Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On the phone side of things, routers exist that include not only a built-in ATA, but also built-in DECT base-station. Any ATA can be plumbed into your legacy phone wiring provided your phone wiring is disconnected from your Telco. This way your jacks around the house still have dial-tone, but coming from your ATA rather than POTS from your Telco. In case of ATA failure, make sure your incoming line can be patched back to your legacy phone wiring to by-pass a broken ATA. Yuri
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Christopher Sawtell csawt...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 July 2010 08:50, C. Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nz wrote: No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. Apart from the fact that it is proprietary software, what is evil and nasty about it? ... to spite my face. I have four proprietary packages on my Linux machine, Skype, Java, Adobe flash and acroread, simply because it is impossible to function in the connected world without them. Java is (now) open sourced, and I haven't come across a need for PDF reading that Evince failed for, or for writing that OpenOffice.org failed for. I do have Adobe Flash, and Skype. I use Flash for entertainment (mostly flash games from Kongregate, and for youtube/vimeo/etc for video, HTML5 notwithstanding) and Skype because customers family want it. Skype's big advantage is the size of the existing userbase, and the ease of use. If it was wonderfully easy to use but no-one else was on their network, there would be no point. I would expect that most people are using Skype because it is free (obviously there's data usage costs, but that's common to SIP too), because it's easy to use, and ooh, look, you can do video!. works pretty well for me on a Telstra Cable connection. It's also fully encrypted. Because it's proprietary closed source, you can't make that argument. The best you can say is that you can't figure out how the audio is represented in flight. It's possible that the data stream is properly encrypted, however there are numerous governments who have made comments that they are able to eavesdrop on Skype conversations -- it's unlikely that they are all inaccurate statements. I tried running GnomeMeeting / Eikga a while ago, but it never worked reliably. and required a proxy in the firewall. The firewall was, and Skype is a significantly better implementation of just work within the network resources available than most SIP solutions, because the ease of use of the software directly impacts on the revenues of the parent compay (i.e. if it works fine, some people will buy value-add services like Skype Out). This is not a common proposition for Open Source software, which is part of the main useability differences between the closed and open world (obviously, not all of the differences). BTW, I switched from a Linux edge firewall to pfSense a couple of weeks ago, and all my tested as working just fine SIP connections were dead the next day; I wasted a day trying to fix the situation, adding firewall rules, running proxies, everything. Eventually calmed down and realised that the problem was just a relatively short state table timeout on the firewall. Now I run multiple SIP devices talking to multiple servers with no special NAT considerations (especially, no STUN, proxy or incoming rules) and everything is fine. Skype of course worked perfectly the whole time, probably because Skype is using more of my network resources than SIP is, just to stay online. Luckily it seems as if that's such a small portion of my available network resource that it doesn't cause a problem. So, is Skype evil and nasty? It's evil philosophically because the communications protocol is closed, and to a lesser extent because the client implementation is closed. It's nasty because it is very greedy with your network resources compared to other solutions that provide the same user experience. However, is it too evil and nasty to use? For me, no. It's bad, but not bad enough to stop using it yet. If there were an Open Source alternative, that provided the same functionality with a similar-enough user experience, I would stop using it and promote the alternative. But SIP voice telephones are not the same. SIP video would be great, but it's not the protocol/implementations that are the problem here (see Linphone for example) but the need to choose a proxy or voip operator that is a step too far for Aunt Tilly. Less choice is anathema for us, but necessary for them. -jim
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:08 PM, John Carter john.car...@taitradio.com wrote: So my home life is getting sufficient twangled that having some more advance facilities (voicemail / caller id / ...) would be good. I was looking at Xnet VFX Fusion. But that means I'd have to replace my router to have a phone plug. This seems... unnecessary. Googling (gargling?) for voip and openwrt turns up Asterix running on a Linksys WRT54GL... just so happens I have a WRT54GL running Openwrt Backfire. So what I need is... * A cordless voip phone or a way of tacking a standard cordless to, umm, something. http://www.nicegear.co.nz * Access to a cheap gateway from the IP to Christchurch local telephone system * Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) So carry on with the digital convergence... After buying, trying and returning to the #...