Abstract: I would like to be able to place calls to users using gatekeepers not configured in my gatekeeper.
I have not read all there is about gatekeepers, and I have not read all there is about this particular one. But I have read about features and configuration and there is one thing that I find lacking.
If I understand the documentation correctly: you have to have all gatekeepers, to which users you want to call, configured in the gatekeeper you are registered to and hence trying to use as a means to place call with. This I find to be restricting the possibility to use internet as a means to verbally communicate with other people. If you want to place calls to people in different locations, using their own gatekeeper, you would have to configure you gatekeeper to find users on all other gatekeepers. This rules out all possibility to, for example, give someone your "voice address" and say "Call me!", unlike e-mail with which you can spread around to let anyone easily send messages to you. This is (to me) a really annoying limitation, since the solution could be very simple.
Why not just allow users to specify a target gatekeeper along with the username? The gatekeeper name would preferably just be a hostname, telling the gatekeeper to look for a another gatekeeper at that address and make arrangement to place a call to the user. A feature like that, I believe, would be tremendously useful. And all it requires from the gatekeeper is to try to connect to a gatekeeper at a given address, ask if the user exist and "patch him through".
Imagine companies putting out their telephone support number as "support@voice.cisco.com". Anyone from anywhere around the world (with an internet connection) would be able to call without paying anything more than their internet connection.
If a system like this would work, I see no reason not to be able to throw the old phones out the window within a few years.
I hope haven't misunderstood the workings of gatekeepers completely, I there already are a solution to this, I would appreciate if someone could explain it to me.
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