On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Mukund wrote:
> What you are asking is Voice Over IP ?
> With msn it works because the server and client both are MS products.
> With linux due to diversity of standard for VOIP, the gateways are still not
> very popular.
With MSN it works because they have a tie-up with net2phone.com . The
gateways probably all run Linux since Linux has fantastic facilities to do
such things. However they do'nt accept connections (and I've also not
found any clients to do do this) from Linux. Sound's crazy.
> In fact I am looking for such gateways, if you have come across, please send
> me links.
I've searched for 2 days at google, altavista, sourceforge, openh323,
linuxtelephony, freshmeat etc and not found any open, free, Linux
compatible gateways or Linux clients to connect to them. The internet to
phone gateway should be offering services in the area where you want to
call, quite similiar to a internet to fax gateway (of which there is a
volunteer group around the world). The pages all say that this is a new
technology and the companies are jumping in for profits.
> Secondly this kind of service can not remain free because, the gateways have
> to dial out a telephone number.
true, but volunteers have made fax possible. Also at some places phone
calls are cheap (that's why USA is covered better than India).
> No special hardware is required if the connection is between pc ->
> telephone, but you will require a modem if telephone->telephone connection
> is required.
True, but at the gateway side an IPTelephony card is preferred for better
sound quality as this takes the burden off the CPU.
Since I couldn't locate any proper providers, I'm planning to start up my
own h.323 gateway to offer free services at the Dallas, Texas area in the
US after a couple of months (especially for people living in India). You
may be required to install xspeakfree on the client machine.
Thanks,
Indraneel
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