Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] SIP and proxies

[Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>]

Hi,

Le samedi 30 avril 2005 à 14:41 -0400, syfou users sourceforge net a
écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> I really like GnomeMeeting, it is really usable and standards-compliant: 
> a big thank to the developers.
> 

Thanks,

> I have a minor irritation with it though, that turns out to be a major one 
> for many of my friends and family, and that make them use alternative VoIP 
> softwares: the firewall/proxy problem -- the inability in too many 
> circumstances to establish proper connection with someone behind 
> some firewall, or a NAT (either hardware or software) or some sort of 
> proxy.
> 
> Of course, almost all those situations can be sorted out with a bit of 
> configuration, but I have the feeling that a big sell point of skype, for 
> instance, is that it just work out of the box in all cases.
> 
> GnomeMeeting already has STUN for diagnostic, but wouldn't it be nice if 
> It could just use some third party tcp broker to establish p2p-like 
> connections when the reception caller is not publicly reachable?
> 

There are 2 possibilities :
- either you strictly respect H.323 and SIP and ...
- or you introduce your own protocol

If you want to respect standards, having a peer 2 peer view is not
possible. What skype is doing is that if both peers are behind NAT, the
call is proxied by a third user transparently, and it works. It wouldn't
work for video though I think because proxying audio is light, but for
video, it is different....

So the only possibility for us would be to provide free public proxies,
usable by everyone, but I don't have the money to do so. 

However, it is possible. There are open source proxies for SIP, easy to
use, easy to install, and GnomeMeeting already supports it.

> I will not go into too much details, since I do not know what you will 
> think, but my idea was some kind of TCP middleman on a public IP 
> interface, similar to socks, that would just help establish and relay the 
> traffic between two hosts, regardless of their masquerading state, etc.
> 
> Is this a good idea, or is this just me being misinformed or targeting a 
> problem that isn't there?
> 
-- 
 _      Damien Sandras
(o-     GnomeMeeting: http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
//\     FOSDEM 2005 : http://www.fosdem.org
v_/_    H.323 phone : callto:ils.seconix.com/dsandras seconix com