@$#! red shed under gaurantee two TV's... and having similar problems with DSE TV's... I'm very reluctant to waste money on a TV again... Sony LG or Samsung seem to be the ones. Dove stock Sony. Yet the Sprats want TV and a place to plug their game consoles into. Dang. Now with netbooks being cheaper (and better quality) than many TV's... what I need is... * Some way of getting TV game console inputs on to the display. Hmm. There is an ADSL2+ to city block cabinet a 50m down the road Would it be worth replacing my DSE ADSL XH1175 router with an adsl2+ one anyway? Suggestions most welcome. -- John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639 Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632 PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email : john.car...@taitradio.com New Zealand === This email, including any attachments, is only for the intended addressee. It is subject to copyright, is confidential and may be the subject of legal or other privilege, none of which is waived or lost by reason of this transmission. If the receiver is not the intended addressee, please accept our apologies, notify us by return, delete all copies and perform no other act on the email. Unfortunately, we cannot warrant that the email has not been altered or corrupted during transmission. ===
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:08:38 +1200 John Carter john.car...@taitradio.com wrote: So my home life is getting sufficient twangled that having some more advance facilities (voicemail / caller id / ...) would be good. I was looking at Xnet VFX Fusion. But that means I'd have to replace my router to have a phone plug. This seems... unnecessary. Googling (gargling?) for voip and openwrt turns up Asterix running on a Linksys WRT54GL... just so happens I have a WRT54GL running Openwrt Backfire. So what I need is... * A cordless voip phone or a way of tacking a standard cordless to, umm, something. i use this to connect to my asterisk system: http://nicegear.co.nz/analog-telephone-adaptors/linksys-pap2t/ never had any problems * Access to a cheap gateway from the IP to Christchurch local telephone system * Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) i use 2talk but ive never really looked around... http://www.2talk.co.nz/ 2000 mins/mth free with each local number for local calls So carry on with the digital convergence... After buying, trying and returning to the #...@$#! red shed under gaurantee two TV's... and having similar problems with DSE TV's... I'm very reluctant to waste money on a TV again... Yet the Sprats want TV and a place to plug their game consoles into. Dang. Now with netbooks being cheaper (and better quality) than many TV's... what I need is... * Some way of getting TV game console inputs on to the display. Hmm. There is an ADSL2+ to city block cabinet a 50m down the road Would it be worth replacing my DSE ADSL XH1175 router with an adsl2+ one anyway? Suggestions most welcome. -- aaron m
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
* Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) http://www.skype.com/ Traffic costs only for computer to computer worldwide. Piffling for voice, and the quality far exceeds that of the POTS system. I have used it for far too many hours to be able to say how many. It works a treat. Linux version available. Small charge for computer to POTS phone. 0.017 Euros per min NZ to the UK 0.055 Euros per min NZ to South Africa -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 23:21 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: Traffic costs only for computer to computer worldwide. Piffling for voice, and the quality far exceeds that of the POTS system. I have used it for far too many hours to be able to say how many. It works a treat. Linux version available. It depends if you want a replacement for your traditional phone or are happy with computer to computer calls. I would recommend a real VoIP service (SIP based) over Skype any day. Real phone numbers, real phones, and typically better quality. Skype may also use up significant bandwidth just by being running, even if you aren't making calls. And to be completely clear; I do have an interest in this. We could sell Skype hardware if we wanted but chose not to. hads -- http://nicegear.co.nz New Zealand's Open Source Hardware Supplier
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
Christopher Sawtell wrote, On 07/19/2010 11:21 PM: * Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) http://www.skype.com/ Traffic costs only for computer to computer worldwide. Piffling for voice, and the quality far exceeds that of the POTS system. I have used it for far too many hours to be able to say how many. It works a treat. Linux version available. Small charge for computer to POTS phone. 0.017 Euros per min NZ to the UK 0.055 Euros per min NZ to South Africa No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. I'm astonished that you could suggest such a thing. We use 2talk commercially and they're sodding brilliant. Skype can take a running jump and stay there. -- Craig Falconer
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
