[Freeswitch-users] mod_opal - call charged before H.225 connect

[Vlasis Hatzistavrou (KTI)]

Claudiu Filip wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Wednesday, October 7, 2009, 3:58:20 AM, Anthony M. wrote:
>> barely get anybody asking about h.323.
> 
> 
> H323 may not be popular for small ITSPs or small/medium PBXes, but
> it's widely used by the big players.. and freeswitch doesnt share the
> same goals with asterisk.
> 
> 
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> 
> Claudiu Filip
> 

I have to agree with Filip, H323 is not popular (or sometimes even 
known) to the VoIP end user and small PBX community. In fact many VoIP 
users that I've talked with even believe that VoIP started with SIP, 
which is not true.

H323 although diminishing in usage is still used among voice carriers 
because it better resembles telephony environments and is not prone to 
errors and problems of SIP (example: if there is a network error in 
mid-call H323 uses TCP for signaling and therefore almost immediately 
detects the error to hang-up the call, while SIP _typically_ uses UDP 
and cannot detect such issues via signaling but only if a media gateway 
monitors RTP activity etc.).

As it is already pointed out, many carriers switch to SIP steadily, but 
still H323 is important for carrier-to carrier interconnection.

FreeSWITCH is positioned/advertised as a high-capacity softswitch (not 
just a SME PBX) which implies interconnection with large carriers (who 
still prefer H323).

There are many SIP platforms out there, open source and closed source 
that can do SIP (most of them pretty good, some of them excellent).

There are many closed source platforms that can do SIP and H323 pretty 
good (and some of them excellent).

However, there is no open source platform that can do BOTH SIP and H323 
REALLY good. That could be a competitive advantage for an open source 
platform...

NOTE: All the above is just academic discussion. A reply to the above in 
the spirit "put your money where your mouth is" is not really 
constructive and will be countered by a series of valid arguments 
against it.

Best regards,
Vlasis Hatzistavrou.