[JDEV] Voice over IP

[Jacek Konieczny]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 11:42:43AM -0700, Mike Prince wrote:
> I'm glad this is idle chit-chat on my side and I don't have to pick a
> protocol ;)
> 
> SIP has momentum on it's side: a lot of companies are producing SIP
> products today.  (same could be said for H.323)  It's cool to see XMPP
> showing its flexibility  by negotiating streaming interactions, but I'd
> worry that it'd be yet another way of slicing the same problem.  

SIP and H.323 are maybe good for hardware IP phones, but they are no
good for usage with IM. 

For VoIP for IM we need.
- simplicity (no gatekeeper or separate registar needed to be
  configured)
  
- NAT-safety. Many IM user are behind various NATs. There is no good
  solution for this in SIP and H323 protocols, but the problem is being
  solved for Jabber anyway (for filetransfer) - the solution may be
  reused for VoIP then. 
  
- software availability. There is no usable and open source SIP solution
  for Windows, and there is no good (openh323 is awful and C++) H.323
  library for Linux. With just RTP it is much better. Client developers
  would usually have to write their own stuff anyway. Is easier to do it
  using already implemented XMPP protocol, than to implement another
  one.

Even choice between H323 and SIP is quite hard - probably we would end
with some clients supporting H323, and some client supporting SIP.

And one more thing. The most easy way to use H323 or SIP in Jabber is to
use some of available H323 or SIP application. But those applications
often already include some kind of IM. So why use Jabber if we need
other similar application?

Greets,
	Jacek