Switching to VoIP

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

370

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

VoIP Vendors and Services

Telephony software is everywhere, and a majority of it is free. Much of it is open

source. It’s a good idea to experiment with as much of this stuff as you can, because

the VoIP family of technologies is evolving continuously. The capabilities and effi-

ciency of these tools rise daily.

Whether you use Linux, Solaris, Windows, or Macintosh, plenty of fully developed

softphones, servers, troubleshooting tools, APIs, and sample code are available.

What follows is a partial list of some excellent VoIP software and service providers.

Many of them have been used in projects throughout this book.

We’ll also briefly cover the growing list of vendors that manufacture modular and

turnkey telephony hardware.

Softphones and Instant Messaging Software

OhPhone

OhPhone and OhPhoneX are H.323 softphones that support Windows, Linux, and

Macintosh. Unlike NetMeeting, OhPhone is open source, but it is not as polished.

OhPhone is a part of the Open H.323 distribution (http://www.openh323.org).

X-Lite, X-Pro, and Eyebeam

Xten Networks produces several VoIP software products. No VoIP test lab is com-

plete without X-Lite, the company’s free SIP softphone for Windows, Mac, and thin-

client (web-based) setups. Chapter 11 contains a few projects that make use