[Asterisk-Dev] We can do better than Skype

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:42:52 +0100, Daniel Pocock
<daniel at readytechnology.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> The real issue is not making Asterisk compatible with Skype (their days
> are numbered anyhow, as well as competing with open technologies, they
> also have to compete with all the other proprietaries like MSN messager)

agreed.

> - the issue is, can we make a similar 'plug and play' telephony protocol
> that is an open standard, build the appropriate channel driver for
> Asterisk,

the answer would seem to be "absolutely yes" as I consider IAX to fit
this description.

> and also make a channel implementation available for products
> like Gnomemeeting so that end users can connect?

Gnomemeeting is open source, so all it takes is somebody with the
right skillset to make an effort to link it to iaxlib and then teach
it how to use that library in order to talk IAX.

> I believe IAX is much closer to achieving this goal than SIP or H323,

most definitely yes.

> but Skype's protocol is more successful at getting through firewalls and
> NAT

How is that? Do you mean to say there are presumably many more Skype
sessions than IAX sessions, hence they are more successful?

Otherwise, how is IAX not successful in traversing NAT?

> Maybe we need to look at the possibility of IAX over HTTP

You'd have to write a wrapper protocol because HTTP is text based and
IAX is binary. This would probably lead to inefficiencies. Efficiency
is one of the main strengths of IAX.

IAX over TCP?

Real-time is not typically a good thing to run over TCP. Call quality
will probably drop.

> In other words, why go to them, when we can wait for them to come to us?

precisely ;-)

rgds
benjk

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