<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote">On 16 May 2011 02:02, Oleg Goldshmidt <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pub@goldshmidt.org">pub@goldshmidt.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Constantine Shulyupin<br>
<<a href="mailto:const@makelinux.co.il">const@makelinux.co.il</a>> wrote:<br>
> A new article about Linux Skype alternatives:<br>
> Bye Bye Skype, Top 3 Free Replacements:<br>
> <a href="http://ostatic.com/blog/bye-bye-skype-top-3-free-replacements" target="_blank">http://ostatic.com/blog/bye-bye-skype-top-3-free-replacements</a><br>
<br>
</div>Unfortunately, I don't see anything there that satisfies _any_ of the<br>
three requirements I posted earlier in this thread.<br></blockquote><div><br>Even before that - I've tried some of these SIP-based voice programs on and off for a few years now and they *never* "just work" (let alone "work") where as Skype is just a "plug a play" and voice clear as a whistle from the first time I used it in ~2003.<br>
<br>The key issue, as far as I can tell, is that 99.999% of the networks today are on the Internet behind NAT so you need something which can traverse both sides and still manage to stream audio/video both ways (i.e. can punch through NAT in both sides but does NOT depend on a central remote server to have enough bandwidth to stream all traffic of all the calls on its network, which is exactly the problem Skype solved).<br>
<br>Absolutely none of these (including the ones in the list Constantine provided) manage to do as much as a simple "echo back" call to a SIP service. You can say I don't know a thing about SIP (and I'll agree), but if I can't set this up after spending an awful lot of time trowling support forums and reading howto's then how do you expect your average Windows layman to set this up?<br>
<br>Even more so - guys in my workplace who claim to have experience setting up SIP and none-Skype voip exchanges still have trouble setting up simple connections between our Sydney and San Francisco offices. You can claim that it's their fault but my point is that SIP (which is what all these solutions relay on) is just still too hard to use.<br>
<br>Skype solved a very complex problem very well and until you manage to come up with something which looks at the VoIP issue at a completely different way from SIP's "central office" way which addresses the NAT issue you are not going to compete with them.<br>
<br>--Amos</div></div></div>