Product Name: OpenH323 Gatekeeper - GnuGK
Product URL: http://www.gnugk.org/
Vendor: Open Source
Supported Protocols: H.323
Platform: Any platform where you can compile the OpenH323 Library (Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.)
Description:
Operational Experience: Some minor problem with Netmeeting. Netmeeting does not support Gatekeeper Discovery, thus you should directly configure the Gatekeeper address in the Advanced Calling Options. Netmeeting requests an incorrect bandwidth, disable bandwidth management to avoid problems with GnuGK. It has Radius, MySQL and LDAP support. Manual written in English, Chinese and Portuguese. It is used in many commercial applications and it has nice graphical interfaces to configure it, to monitor the registrations, to define groups of endpoints, to do call management, etc. Overall Evaluation: Simply the best Open Source Gatekeeper available nowadays. For technical support there is the Gatekeeper Users mailing list.
Product Name: VOCAL (Vovida Open Communication Application Library)
Product URL: http://www.vovida.org/
Vendor: Open Source
Supported Protocols: H.323, SIP, MGCP
Platform: Refer to http://www.vovida.org/applications/downloads/vocal/platform/1_5_0.html for an updated list (Linux, etc.)
Description:
Operational Experience: The VOCAL software includes a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based Redirect Server (RS), Feature Server (FS), Provisioning Server (PS), Marshal Server (MS) and Voice Mail Server (vmserver). Other applications are not included in the current release (1.5) and are: 1. SIP to MGCP translator 2. Policy server 3. Inet/Conference proxy server. 4. SNMP/NetMgnt 5. SIP to H323 Translator It has IPv6 Support and a lot of subsidiary application (from the site http://www.vovida.org). Unfortunately, provisioning currently requires valid IPv4 addresses. For an updated list of know limitation please refer to: http://www.vovida.org/downloads/vocal/1.5.0/doc/LIMITATIONS.txt. Overall Evaluation: All-in-one solution for small-medium size business unit. It needs complementary solutions to be deployed in tandem in order to become a distributed system (the management is still centralized with no possibility of interfacing to other domains).
Product Name: OpenMCU (H.323 Conferencing Server)
Product URL: http://www.openh323.org/code.html
Vendor: Open Source
Supported Protocols: H.323
Platform: Any platform where you can compile the OpenH323 Library (Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.)
Description:
Operational Experience: It can accept multiple simultaneous connections. From the first four clients that get connected, it accepts audio and video capabilities, from the following ones only audio. It determines which conference is required via the 'rooms' feature and adds the call to that conference. New rooms are created automatically and there is a default room for people who do not specify a room or cannot specify a room (e.g. NetMeeting). It initiates calls from the MCU to remote endpoints and supports audio loop-back mode in a specific room (ideal for setup of audio hardware and testing network performance). No dynamic configuration is possible; once the program is started the client is configured using the command line options (only statistics on call in progress and initiating new calls is possible). Overall Evaluation: MCU software requiring a performing hardware infrastructure in terms of shared memory it is using. Highly customization in terms of parameters (video compression and quality) makes it scalable in terms of computational requirements. Really useful in case of multipoint conferencing. Drawbacks are the one of multipoint conferencing, i.e. it does not use multicast but multiple unicast connections.
Product Name: SIP Express Router
Product URL: http://iptel.org/ser
Vendor: iptel.org
Supported Protocols: SIP
Platform: POSIX-like systems
Description:
Ser or SIP Express Router is a very fast and flexible SIP (RFC3621) proxy server. Written entirely in C, ser can handle thousands calls per second even on low-budget hardware. A C Shell like scripting language provides full control over the server's behavior. It's modular architecture allows only required functionality to be loaded. Currently the following modules are available: digest authentication, CPL scripts, instant messaging, MySQL support, a presence agent, radius authentication, record routing, an SMS gateway, a jabber gateway, a transaction module, registrar and user location.
The server has been optimized for speed and is being used on a couple of major SIP servers. One drawback might be quite complicated configuration file. The configuration requires good knowledge of SIP.
Product Name: AppEngine
Product URL: http://www.dynamicsoft.com/prod_sol/AppEngine/appenginev4.php
Vendor: dynamicsoft
Supported Protocols: SIP
Platform: Sun Solaris
Description:
A SIP application server written in Java. The server implements Java SIP servlets which allow to create even complex SIP applications called servlets. The servlets can interact with HTTP servlets as well. Good documentation is available with many examples.
Product Name: Cisco IP/VC 3510 MCU
Product URL: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/ipvc/ipvc2_2/2_2mcurn.htm
Vendor: Cisco
Supported Protocols: H.323
Platform: N/A
Description:
This MCU is an older product, identical to the Radvision OnLan MCU, but OEMed by Cisco and currently not supported any more, as it has been replaced by the 3511 MCU. The 3510 is capable of connecting 12 participants at 384Kbps each, or a combination of conferences at different rates and different numbers of participants. The default hardware does not provide audio/video transcoding between participants, so conference settings must be matched by all. Continuous presence is supported, but with asymmetric video rates, i.e. each participant sends 384Kbps video but receives 4x384Kbps back from the MCU, for viewing 4 participating sites simultaneously. Check the IP/VC Products page at http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/ipvc/ipvc2_2/2_2mcurn.htm
Product Name: Cisco MCM gatekeeper
Product URL: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios122/122cgcr/fvvfax_c/vvf323gk.htm
Vendor: Cisco
Supported Protocols: H.323
Platform: Cisco router - IOS based
Description:
The Cisco Multimedia Conference Manager (MCM) is the name of the gatekeeper product bundled in special IOS feature sets (H.323 feature set) and can be installed on most Cisco routers, that may be performing as gateways at the same time. The MCM is mostly geared towards VoIP and in supporting basic H.323 interoperability, but a number of extra Cisco-proprietary features as well. It can also act as an H.323 proxy for serving H.323 clients behind firewalls. The API that has been developed by Cisco allows extensive control of gatekeeper events by an external application, but it requires significant development effort to bear fruits. Check the Cisco Gatekeeper External Interface Reference page at http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios122/rel_docs/gktmp4_1/index.htm