J. Antas wrote: > Computex 2005: low cost VoIP/SIP/Skype phones are arriving > > The Register has an article on the recent Computex 2005 fair, named > "Skype handset makers flock to Computex", about the pending arrival of > a new set of low cost phones designed to work over all kinds of VoIP > architectures. > > Those combined with the free PBX Software Asterisk > (http://www.asterisk.org/), could become an welcome help for > inter-hospital communication needs.
Dear OpenHealth FWIW, I have been experimenting with SIP phones in our largish medical practice. They are a breeze connecting to an Asterisk server. If you want a painless introduction to asterisk, I can recommend Xorcom, http://www.xorcom.com/, which is a debian derivative. I have not used [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/, that has RHEL as its base and a reportedly friendlier configuration interface. I found using SIP to SIP over the net behind a NAT firewall, the expected nightmare. My next experiment is SIP -> asterisk -> asterisk -> SIP. The asterisk to asterisk component uses the IAX protocol. IAX is a newish protocol (http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1341768269;fp;256;fpid;319049444 and http://www.cornfed.com/iax.pdf) and not IETF ratified. I think one would have to wait for encryption to be added before recommending it for inter-hospital communication (see the Arnnet link). The asterisk mailing list is one of the most prolific I have come across. The answer to everything VoIP can be found either there or somewhere on http://voip-info.org. We will have entered VoIP nirvana, when asterisk runs seamlessly on the WRT54G. HTH. David
