OT - Skype alternative?

Char Jackson wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2017 09:10:14 -0400, Paul wrote:

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| This also works on the public internet, provided that the
| two machines have public IP addresses or appropriate firewall rules.
|

Returning to the earlier question, do I have
a unique IP? I doubt it.

(Replying to Mayayana here, since I don't otherwise see his posts)

Your cable modem requests a single IP address on your behalf and assigns
it to the first device that you connect to the modem. That could be a
PC, a router, whatever. From that point on, you have (or rather, that
device has) a unique IP address.

My understanding is that
the cable neighborhood has a unique IP and the
cable company handles the local delivery.

That has never been the case.

(Remember in the early days of cable how people
were accidentally seeing each others' desktops
in Network Neighborhood?)

Fixed with the advent of something called Baseline Privacy, implemented
somewhere around 2000, give or take. The explanation for why it happened
in the first place is long and boring.

When I got VOIP here, the provider wisely offered a
two week period with a "trial" phone number. I got to
keep my POTS phone in a functional state for those
two weeks (before number portability brought the
phone number to the new provider).

And it took me a week of testing before
I was reasonably happy. I bought a second physical
snip
What that test did not uncover, is the VOIP server
drops a call, after the call reaches two hours of
runtime. I neglected to do timeout testing... Oh, well.

Paul,
With the purchase of an Obihai VoIP adapter, you get pre-configured
access to Google Voice, Google's free VoIP service. It works perfectly,
but calls are dropped every three hours. So now you have two data
points, one showing two hours and one showing three. I use the VoIP
service from my cable company, but it's not free. $4.99 a month gets me
unlimited calls of unlimited duration, or so they say. I think about 15
hours is the longest call I've had. Network troubleshooting can really
drag on.


Well, POTS can have timeouts too. But usually they're a bit
longer. POTS won't stay up forever. The timeout could be somewhere
in the 12-24 hour vicinity. People who used to do long downloads
over dialup probably know this value with great precision :-)

I have to admit, the package I got isn't "the best", and the
only advantage is the VOIP and ADSL are on the same bill at
the end of the month. My plan doesn't have E911 either, which
sucks. If I were to phone 911 right now, nobody knows where I am.

Paul

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| The thing is, if you know the IP address of the other party
| (say, the person sends it to you by email, five minutes
| before your call), then it should be possible to do video
| and audio transport, with no frills at all. Sending the IP
| by email, handles the most common case of the ISP using
| DHCP for address assignment to ISP customers.
|
| I think you understand this.
|

In theory, I guess. But does it really work that way?
I have a relatively fixed IP from a cable company, but
my understanding is that cable service is a neighborhood
thing. That there might be 500 customers on my IP
address.
Even so, I've got multiple machines here. So maybe
there has to be an external connection point? That's
the part that's not clear to me. how does something
like Team Viewer or other remote desktop software
work? Do those require connecting to a common server?

You're right that I'm looking for the cleanest, but
it also has to be something that others can install.
In this case, my friend wants to talk to a pensioner
in Britain, with a Windows PC, a shoestring budget,
and when asked what kind of computer he has, he
says "Lenovo". So he may not even know that he
has Windows. (And who knows about Britain? Maybe
Lenovo also sells Linux boxes there?)

If I found something really clean and simple I might
even use it myself, to video chat with old flames.



I tested the Linphone here.

1) Works on Win10 15063.
2) Crashed on Win10 10586 (right when picking up a call).
3) Linux version in Ubuntu 17.04 worked, but resolution of
video during call was reduced to 320x240 (and the LAN is
GbE). Preferences had been set to 640x480 on both ends.

Since 15063 has Frameserve on video, it behaved a bit strangely
at first. I had to uninstall the software, delete the bin and lib
folders in Program Files (x86) after a reboot, then try installing
again. And for some reason, it could see the webcam then.

The 10586 laptop didn't have trouble with the initial install,
or the setting of preferences, but the crash on receipt of a call,
I couldn't fix that.

The Linux version worked, but I couldn't tell which webcam was
which, in the Settings panel.

Call syntax used:

# When calling the Windows Linphone

# When calling the Ubuntu installation

There was no particular need to set up any SIP stuff or
use the Linphone "free" SIP server to find the recipient.
But because everything was working so "smoothly", I didn't
spend time on a network analysis. All machines are now
restored from backup, and toys put away.

So that was just some LAN testing, to see if it's worth
using or not. I would say "it worked about as smoothly
as a copy of AMCAP". If you see some story about
somebodies 86 year old grandma setting it up, my
guess would be probably not. Granny would be ****ed
if she was using my copy of Win10 10586 (old release)
with the crash on call receipt. Granny would need
her Visual Studio and debugger or something :-)

Paul

"Mayayana" on Mon, 31 Jul 2017 08:09:26
-0400 typed in alt.windows7.general the following:

| Well, at least (potentially), you can now take
| two webcams and "talk to yourself" on the same
| LAN segment, using your new Linphone :-) I can't wait
| to test mine out.
|

Yes. What'll they think of next, huh? But
before I got a chance to try that out I came
across another gem that looks even better:
YellDownstairs v. 1.04 beta.

Ah yes, the original "Voice Activated Interface."

So far it seems to work quite well, as long as there isn't a loud
truck driving by.

Always there are signal to noise issue, eh no?

And it doesn't require any special hardware other than functional vocal
cords.


