July 05, 2005

The sincerest form of flattery

Well, I tried downloading Skype-clone Gizmo and making a call.

But it doesn’t work. Just hangs after trying to connect to the login server post-registration. I’ve got a bog-standard HP Windows XP laptop.

Remember, it’s not just free Internet telephony that counts. It’s free Internet telephony that just works.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:03 PM
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Comments

It's just SIP on top of UDP. Probably, you have to allow UDP on port 5060 (SIP) and port 5004 (RTP). I had the same problem. Yes, it sucks. That's why Skype rockz, you don't have to worry with this stuff, it's good old proprietary protocol on top of TCP (nat-friendly too). Simple people don't want to know about standard and VoIP protocols, they just to call everybody and have no worries with it.

Posted by: at July 5, 2005 03:42 PM

I recently witnessed the demonstration of yet another VoIP hopeful running on a moby (Vyke, if you must know). First of all it didn't work, then, when we were connected, there was a delay reminiscent of Neil Armstrong on the moon ("One small step for man, one giant leap for Vodafone..") and really dire sound. And this is on a service that owns quite a bit of its own fibre.

Posted by: at July 5, 2005 03:47 PM

Since Skype is proprietary I was hoping a SIP (therefore open) equivalent would come along. Maybe this is it since it appears to use SIP. But I am left wondering if it uses P2P technology because if not, the quality will be crap.

Posted by: at July 5, 2005 04:59 PM

There was a bug that affected a small number of Window's users. That was corrected within 36 hours of launch. Please give it another shot.

As far as the other questions and criticisms from the people above that have never even used Gizmo, we have done WAY more than simply do SIP on UDP. We are as agile at traversing NATs as Skype. People should try the client before making these assumptions. Second, like almost every VoIP service we do lots of P2P. However, we do not need users machines to route calls. We use a private fibre network for that, a strategy we share with little players like Google and Yahoo.

Jeff Bonforte
President, SIPphone, Inc.
GizmoProject.com

Posted by: at July 6, 2005 01:12 AM

Well, I tried it again, and it now gives a different error. Three strikes and you're out.

Posted by: at July 8, 2005 01:53 AM

Dear Jeff, I don't have any NAT gw, but I still had problems with the UDP traffic and the corporate firewall that protects me. Allowing port udp packets from 5060 port to my machine, solved the problem. But, I am the security guy round here. Others, had to bug me or send the usual mail-to-the-security-admins to allow them to use the Gizmo soft phone. With Skype and TCP I had no problems and even they can use some http proxy.

Posted by: at July 8, 2005 06:55 PM

Frederico: I don't get it. You are "the security guy" around there and you WANT software developers to disguise their data streams as though they were http? Once ALL IP flows are on port 80, then what for firewall admins...?

Posted by: at July 10, 2005 09:58 PM

Hi Steve. I'm talking here as a consumer guy who likes disruptive technologies and easy of use on applications. That's why I love Skype. But, as a 'security guy', things like Skype are a nightmare. Maybe stateful inspection could block it on port 80 or (argh) some sort of application gateway.

Posted by: at July 14, 2005 05:40 PM
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