Re: [Ekiga-list] Outbound use with routers and firewalls

[Christian Jaeger <chrjae gmail com>]

> OK, but they need to fix documentation and directions, if they have not
> already.

Who is they? Probably nobody working on Ekiga and related libraries is
paid for their work, and no volunteer is obliged to do anything.

> Currently there is a long, rambling section on use with firewalls and
> routers.

Where?

> Maybe that section in the wiki needs to be deleted or updated.

Well go ahead improving the wiki documentation. I've used the
Ekiga_behind_a_NAT_router page in the past, of course don't delete it.
Also you may not have realized yet just how broken nowayday's networks
are (and in how many different ways).

I totally share the opinion that voip through SIP isn't ready for
prime time, maybe partly because of the protocol (I don't know enough
about that), partly because the current clients have too many issues,
and then on top of that, on Linux the clients have to deal with the
most problematic Linux subsystem, sound. I totally agree that there
are just too many links that can break. If you want to have voip
without many issues your current best option is Skype. (Still SIP can
offer better sound quality, cheaper landline phone calls, but it has a
big price in terms of your own time currently.)

> If that is the problem, they need to display an error message
> instead of displaying nothing.

It's not something that happens in "normal" usage, only if a client
has been forcibly killed somehow (or possibly in suspend, not sure).
So *probably* the ALSA developers have never meant for an application
to see it locked for a longer time, hence probably nobody expected
application writers to deal with such situations. And yet ALSA is
written in a way that such situations *can* happen (I don't know *why*
they choose to use a locking infrastructure that won't release the
locks upon apps being killed. They *might* have a good reason, or then
maybe not.)

Ch.