Category: VoIP
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What Devices And Software Support The Opus Audio Codec? Here Is A List
Continue Reading: What Devices And Software Support The Opus Audio Codec? Here Is A ListWhat devices support the Opus audio codec? What softphones? hardphones? call servers? Obviously given that Opus is the “mandatory to implement” audio codec for WebRTC, it will be in many web browsers… but what other I was asked this question by a colleague recently and when I couldn’t easily find a list on the Opus codec web site, I turned to the VUC community inside of Google+ and posted there. The great folks there naturally were a huge help, and quickly came up with this list: UPDATE: No sooner had I hit “Publish” then I discovered that Wikipedia has a list of devices and software supporting the Opus codec. As that list is much longer than this one below, I’d encourage you to look at that list.
- Web browsers supporting WebRTC:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Softphones:
- Blink
- Counterpath Bria
- Jitsi
- Linphone
- Mumble
- (Maybe Skype? They talked about it.)
- “Hard” IP phones:
- Mobile applications:
- Acrobits (iOS)
- Counterpath Bria (iOS)
- csipsimple (Android)
- Switches / Call Servers / IP-PBXs:
What other devices or software supports the Opus codec? (Or what other lists are out there listing devices supporting the Opus codec?) Please do let me know either by comments…
- Web browsers supporting WebRTC:
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Don’t Miss Friday’s Live VUC Call! – Martin Geddes on “Rethinking Broadband and Voice”
Continue Reading: Don’t Miss Friday’s Live VUC Call! – Martin Geddes on “Rethinking Broadband and Voice”What are you doing tomorrow, Friday, December 6, 2013, at 12noon US Eastern (1700 UTC)? Would you like to join in to what should be an excellent conversation about the future of broadband networks, IP communications, telecom, etc.? If so, make plans to join the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) call happening live at 12 noon where the guest will be the ever-interesting Martin Geddes. The topic will be “Rethinking broadband and voice: Network Science and Hypervoice” and should prompt some vigorous discussion!
I’ve known Martin for many years now and have been a great fan of his analysis and writing ever since back in the days of his “Telepocalypse” blog. He’s truly a great thinker in the space and is also quite an enjoyable and fun speaker to listen to. We know each other well from the early days of VoIP blogging as well as the conference circuit, and I regularly read his email newsletter and other great content he puts out. He’s very active on Twitter as well.
Having said all that, I do have some fundamental disagreements with some of what he is advocating these days. I wrote about some of this disagreement last year and he and…
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Telefonica Shuts Down Jajah
Continue Reading: Telefonica Shuts Down JajahTheNextWeb reported yesterday that Telefonica is shutting down the Jajah VoIP service that they acquired back in 2009 for a reported $207 million. While certainly disappointing for the users and presumably for some staff, it’s not entirely unexpected. In the early pre-acquistion days, Jajah was doing some very cool things (ex. powering Yahoo!Voice, although that service has since faded) and was quite interesting to watch. Back when Alec Saunders was doing his daily “Squawk Box” podcast, we interviewed Jajah co-founder Roman Scharf on April 29, 2008 (you can still listen to the episode).However, ever since the Telefonica acquisition you didn’t hear a whole lot about them… although they did come out with an Android app in 2011 for calling Facebook contacts.
Telefonica isn’t saying anything yet publicly about why they are shutting down Jajah. Pretty much the entire Jajah website points to a single “shut down” page and the blog now only has an entry about the shutdown. Matt Marshall over on VentureBeat speculates that Jajah simply didn’t have any substantial revenue after voice traffic has been so commoditized – and that’s as good a suggestion as any.
So… goodbye to Jajah… best wishes to all the customers and…
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Linphone On iOS Now Supports The Opus Codec
Continue Reading: Linphone On iOS Now Supports The Opus CodecWhen updating my iPhone this week, I was extremely pleased to see the message in the attached screenshot that Linphone now supports the Opus audio codec. Somewhat strangely, I don’t see any mention of this Opus support (or even the 2.1 release for iOS) on the Linphone news page or even on the Linphone features page, but the mention of a “Linphone Web” release does also mention Opus, so I’ll assume this is real.I’ve written before about why the Opus code is so incredibly important if we want to truly deliver a richer and better communications experience than we’ve had with the traditional PSTN and so it is great to see this support coming in to Linphone. Linphone is certainly not the first SIP softphone to support Opus – there are a number of others out there, including Jitsi and Counterpath’s Bria (and X-Lite) – but it’s definitely great to see another softphone added to the mix. Hopefully we’ll also see this Opus support move to the desktop versions of Linphone (for Windows, OS X and Linux) as well.
Congrats to the Linphone team on making this happen!
P.S. Linphone also supports IPv6, ensuring that it will continue to…
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Can We Create A “Secure Caller ID” For VoIP? (Join Tomorrow’s STIR BOF To Learn More)
Continue Reading: Can We Create A “Secure Caller ID” For VoIP? (Join Tomorrow’s STIR BOF To Learn More)Can we create a “secure Caller ID” for IP-based communications, a.k.a. voice-over-IP (VoIP)? And specifically for VoIP based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)? Can we create a way to securely identify the origin of a call that can be used to combat robocalling, phishing and telephony denial-of-service (TDOS) attacks?