John Carter wrote, On 07/19/2010 09:08 PM: So what I need is... * A cordless voip phone or a way of tacking a standard cordless to, umm, something. * Access to a cheap gateway from the IP to Christchurch local telephone system * Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) No. Your first requirement is decent stable reliable internet connectivity. And DSL is not quite there. The minimum I'd suggest is TCL cable, because it works far more reliably. Though when they have an outage its generally a good one but only once or twice a year. Other connections are available, but cost a lot more. Commercially we have some sites with fibre, and a separate vlan for voice. You possibly already have a cordless phone - connect it to an ATA like the linksys pap2t to make it a voip phone.They're something like $100 and can do two analogue phones. You can do what I do, and have your ATA log directly into 2talk over the internet, or you could run an asterisk install at home and run an IAX trunk to 2talk. trixbox is a turnkey asterisk distro, or there are hardware ones - see www.nicegear.co.nz for some. http://www.2talk.co.nz/ South Africa - 10c/minute South African Mobile - 25c/minute (same as NZ mobiles) UK 3c/minute UK Mobile - 25c/minute (same as NZ mobiles) USA 5c/minute USA Mobile - not listed. Full rate card is at http://www.2talk.co.nz/assets/lib/2talkrates.pdf but its outdated - their mobile rate is now 24c/minute. Note calls to the 3c/minute destinations come out of your 500 minute monthly allocation on the 2talk500 plan. That's $15/mo and you can even port your 03 number. If you want faxing, use a 2talk fax to email number for incoming, and tell anyone who wants you to send a fax that they're luddites. Fax over voip is difficult. After buying, trying and returning to the #...@$#! red shed under gaurantee two TV's... and having similar problems with DSE TV's... I'm very reluctant to waste money on a TV again... Yet the Sprats want TV and a place to plug their game consoles into. Dang. Now with netbooks being cheaper (and better quality) than many TV's... what I need is... * Some way of getting TV game console inputs on to the display. You could use some kind of USB capture device, but they tend to have lag. So the player hits a key but the game has moved on 1/10 second and they're too late. Best thing here is a good quality monitor with composite-video inputs. How about an LCD TV/Monitor, so you can switch over to another input for the console? Or something like those Composite to VGA adapters so they can use a normal monitor. http://www.cdlnz.com/productimages/pdfs/vc100.pdf is worth about $120 At home we have a mythtv backend in the garage running 24/7, a dedicated frontend in the house which is connected via DVI-HDMI to a 32 LCD and to a small stereo. There's a PS2 which connects to the composite-in on the TV. This works nicely. Hmm. There is an ADSL2+ to city block cabinet a 50m down the road Would it be worth replacing my DSE ADSL XH1175 router with an adsl2+ one anyway? ADSL is pretty dreadful. The limited upload means your digital convergence is going to be mostly inbound. If this DSE router gets ADSL2 speeds then there's not a lot more to be gained. ADSL2+ is mostly an advertising phrase, and generally only improves on ADSL2 performance at and above the 5000+ foot mark. We use cisco routers but for sheer throughput the DSL technology is the limiting factor. Another thing to consider is a good firewall. Don't just run iptables on your server. I use and like pfsense ( http://www.pfsense.org/ ) and there's bound to be a good aftermarket firmware for your WRT. Food for thought. Please let us know how it goes. -- Craig Falconer
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 10:38 +1200, C. Falconer wrote: http://www.2talk.co.nz/ South Africa - 10c/minute South African Mobile - 25c/minute (same as NZ mobiles) UK 3c/minute UK Mobile - 25c/minute (same as NZ mobiles) USA 5c/minute USA Mobile - not listed. I use asterisk, and gradwell.co.uk provide me with an IAX2 trunk to the UK and a DID on the Birmingham exchange: just gone up to GBP4/month incoming / 1p/minute outgoing. Olds use friends and family, so can ring me for free. I have no problem with ADSL - however, I have had to upgrade to the most expensive offering from voda to get the 768Kbit uplink speed. Before that, everything else had to be stopped for a decent call at 256Kbit. I'm running asterisk on my old desktop box, which is a fair bit of overkill... the power it consumes should probably be added to the cost ( I do have a soekris board and spare tdm400p, somethere on my todo list ). Steve -- Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz http://www.greengecko.co.nz MSN: st...@greengecko.co.nz Skype: sholdowa smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On 20 July 2010 08:50, C. Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nz wrote: Christopher Sawtell wrote, On 07/19/2010 11:21 PM: * Something with cheap calls to South Africa / US / UK (diasporas tend to do that to you) http://www.skype.com/ Traffic costs only for computer to computer worldwide. Piffling for voice, and the quality far exceeds that of the POTS system. I have used it for far too many hours to be able to say how many. It works a treat. Linux version available. Small charge for computer to POTS phone. 