How to use other voip sip softphones than skype in linux

[Nils Kassube]

user1 wrote:
> I am skyping with a friend who has windows xp and I am using lucid.
> 
> The video and sound is often broken so the conversation is often
> difficult to follow.
> 
> Then I tried aMSN and it tells that it will not do video.
> 
> Then I tried linphone and the sound did not work.
> 
> Then I tried Ekiga and could not make it work.
> 
> Then I tried Kphone and that I could not make to work.

I'm using Ekiga to speak with a friend and our experience was that the
router was the main problem. First we used boxes which could also be
setup to connect to an analog telephone for SIP connections. While we
didn't use that option, the router blocked the standard SIP port (5060
UDP) anyway. Changing the ports on the Ekiga side and / or using port
forwarding rules helped partly and we could sometimes make a connection
but it wasn't really usable. Finally we used another router (WRT54GL) on
both sides which works fine for audio and video. We also tried with the
Windows version of Ekiga (on one side only) and it works as well.

Maybe your router has a similar problem as ours had? Or there could be
other problems related to NAT mentioned here [1], [2]. As you tried
various SIP programs and none worked, I would assume, that it is not
primarily a problem of those programs but more a problem of your
internet connection. As you probably know, Skype doesn't use the SIP
protocol and can therefore overcome the NAT and other problems.


Nils

[1] <http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Understanding_NAT/firewall_issues_with_SIP_clients_(eg_ekiga)>
[2] <http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Ekiga_behind_a_NAT_router>