[LINK] There goes the neighbourhood...

[Kim Holburn]

The issue is that SIP/VOIP/H323 are free, open, braindead protocols designed by idiots who put IP addresses in the data part of the packet, use enormous ranges of ports when it could be done with one.  

They are hard enough to pass through firewalls when you want them to go through.  Every implementation, every brand and sometimes every model of device or software seems to use a different selection and range of ports.  

Oh and skype just works anywhere and works reasonably well.

On 2011/May/11, at 11:25 AM, Karl Auer wrote:

> On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 10:57 +1000, rene wrote:
>> Just curious about what is meant by "ubiquitous NAtting home router".
> 
> Virtually all home users and most business users are behind a NAT
> router. Hence "ubiquitous".
> 
>> Am I correct in being under the impression that the NAT problem can be 
>> solved, with any home router, if the person uses SIP client software 
>> configured to use a stun server (or does that not work with some/many 
>> routers)?
> 
> No, that'll work.
> 
>> Even if that method/solution does work with all home routers, it's imo no 
>> doubt far too 'complicated' for the most users (at least unless they've 
>> been lucky enough to have been told/heard about some SIP client that 
>> installs pre-configured to use a publicly usable stun server - don't know 
>> if there even still is any such client, but several years ago IIRC free 
>> SJPhone did - *and* the people they want to communicate with have also).
> 
> Ekiga etc will do all this. The problem is STUN servers! You need them.
> Skype solved the problem by distributing it, and essentially stealing
> bandwidth and CPU from anyone running Skype on a public IP address. It
> promotes these to "supernodes" and provides STUN-like services on them.
> 
> There's a good paper on it, though things may have moved on a bit since
> 2004:
> 
>   arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0412017
> 
> Regards, K.
> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Link mailing list
>> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
>> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer/                   +61-428-957160 (mob)
> 
> GPG fingerprint: DA41 51B1 1481 16E1 F7E2 B2E9 3007 14ED 5736 F687
> Old fingerprint: B386 7819 B227 2961 8301 C5A9 2EBC 754B CD97 0156
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request