Rob schrieb: >On Friday 18 March 2005 15:44, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote: > > >>I know very little about skype and don't have much time or personal >>interest in learning about it. But, it's making inroads. I want to >>understand what it does and what free software alternatives are >>available. Is it possible for free software alternatives to inter >>operate with the skype world? >> >> > >Free software VOIP typically takes the form of SIP, or Session >Initiation Protocol, which is as close to a standard for end users as >VOIP really has. Skype doesn't have any SIP gateways as far as I >know, though they're supposed to offer something called "SkypeIn" >this summer to do that. Personally, I'd rather just avoid them >altogether, as it seems what they've brought to the mix is primarily >marketing. > > yes, but contrary to SIP and h232, skype uses some p2p protocol, that minimizes their server load (according to skype). thats no big deal for the user, as long as he / she can still find an free sip / h323 service provider, but as bandwith does cost money, this might be a problem. another point of skype is that it can (does) "missuse" some skypers that are not behind a NAT as some sort of server to connect two NAT'ed skype users - that means: skype just works, without any configuration, and no matter if u and the person u are calling is behind a NAT. this might be the reason 4 skype's popularity, and there is no OS software i know of that has similar features. >I would say Linphone is the most widely used free SIP client software, >at least under Linux. Linspire seems to be throwing some money at >PhoneGaim, though, so maybe it'll be grandmother-friendly before >Linphone. > >Rob > > > > >
