[GnomeMeeting-devel-list] SIP and GnomeMeeting - please comment

[Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>]

Hello,

We are now talking about the future of GnomeMeeting, after 1.0 has been
released.

After 1.0 is released, I plan to add SIP support to GnomeMeeting
(provided that the libs I rely on are ready for that).

There is a discussion that I would like to start today, even though the
implementation is not for today.

---

First of all, a few questions:

- What is SIP? 
Another protocol than H.323, to do the same thing, with Instant
Messenging capabilities, and text based (like HTTP for example).

- Is it better than H.323?
Is vi better than Emacs? Is Emacs better than vi? ;)

Now the problem.

---

If we add SIP support to GnomeMeeting, it will add complexity. There
will be:

* preferences common to both H.323 and SIP (Personal Data, Audio
Devices, Video Devices, Audio codecs, Video codecs, ILS). 
* H.323-only preferences (Gatekeeper, Fast Start Tunneling)
* SIP-only preferences (SIP Proxy = same notion as a gatekeeper iirc)

Usability people would tell it is bad because normal users don't have to
know what is SIP and H.323. But well, I plan to add those preferences in
an Advanced category, so that only experienced users play with those
settings.

The URL format is nearly the same for H.323 and SIP:
- [alias ]hostname if you are not registered to a gatekeeper/SIP proxy
- alias[ hostname] if you are registered to a gatekeeper/SIP proxy

Now the real problem is that when the user wants to call another user,
he has to choose a protocol for calling him. If we choose SIP as default
protocol in GnomeMeeting v2.0, the user will use sip:// URL's by default
and we will have to tell him that if he wants to call old gnomemeeting's
or Netmeeting's, then he has to use an h323:// URL instead of a sip://
URL.

What do you think of that? Too complex?

If we keep ILS we can automate that by looking at the sappid:
- Netmeeting or old GnomeMeeting user => h323
- GnomeMeeting user => sip

Another problem is that if user Alain registers to the same gatekeeper
than user Damien, doing 
sip://Alain will not work
h323://Alain will work
Because the Gatekeeper is an H.323 thing, not an SIP thing. But we can
suppose that only advanced users are using H.323 Gatekeepers or SIP
proxies, and that they know what it is.

The manual will become complex.

Another direction that GM will take, is that we won't rely on GNOME
libraries for things we can do without them. Minimizing the dependancies
will be our main goal.

Thanks for having read me.

-- 
 _	Damien Sandras
(o-	GnomeMeeting: http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
//\	FOSDEM 2003:  http://www.fosdem.org
v_/_	H.323 phone:  callto://ils.seconix.com/dsandras seconix com