[no subject]

However Ekiga (and any other VoIP software for that matter) is both
client *and* server. It is both making "connections" to other
computers as well as listening on SIP standard port (which is 5060)
for incoming calls. Thus if you want to run multiple Ekiga instances
on the same computer you need to configure them to listen on different
ports (same thing with SSH - if you want to run multiple sshd's you
need them to listen on different ports). One can argue that the second
(third etc) instance of Ekiga should be able to detect that port 5060
is taken and use a different port.

> Therefore, I find it difficult to believe that Ekiga doesn't have an automatic
> built-in solution for several Ekiga logins behind a NAT router, since
> other software seems to have no problems with that too.....

Actually NAT shouldn't matter here at all, as long as STUN and UDP
tracking on the router is working and there are no restrictions on
ekiga.net or whatever VoIP provider you're using (I have a Cisco
CallManager at work which limits the number of accounts to one per IP
address). Ekiga running on multiple computers behind NAT should work
just fine.

> Moreover, I try to switch from Skype to Ekiga; I have 4 Skype logins
> active at the moment, 2 on the same PC and another 2 on different
> PCs. All behind the same NAT router. No problems or clashes!

Skype obviously is listening on an a random unused port and
advertising the IP and port to other Skype users through it's
infrastructure. That's why it's possible to have multiple Skype logins
on the same PC.

Technically Ekiga is doing the same - it is using different port (that
is also different from the default one) for each configured account
and advertising it via registration. Just for some reason it
desperately wants to listen on the default port as well. As I
mentioned it can be argued that listening on 5060 is not that critical
and Ekiga should automagically choose a different port if 5060 is
taken. Anyway the Ekiga is already using different ports for each
account, and the only thing listening on 5060 is required for is
direct IP dialling. I don't think many people are using this feature,
it's kinda irrelevant with DHCP-assigned IPs and hey, we have mDNS for
calling people on the same LAN.


Now to sum up:

As already said, multiple Ekiga logins on different PCs behind the
same NAT should just work without any additional setup. If it doesn't
then it's a totally different problem related to NAT traversal.

To get multiple Ekiga logins working on the same PC (but with
different users, like you described), try changing the
/apps/ekiga/protocols/sip/listen_port (assuming you're using only SIP)
to something different than 5060 for one of the users (eg 5070, the
easiest way to do that is with gconf-editor - yum install gconf-editor
and it will show up in Applications/System Tools as Configuration
Editor). If that doesn't do the trick, try changing
/apps/ekiga/protocols/h323/listen_port as well, just to shut it up. If
you still get the same error after that I consider it a bug in Ekiga.

Running multiple Ekiga instances on the same PC and same user is not
possible but I see no reason why would one want to do that as you can
have multiple accounts active at the same time.

I hope this helps.

Best,
-- 
Ian