WengoPhone
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (October 2007) |
| WengoPhone | |
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| Developed by | OpenWengo developers |
| Initial release | ? |
| Stable release | 2.1.2 (2007-08-24) [+/−] |
| Preview release | 2.2 alpha 2 (2007-09-25) [+/−] |
| Written in | C/C++ |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| Available in | ? |
| Genre | VoIP/instant messaging service |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | http://openwengo.org/ |
WengoPhone is a free software SIP compliant VoIP client developed by the OpenWengo community under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It allows users to speak to other users of SIP compliant VoIP software at no cost. It also allows users to call landlines, cellphones, send SMS and make video calls. None of these functionalities are tied to a particular SIP provider and can be used with any provider available on the market.
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[edit] History
WengoPhone's development started on September 2004. The first published version was released as 0.949. Classic has gone through a number of different releases, up to 0.99 RC8.
WengoPhone NG's development started at the end of the year 2005. Latest version is 2.1.2 (as of September 2007).
A WengoPhone Firefox extension has also been published, which is available on Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
28 Jan. 2008: Wengo The original sponsor of WengoPhone transferred the sponsorship of the project to MBDSYS [1], who will call it QuteCom.
15 May 2008: osAlliance [2] presents kvats [3] as a branded 2.2 version of WengoPhone / QuteCom with the preferred SIP provider A1, a brand of mobilkom austria.
[edit] Calls
PC-to-PC calls are Hi-Fi quality and use several codecs such as ILBC, AMR-WB, PCMA, PCMU, AMR and GSM. It is possible to start a conversation with other users of the same software or any other software that is SIP compliant such as Gizmo. WengoPhone also allows users to make video calls using ffmpeg. Since version 2.1 WengoPhone allows IM chats with MSN, YIM, AIM, ICQ and Jabber users. This has been achieved by using libgaim library.[4]
Concerning calls to landlines, the default server configuration is the one from Wengo which is the primary sponsor of the OpenWengo project. It is however possible to use other servers. This provides users an economic advantage as they can choose the SIP provider according to how much they charge per minute and not according to the software they use.
Since version 2.1 WengoPhone can now also be used with any SIP provider. [5]
[edit] Protocol
The protocol being used is standard SIP.
[edit] User interface
The GUI is similar to those of other VoIP softphones such as Gizmo or Skype. From the main GUI, one can access through tabs the contact list, the list of calls but also the user SIP account. Technically, it is written in Qt/C++.
[edit] Particularities
Particularities of the WengoPhone are:
- SIP compliance
- Provider agnostic
- Allows users to send SMS to France
- NAT traversal
- Cross-platform
- Audio smileys
- Qt-based GUI
- chatting with MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and Jabber users
[edit] Limitations
The main limitations of the WengoPhone such as:
- it uses SIP SIMPLE as its protocol for text messaging; this is not often used by other softphones, which prefer XMPP (although XMPP/Jabber is available for using with separate account).
- Lack of true privacy features such as encryption. A beta AES-128 encryption using SRTP is available since 2.1 version of WengoPhone.
- Needs a broadband connection, unusable on dial-up connections (unlike Skype)
- Does not support older versions of Windows like Windows 98 and Millennium
- Does not support H.261, and sends wrong H.263 packets, preventing communication with other videophones.
- Does not support audio conferences with more than 3 people.
