[Ekiga-list] Linphone and Ekiga communication attempts - was Re: Any prospect of Ekiga being ported to MacOS

[Bret Busby <bret busby net>]

On Wed, 20 Feb 2013, el_gallo_azul wrote:

> 1. I received notification of your call (in my case, both my landline phone and my smart mobile phone ring), 
> and answered using the landline.
>
> 2. I could not hear anything on the other end.
>
> 3. I checked the phone handset and it said 'Talking' which means that as far as the phone is concerned, the 
> call is still connected.
>
> 4. I worked out later that I had two instances of my ekiga.net account registered at the time you called. One 
> was in the VoIP settings of my modem, and the other was the CSipSimple app on my smartphone.
>
> 5. I Eventually hung up the landline phone, and went and had a look at the smartphone. The app CSipSimple 
> reported a missed call, and had a record of your call because it said 'Bret Busby'.
>
> 6. I was having a look at the record of the call, to try and work out what had happened. During this process, 
> I fouled things up. It looks like I selected all call history, and then deleted them. So unfortunately, I am 
> not able to comment on the details of the record of your call reported from CSipSimple.
>
> > Anyway, if you could advise what, if anything, shows in your event history, for that attempt, it would be 
> > good.
>
> No can do.
>
> 7. I would be interested to see if I need to change my SIP configuration or not, which means receiving a few 
> calls in a row to test my landline phone and my smartphone.
>
>
>  
> Greg Flint
>
> PO Box 642 
> Parap 
> NT 0804 
> Australia
>
> Phone +61 (0)8 8945 1725
> Mobile +61 (0)428 279 021
> Australian Central Standard Time (CST) = GMT + 9.5
> sip: el_gallo_azul ekiga net
> sip: 473936 sip diamondcard us
> sip: 0889451725 sip internode on net

Hello.

A couple of things occurred to me about this, which I posted to the 
Linphone list (although, subsequent messages posted to that list, by 
other people, appear to indicate a lack of technical support for 
Linphone, by the developers).

The first, is that, when I called you, I was using the default settings 
for each of my applicable devices. In Ekiga, I had to change the device 
setting for the microphone, and I changed it to what I had set up for 
Skype. In Linphone, I was unable to find provision of an Echo Test Call 
facility, thjat both Ekiga and Skype provide, so that, in Ekiga and 
Skype, a user can check the functionality of the devices and their 
settings, and, find whether what the user has set up, actually works.

As there appears to be no provision of that, in Linphone, I have no way 
of testing and adjusting my device settings, to ensure that the devices 
are properly set up.

The second thing, is that when run ning each softphone software 
application for the first time, Skype and Ekiga, from memory, prompt for 
the setting up of a SIP account, so as to enable the user to make calls 
across the Internet. Linphone does not do this, and, instead, sets up a 
default SIP address, using the format <username>@<users_IP_address>, 
and, the IP address can, as is shown in my case, the IP address within 
the LAN, which I do not want to be published on the Internet.

I subsequently found that that default SIP address supposedly allows for 
cals within, and, only within, a LAN, and that, to call across the 
Internet, a SIP accopunt that needs to be otherwise set up, is required.

On the Linphone web site home page, on the left side, is a menu, with 
one option being free SIP account.

In clicking that, I was led through the procedure for setting up a SIP 
account hosted by Linphone.

It was not made clear that this is required, to make calls across the 
Internet.

And, it is not intuiotive, especially when Linphone automatically 
creates a default SIP address, which, would appear to be all that is 
required for making calls across the Internet.

The "Free SIP account" option in the menu on the Linphone web page, 
appears to be, without proceeding further with that option, by selecting 
the button, no more than information about the provision of that default 
SIP address.

So, I believe that Linphone has critical deficiencies in its interface 
and functionality.

Also, I note that, in two attempts to send Chat messages to Greg 
(Linphone to Ekiga), on each occasion, clicking on the <Send> button, 
caused Linphone to crash (and the messages to be lost and not sent).

Another curious thing; when I contacted Greg from Linphone (me using 
Linphone to call Greg at his Ekiga SIP address), whilst the call showed 
within Linphone, to have been successful, neither he nor I could hear 
each other for the duration of each call attempt (after the ringing 
stopped, there was silence, and, after 30s of silence, I terminated each 
call).

But, at the end of each of those unsuccesful calls, Greg could call me 
(Ekiga account to Linphone account), successfully, and we could 
successfully sustain a conversation, in each call thus made from Greg to 
me.

So, calling Linphone to Ekiga, does not work, and,
calling Ekiga to Linphone, does work, apparently.

As I said to Greg, in one (or more) of the conversations, whilst the 
concept of Linphone (especially, that it supposedly covers the operating 
system platforms that it is supposed to cover, including MS Windows, 
Linux, and, Apple Mac OSX), appears to be good, the Linphone people 
have alot more work to do, to make it usable, and, at present, other 
than using it for testing communications with other softphone provision, 
such as testing for calling between Linphone and Ekiga, I would not 
bother with it again, until it is shown to be working properly.

--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
  Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  A Trilogy In Four Parts",
  written by Douglas Adams,
  published by Pan Books, 1992
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