O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

Session
VoIP is the New Black - Adventures with Open-Source SIP
Anthony Baxter, ekit

Track: Emerging Topics
Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Time: 10:45am - 11:30am
Location: E148
In late 2003, Baxter thought it would be an interesting exercise to attempt to implement Voice over IP purely in Python. Shtoom (shtoom.divmod.org) was the result. This is an implementation of SIP that includes a software phone (on Mac, Windows, Linux) with a variety of GUI frontends (7, as of early 2005) and different audio interfaces. It also includes a server side component to make it easier to write useful voice applications in a sane way. He has deliberately not over-promoted this project, and even so, the response has been extraordinary. There's a whole lot of people out there who want to work on and with VoIP, and would prefer to avoid the C++/Java route. There's also a huge number of people out there who are fascinated by almost anything to do with VoIP. It truly is this year's black. In this talk, Baxter is going to look at what he's learned about VoIP so far, where he wants to take the shtoom project, and also touch on where open-source VoIP can help us do some seriously neat stuff. In addition, he will try and demonstrate how and where you can use VoIP in day-to-day use - it's not just about cheap phonecalls!