That is the challenge to be undertaken by the “Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR)” group meeting tomorrow morning, July 30, 2013, at 9:00 am in Berlin, Germany, as part of the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The meeting tomorrow is a “Birds Of a Feather (BOF)”, which in IETF language is a meeting to determine whether there is sufficient interest to create a formal “working group” to take on a new body of work within the IETF. The proposed “charter” for this new work begins:
Over the last decade, a growing set of problems have resulted from the lack of security mechanisms for attesting the origins of real-time communications. As with email, the claimed source identity of a SIP request is not verified, and this permits unauthorized use of source identities as part of deceptive and coercive activities, such as robocalling (bulk unsolicited commercial communications),…
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Why The Opus Codec Matters – Even If You Don’t Care About Audio
Continue Reading: Why The Opus Codec Matters – Even If You Don’t Care About AudioWhat makes the Opus codec so interesting? Why is there such a buzz about Opus right now? If you are not in telecom or doing anything with audio, why should you even remotely care about Opus?
In a word…
Innovation!
And because Opus has the potential to let us communicate with each other across the Internet with a richer and more natural sound. You will be able to hear people or music or presenters with much more clarity and more like you are right there with them.
Opus can help build a better user experience across the Internet.
You see, the reality is that today “real-time communication” using voice and video is increasingly being based on top of the Internet Protocol (IP), whether that communication is happening across the actual Internet or whether it is happening within private networks. If you’ve used Skype, Google+ Hangouts, any voice-over-IP (VoIP) softphones, any of the new WebRTC apps or any of the mobile smartphone apps that do voice or video, you’ve already been using IP-based real-time communication.
Dropping The Shackles Of The Legacy PSTN
Part of the beauty of the move to IP is that we no longer have to worry about the…
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Did Google REALLY Kill Off All XMPP/Jabber Support In Google+ Hangouts? It Still Seems To Partially Work
Continue Reading: Did Google REALLY Kill Off All XMPP/Jabber Support In Google+ Hangouts? It Still Seems To Partially WorkDid Google really kill off all of their support for XMPP (Jabber) in Google+ Hangouts? Or is it still there in a reduced form? Will they be bringing back more support? What is really going on here?
In my excitement yesterday about Google Voice now being integrated with Google+ Hangouts, I missed a huge negative side of the new Hangouts change that is being widely reported: the removal of support for the XMPP (Jabber) protocol and interoperability with third-party clients.
But yet a few moments ago I did have a chat from an external XMPP client (Apple’s “Messages” app) with Randy Resnick who received the message in a Google+ Hangout. I opened up a Google+ window in my browser and I could see the exchange happening there as well. Here’s a side-by-side shot of the exchange in both clients:
So what is going on here?
Reports Of Google Removing XMPP
This issue has been widely reported in many of the tech blogs and sites. Matt Landis covered this issue very well in his post: Hangouts Won’t Hangout With Other Messaging Vendors: Google’s New Unified Messaging Drops Open XMPP/Jabber Interop which then generated long threads on Reddit and Slashdot.
The Verge in…
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You Can Now Call Into Google+ From Regular Phones – Google Connects Google Voice To Hangouts
Continue Reading: You Can Now Call Into Google+ From Regular Phones – Google Connects Google Voice To HangoutsWant to hear the sound of Google further disrupting the world of telecom? If you have a Google Voice number and also use Google+ (as I do) with the Hangouts feature enabled, you’ll soon be hearing this new sound if you haven’t already.
UPDATE: I have written a follow-up post responding to several comments and expanding on several points.An Unexpected Ringing
Yesterday a random PR person called the phone number in the sidebar of this blog to pitch me on why I should write about her client. This phone number is through Google Voice and I knew by the fact that my cell phone and Skype both started ringing simultaneously that someone was calling that number.
But as I was deciding whether or not to actually answer the call, I realized that there was another “ringing” sound coming from my computer that I had not heard before. Flipping quickly through my browser windows I found my Google+ window where this box appeared at the top of the “Hangouts” sidebar on the right:
Now, of course, I HAD to answer the call, even though I knew from experience that most calls to that number are PR pitches. I clicked…
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At SIPNOC 2013 This Week Talking About VoIP And IPv6, DNSSEC … and Security, Of Course
Continue Reading: At SIPNOC 2013 This Week Talking About VoIP And IPv6, DNSSEC … and Security, Of CourseOne of the conferences I’ve found most interesting each year is the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) produced by the SIP Forum, a nonprofit industry association. Part of my interest is that it is only an educational conference, i.e. there’s no massive exhibit floor or anything… it’s all about education. It also brings together pretty much all the major players in the “IP communications” space – certainly within North America but also from around the world.
I’ll be there this week in Herndon, Virginia, talking about how VoIP can work over IPv6 and how DNSSEC can make VoIP more secure. The sessions I am directly involved with include:
- Panel Discussion: Anatomy of a VoIP DMZ
- VoIP Security BOF
- Panel Discussion: IPv6 and SIP – Myth or Reality?
- Who Are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help
There are quite a range of other topics on the SIPNOC 2013 agenda, including a number of other talks related to security.
It should be quite a good show and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m particularly looking forward to my “DNSSEC and VoIP” talk on Thursday as that is a topic I’ve not presented on before… but I think…