[asterisk-biz] MagicJack

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Fri, 2008-03-21 at 04:29 -0400, Matthew Rubenstein wrote:
> 	I saw an ad for MagicJack on TV, a USB VoIP dongle with a $20:year
> unlimited calling subscription,  and looked into it. I am in no way
> affiliated with MagicJack, except that I saw the ad and was curious. It
> was introduced at the TED conference last April, and was buggy through
> last Summer. But it's been around a year now, has a budget for
> mass-market advertising.
> 

you have to use their dongle (which appears to be a softmodem packaged
as an FXS port) and their service.  They do not have linux support for
it, only windows and osx.  

I have already approached them about linux stuff, but that was just
today, so nothing yet has happened more than finding out who exactly to
contact and a proposal submitted to do the work.  

Based on their webpage they use G.711 as the codec (they say you need
80kbps of bandwidth per call).  It is unclear at this time if they
support any standard VoIP protocol or not, they specifically state they
are not compatible with asterisk, and imply they are only compatible
with their device.

It is my belief that the dongle itself is not smart enough to do
anything but act as a FXS port, and that the software that controls it
is what controls everything else.  I do not know if they are receptive
to linux support (which should be most BSD/POSIX compatible systems if
my proposal is accepted).

I also do not know if they are even receptive to the idea of a 3rd party
writing and maintaining drivers for their hardware since it can cause
them some problems in terms of support queries.  My hope is yes, but I
probably wont know until well after the weekend since it is a holiday in
many places around the world.  I further do not know if they will allow
open source or not, I do not know if they will allow support for their
service (regardless of the device itself) which would allow open source
switches to utilize it.

Worst case I may just get one and sniff the usb bus to see what they do
and how they do it and code based on that, if the inet part isnt
terribly difficult I may write something that would interface, for all I
know its just generic SIP.


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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