider choice of providers, who each have
slightly different configuration nuances. Thankfully, most providers
give instructions on configuring one or more popular softphones and
you can use that information to configure other softphones or even
dedicated VOIP handsets once you get to grips with VOIP basics.

HTH,

-- 
Geoff

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