Re: [tlug] Not Skype

[Edward Middleton <edwardmiddleton@example.com>]

On Fri, 2005-12-23 at 20:17 +0900, Ian Wells wrote:
> On 12/23/05, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
>         Skype just lost a potential customer.
> 
> I am not personally Skype-averse, but I know several people who have
> problems with it.  Has anyone compared the alternatives?  
> 
> Personally I've used MSN messenger with some success, and better
> quality than Skype, PC-to-PC; and Google's offering is at least a bit
> more open source...  Not actually paid the money for SkypeOut, but I
> suspect it will only take one more really dodgy call with Brastel...
You can do VoIP fine with open sources software it just requires a bit
more effort to set everything up.  The biggest problem is dealing with
firewalls.  You need an intermediary if both sides are on a poorly
configured firewall.  You can use asterisk for this.  If you use iax2 it
shouldn't require any configuration for most firewalls.  Most TSP
support sip (though most won't offer an unbundled service), which is
also supported by asterisk.

-- 
Edward Middleton <edwardmiddleton@example.com>