December 04 2007

SIP Clients

We are usually talking about VoIP as it pertains to the enterprise here, but we haven’t touched on what clients to use.  Well, fret no more, here’s a list of SIP clients that you can use on your computer. Great for road warriors with a need to be connected to the office:

Free software

Proprietary freeware

  • RadiusCat for Windows, SIP RADIUS AAA Billing Software
  • CounterPath X-Lite for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
  • The Cornfed SIP User Agent for Linux by Cornfed Systems is available with Command-Line Interface (CLI) and Gnome GUI clients.
  • Gizmo Project for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Symbian, primarily used for the SIPphone network
  • FWD.Communicator is softphone for Windows. It allows audio and video and IM.
  • SightSpeed for Windows and Mac OS X. G.711, iLBC, Speex and H.263 codecs
  • SJphone runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and PocketPC.
  • Tivi runs on Windows
  • NCH Swift Sound Express Talk, GSM, uLaw, ALaw and PCM codecs
  • 3CX Phone for Windows - a free SIP client for Windows.
  • Mindspring, for Windows. Voice, chatting, and file-sharing capabilities.
  • Phoner for Windows, G.711, iLBC, G.726, GSM and Speex codecs
  • PhonerLite for Windows, G.711, iLBC, G.726, GSM and Speex codecs
  • fring enables users to make mVoIP (mobile VoIP) calls with any SIP provider even from non-SIP enabled phones
  • ZOIPER Free IAX and SIP softphone, compatible with the Asterisk open-source project for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X

Commercial proprietary software

  • AGEphone runs on Windows, PocketPC and Windows Mobile.
  • Eyeball Messenger SIP Softphone supports voice, video and IM. STUN TURN & ICE standards based
  • Hampton Software’s Articulation runs on Palm OS 5 handhelds including Clie and Treo.
  • Mirial Softphone - SIP/H.323 software client for professional video conferencing supporting HD 720p and H.264 up to 2Mbps
  • Movial PC, Symbian and Windows CE Clients
  • NEC SP30 for Windows, Support Voice, Video and collaboration.
  • Pingtel, Java-based for Windows.
  • VeriCall Edge for voice/video over IP calling runs on embedded Linux.
  • Virbiage Cubix for Windows, Inter-Asterisk eXchange Protocol, G.711, iLBC, G.729, GSM and Speex codecs
  • CounterPath X-Pro for Windows
  • SightSpeed for Windows and Apple OSX G.711, iLBC, ADPCM and Speex codecs
  • ComunIP ClicVoz runs on Windows, supports ICE (draft-17), HTTPS tunnel to work behind blocked/misconfigured enterprise firewalls, G.711, iLBC, G.726, G.729, GSM and Speex codecs, supports AEC, VAD and AGC, adaptative jitter buffer control
  • Confero runs on Windows and Linux. Primarily targeted at high quality video conferencing. Examples of this is tele-medicine applications doing remote diagnostics.
  • Robust SIP ActiveX is a SIP ActiveX control and also a SIP Client Phone. It can be displayed in Internet Explorer, or easily integrated into any Windows applications. It is NAT friendly, and supports G.711, iLBC, GSM, and Speex codecs. PCBest Network also provide other SIP ActiveX sulutions, for example, LiveTalk for companies which want to transfer customers’ voice from WEB to their applications.

This list is from Wikipedia, here’s the link to the Wiki.

Filed Under (Software) by Nadeem
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November 30 2007

VoIP and your data network

It is tempting to assume that you can simply implement VoIP on your existing network, as most vendors claim, and everything will just work, this is not the case.

For VoIP to be successful you have to have a certain level of service in place. Unlike data packets, voice packets must make it to their destination, if a packet is lost, it cannot be resent without repercussions.

So before you start planning your VoIP roll-out, do some home work, you might have to upgrade your network switches to prioritize voice traffic, you may have to upgrade your routers or even network wiring.

Here is an interesting article from Network World about VoIP analysis tools that will help you along the way.

Remember, not all switches/routers are the same; There is a difference between a high dollar (HP Procurve, Cisco, etc.) switch and a low cost (Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc.) switch. I know both might say they support 10/100 MBPS, both might be managed but if you test both side by side in a lab, you will see the difference.

Always have some sort of network traffic sniffer/analyzer in your toolkit, sooner or later, you will need it. Ethereal is a good opensource network packet analyzer to have in your arsenal. Ethereal will let you see the traffic flowing back and forth on your network so you’re not running blind when problems arise with voice quality and end node connectivity.

Know what codec your VoIP devices are using, all codecs are not the same and voice quality along with bandwidth usage is heavily dependent on codec used.

Filed Under (Hardware, Networks, Software, Solutions) by Nadeem
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