0.017 Euros per min NZ to the UK 0.055 Euros per min NZ to South Africa No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. Apart from the fact that it is proprietary software, what is evil and nasty about it? I'm astonished that you could suggest such a thing. I'm not a total bigot over the FOSS thing. If it works properly, I'll use it with alacrity, but if it does not, then I won't cut off my nose to spite my face. I have four proprietary packages on my Linux machine, Skype, Java, Adobe flash and acroread, simply because it is impossible to function in the connected world without them. The big advantages of Skype are not only can it be installed by everybody's great Aunt Tilly, ( you only have to click the mouse twice, once to download it, once to run it ) but also it sails through firewalls because it uses ports 80 and 443 which have to be available for the 'Net to work properly. It works pretty well for me on a Telstra Cable connection. It's also fully encrypted. We use 2talk commercially and they're sodding brilliant. commercially is the operative word here. You can set up the complex proxies etc. but there is no way in the world my dear old great Aunt Tilly could do so. Skype can take a running jump and stay there. I tried running GnomeMeeting / Eikga a while ago, but it never worked reliably. and required a proxy in the firewall. The firewall was, and still is, pfSense, but the combination of Eikga and the proxy was distinctly poxy. Very poor sound vision sync on the very few occasions when it actually connected. It was effectively unusable. Things may well have changed, and I would be delighted to change to Eikga just as soon as all the wrinkles have been sorted out, and by dear old Aunt Tilly can install it at her end on all three popular platforms without needing technical support by the hour. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 15:14 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: On 20 July 2010 08:50, C. Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nz wrote: No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. Apart from the fact that it is proprietary software, what is evil and nasty about it? Like the fact that it uses 100% of the available CPU for no discernable reason, even when you're not using it? Or the fact that it will abuse your firewall until it can find a way around it? I have* to use it, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Steve *My customers demand it. I need customers. -- Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz http://www.greengecko.co.nz MSN: st...@greengecko.co.nz Skype: sholdowa smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On 20 July 2010 15:51, Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz wrote: On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 15:14 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: On 20 July 2010 08:50, C. Falconer cfalco...@totalteam.co.nz wrote: No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. Apart from the fact that it is proprietary software, what is evil and nasty about it? Like the fact that it uses 100% of the available CPU for no discernable reason, even when you're not using it? Mine doesn't do that on Linux. Or the fact that it will abuse your firewall until it can find a way around it? Isn't the fact that it attempts to find a way around firewalls a benefit? Remember that we want ordinary folks to be able to use it in as many situations as possible. I have* to use it, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. *My customers demand it. I need customers. What would you recommend in its place? Remember that the replacement should be free of $$$ cost and installation be available on Linux, Windows, and Mac O/S X. It _must_ be as simple to install as falling off the proverbial log, so Dear Old Aunt Tillly can make it go. Honest, I'm all for a more acceptable replacement if something else is both available and as easy to install and use. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
Christopher Sawtell wrote, On 07/20/2010 04:15 PM: Remember that the replacement should be free of $$$ cost and installation be available on Linux, Windows, and Mac O/S X. It _must_ be as simple to install as falling off the proverbial log, so Dear Old Aunt Tilly can make it go. Honest, I'm all for a more acceptable replacement if something else is both available and as easy to install and use. So - do you expect your Aunt Tilly can do her own plumbing when a tap leaks? No - she calls a plumber. Personally I like solutions that work as expected. If your Aunt Tilly needs a voip phone, I want to configure it once and never again. As long as she knows how to dial, she'll be okay. (and that was hard converting her from a ducatic pulse dial to a keypad) So back to the original question from John Phone -- VOIP TV -- media centre thing Family Photo shoebox -- digital photo frame Any data storage that you care about (photos etc) raid plus backup plus offsite backup. -- Craig Falconer
Re: Seeking Linuxy hardware to rejig my life to digital convergence....
On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 16:15 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: Or the fact that it will abuse your firewall until it can find a way around it? Isn't the fact that it attempts to find a way around firewalls a benefit? Remember that we want ordinary folks to be able to use it in as many situations as possible. Only in specific environments. Within any kind of business environment it's a massive security hazard, file transfer and all... I have* to use it, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. *My customers demand it. I need customers. What would you recommend in its place? Remember that the replacement should be free of $$$ cost and installation be available on Linux, Windows, and Mac O/S X. It _must_ be as simple to install as falling off the proverbial log, so Dear Old Aunt Tillly can make it go. Well, dear old Aunt Till(l)y is no technical idiot if she's converted a PC into a fairly sophisticated communications device (: I don't use video - for reasons we discussed over a beer - so can't really comment on alternatives. In this case free comes at a real price. Steve -- Steve Holdoway st...@greengecko.co.nz http://www.greengecko.co.nz MSN: st...@greengecko.co.nz Skype: sholdowa smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
