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

[Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>]

Le ven 21/02/2003 à 11:38, Kilian Krause a écrit :

> well, the other opportunity would be a wrapper to tune "bad -
> not_so_bad - normal - better - best" connection quality, and this
> would set options for h323 and sip from some internal table.. although
> this would solve the problem of the usability, i guess it would make
> users call gm a "stupid app", as they can't configure each option,
> which is what most linux-users want (at least i would want to be able
> to tune without hacking source - unless it's perfect without user
> intervention, which would be best anyway ;)).. so even if we have that
> kind of setting, the expert options is a must, IMHO...
> 

We agree here.


> hmm, how about this:
> - have a "default protocol" in the prefs, which is either of them both

Agreed

> - use callto:// with that protocol and try to fallback to the
>   remaining one, if connection fails
> - have h323:// and sip:// for distinct protocol seletion..
> 

I discussed that with Equivalence yesterday, and they found it was a bad
idea. If we have a fallback, it will be very difficult to hide to the
user the fact that a first connection failed and that we are trying a
second one due to the structure of callbacks in OPAL.

We can do some guessing by looking at ports the remote application has
opened : 1720 => H323; if not, then go for SIP. That's another idea, but
that approach won't work if the remote application is not using standard
ports.

So we have several solutions here :

1) Try to have one unique URL (callto), and hide things to the user.
Doing some guessing and so on. I fear it gives more problems and it is
sad to not use SIP URL's by default as they are standardised.

2) Choose SIP as default, and have 2 URLs: sip:// and h323://. We would
keep h323:// for h323 applications, but we would suppose GM users are
using sip:// and ship with sip:// as default. 

That would be harder for users using gatekeepers, as they would have to
know they have to use h323:// to make calls using the gatekeeper, but
who uses a gatekeeper is an advanced users and knows that gatekeeper =
h323.

If you use ILS, then you can determine if you have to call using h323 or
SIP.

3) Start a second project, with a few #ifdef and have an
H323-GnomeMeeting and a SIP-GnomeMeeting incompatible between them.

4) Drop H.323 support and tell to users to use the old GM for H.323, and
to switch to the new one for SIP.


What would you choose? 
I would choose 2), and I would keep ILS/LDAP, for both SIP and H.323,
even if SIP adds other features for finding users.
The problem is that callto://ils.seconix.com/dsandras seconix com would
still work independantly of the protocol. So what would we do? Keep
h323, sip and callto ? Or rename the
callto://ils.seconix.com/dsandras seconix com into ils:// ?
That way we have standard h323://, standard sip:// (default), and ils://
?

-- 
 _	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