It’s been an interesting day around here. I have been using the Packet8 service for some time. The quality on Packet8 is pretty good, although I did dig into it and change the code from G.723 to G.711 to boost the quality somewhat. I have a feeling my old and funky firewall gets in the way of a really good experience on Packet8. I’ll probably need to reconfigure my firewall, or put up a new one, in order to get really good quality from Packet8.
So, today I bought a headset and downloaded Skype. Wow! It was easy to set up, and, as promised, punched through my firewall with ease. The most amazing thing was the quality of voice. Packet8 occasionally breaks up the way a cell phone does. Skype is like having the person you’re speaking to in the room right next to you. It’s really very impressive.
The other thing I bought today was a new PC, and a copy of Red Hat Linux. I brought them home, partitioned the disk for Linux, and then downloaded Vovida. Vovida is an open source project doing SIP based telephony on Linux. As of a few minutes ago, I have a functioning softswitch sitting next to me in my office. Yes, it’s a little crude, but for the cost of a PC, you too can enter the VoIP telephony business. Tomorrow we’ll try hooking up a few user agents on various PC’s around the house to it. Stay tuned!
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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