Yep. And I don't have to start anything in order to stop.

tschus
pyotr
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

On 7/27/17 6:45 PM, Mayayana wrote:
I just went through a maddening session
of Microsoft sleaze for a friend. Skype said
her account "had problems". It turned out
they were trying to force her to set up an
outlook.com account without admitting that
was their plan. They pretended there was a
mixup and then pretended there was a security
issue. But once she set up outlook.com, presto,
the mixup and the need for a new password
magically disappeared. Skype came up, but not
before showing a window that said:

"There have been no recent purchases from
this account. Let's go shopping!"

Maybe people are used to this kind of thing. I
was amazed at the bald-faced sleaze of it all.
Anyway.... I don't use Skype or anything like
it. I wonder if there's some other alternative
that works well and isn't so slimy. What do people
like? What about if some friends are on Mac
or Linux? Do other programs work on those?
What is this class of program even called?

Hi, Mayayana,

Yep, late to this thread. LOL

I don't have any alternatives to suggest, other than Yahoo Messenger
which I gave up on when they did a complete rewrite and removed a lot of
features. I haven't checked since I removed it from my computers, so
they could have added the features back.

I skype with just one person on a regular basis, and we've not seen
anything like what your friend saw. My friend has 8.1, and I've got it
on W7, W8.1, W10, Mac El Capitan, and Linux Mint 18.0 Sarah.

But, here's what I wonder...

Does she sign into Skype using a Microsoft account? We don't, even
though we each have one. Neither do I use my Apple account for
anything, except when I go to the App Store to see what's available there.

So I'm wondering if by using a Microsoft account, that gave MS the
opening they needed to do that?


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 53.0.2 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 52.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

"Ken Springer" wrote

| Does she sign into Skype using a Microsoft account?

No. That seemed to be the cause of the problem.
They were forcing her to create one, and then trying
to redirect her into shopping options. My impression
was that it was a marketing scam: For anyone not
already using MS services, coerce them to sign up
in the hope that they'll hang around MS properties
more, maybe use outlook.com email, then be exposed
to MS spam.

Maybe you didn't see the same thing because you
already have an account. She's not forced to sign in
with the outlook.com account. She was just forced
to get one. The alleged reason was for security -- that
she needed another email for security confirmation or
some such. But nothing worked to satisfy that demand
until she took the option to sign up for an outlook.com
account. Now Skype is working fine, despite that she
hasn't actually set up outlook.com email and has no
plan to ever log into anything Microsoft.


I can't say for sure. All I know is what I saw: Skype
suddenly had a problem with her account. Going through
the obvious steps had no effect. Getting an outlook.com
account solved the problem and brought us to some
kind of shopping and ads screen, which I guess must have
been the Outlook portal. But it actually did say something
crass at the top to the effect of, "You haven't been buying
much lately. Let's go shopping!" Then we closed that. Then
Skype was working again.

I don't use any of these products so it's somewhat new
to me, but I have noticed articles about both security
and privacy problems with Skype in the past. So I was
prompted to get a handle on it and figure out the options.
I figured maybe there are safer and more civilized options
that are less well known.
I can't say that I really understand it any better now.

And I still don't understand the actual mechanics involved,
and the technical options available, in regard to
communicating directly with another machine across
the Internet. I don't understand why there aren't simple
relays somewhere, where two people can get some kind
of IP and passcode, then both connect to the relay.
But in asking about that it seems clear that no one here
really understands it either. So my only guess is that
companies like Skype(MS) or Team Viewer must be acting
as commercial versions of such a relay.

That seems to make sense. I don't see how anyone
could call directly to a remote machine that's not a server
operating at a dedicated IP address. And ISPs moved to
block that option for non-business customers many years
ago. So sharing an Internet connection point seems to
be necessary. But the the question becomes: What's the
possible variety -- and respective functionality -- of
Internet communication relays?

Part of the reason I find it all so hard to grasp is that
I don't use any similar products and don't consider them
to be safe. But that's a different issue: Whether remote
calling could be done in such a way as to avoid remote
networking vulnerabilities that accout for so many online
security issues.

On 8/19/17 6:36 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| Does she sign into Skype using a Microsoft account?

No. That seemed to be the cause of the problem.
They were forcing her to create one, and then trying
to redirect her into shopping options. My impression
was that it was a marketing scam: For anyone not
already using MS services, coerce them to sign up
in the hope that they'll hang around MS properties
more, maybe use outlook.com email, then be exposed
to MS spam.

Maybe you didn't see the same thing because you
already have an account. She's not forced to sign in
with the outlook.com account. She was just forced
to get one. The alleged reason was for security -- that
she needed another email for security confirmation or
some such. But nothing worked to satisfy that demand
until she took the option to sign up for an outlook.com
account. Now Skype is working fine, despite that she
hasn't actually set up outlook.com email and has no
plan to ever log into anything Microsoft.

And she's using Windows 7, I'll assume. Did she sign up for the
Microsoft Store, and download and install Skype from there?

That version of Skype is different from the desktop program. We use the
desktop version that you download and install like any other program.

When you install W10 (I don't know about 8.1), the MS Store version is
installed and displayed as a tile, just awaitin' for you to log in. I
think it's a Live Tile, too. On my W10, I turned the tile off and
removed it from the W10 Start Menu. But I didn't uninstall the store
version from the computer.

If it is the desktop version, I wonder what would happen if you
uninstalled Skype, cleaned the system from all references to Skype, then
reinstall and login with a local account.


I can't say for sure. All I know is what I saw: Skype
suddenly had a problem with her account. Going through
the obvious steps had no effect. Getting an outlook.com
account solved the problem and brought us to some
kind of shopping and ads screen, which I guess must have
been the Outlook portal. But it actually did say something
crass at the top to the effect of, "You haven't been buying
much lately. Let's go shopping!" