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in reply to Is a Perl Skype-like VoIP connection possible?

I regularly participate in Zoom, Webex and doxy.me web meetings with audio and video.

If all you want is an audio conference call, my telephone provider can do that. No computer programming or even computer required!

At one time, I had a Win XP laptop that just couldn't run Skype.

If your current machine is not capable of having a Zoom meeting, then I would just forget it.

We could get into details about how much bandwidth and latency requirements there are for this stuff. But I believe that is pointless.

If your machine cannot run a commercial conferencing app, the probability that you can re-create the functionality of said commercial app, is close to zero.

If all you want is a telephone conference call, use your telephone.

  • Comment on Re: Is a Perl Skype-like VoIP connection possible?

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Re^2: Is a Perl Skype-like VoIP connection possible?
by Polyglot (Chaplain) on Aug 31, 2021 at 02:40 UTC
    With all due respect, you sound like someone from a privileged first-world country which has more-or-less a "free" telephone call program. Such is hardly the case for my intended use.

    In my case, one of the callers would be based in a country listed by the United Nations as a "Least Developed Country." Not only would the calls be expensive, but there would be insufficient ability to earn the amount required to cover those costs within that country. Furthermore, the government of that country severely limits the infusion of funds from other nations to private individuals within the country, and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get any funding through, especially to a local (foreigners may be able to use their own foreign bank accounts to withdraw funds at an ATM).

    I am not specifying the name of the country for multiple reasons, not merely for my own privacy here. This is a country in which non-profit organizations are not recognized, foreign (and even local) foundations are near impossible to establish, and the government opposes any form of grass-roots community action that is not led out by the government itself. Books of many types cannot be sold within the country, or imported, including Bibles--such is the nature of its government. The full extent to which the government monitors internet communications within the country or across its borders is unknown. A secure encryption of all communications would be advisable.

    The circumstances are what they are. I would certainly not be considering going this route without reason. Honestly, this task is daunting to me and having looked into Djabberd and Jitsi and Asterisk, I have yet to find any plausible path to success.

    Djabberd did not install correctly on my machine, and seems to be requiring one missing library which is no longer available. Asterisk seems more for first-world countries with good telephony systems. And I just haven't figured out yet what Jitsi is or can do. The task may be beyond my skills, which I knew was a possibility when I asked the question--but one can never get an answer to that which one has not first asked.

    Without this form of communication, the international public-interest project it stood to benefit will be greatly hampered. I'm considering hiring some help, having found freelancer.com, but don't know yet how that works.

    Blessings,

    ~Polyglot~

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      You may want to check out mumble, cross platform clients, uses opus codec and provides low latency comms, even on low end hardware.

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        Thank you for the tip. That looks like it would work well. Unfortunately, it also requires a recent OS. The installer would not even open on the Mac, saying "no mountable file systems."

        Blessings,

        ~Polyglot~

[reply]
      Thank you for providing more details about your application situation. This matters!

      Yes, I am in a "first-world" country where telephone calls are cheap and the menu of included features are many. I did not intend to sound "snarky" - often the e-mail type communication can sound more aggressive than what is intended.

      In the type of country which you are describing, even getting a basic "land line" can be difficult. Sometimes you have to bribe the telephone guy. He disconnects a line from some other guy and gives it to you. Then that other guy with "dead air" instead of "dial tone" has to come up with a bribe to get the telephone guy to steal a line from somebody else! And so it goes...

      Surprisingly, the cell phone networks in some of these under-developed countries are quite good.

      Instead of some app that can run on some ancient computer, I would focus upon using an app that the guy in this 3rd world country can run on his cell phone. The available "computer power" in the cell phone is likely to exceed the power of an ancient computer.

      It is unclear to me why one of the many commercial apps won't work?

      Even if you have some basic encryption (and many of these apps do), the government of this country will know who that person is talking to!

      As a reference, my internet connection can support about 3 simultaneous video and audio connections. Whatever site you decide to host this applicaion will need more bandwidth than that. This typically means that your home computer cannot do it.

[reply]

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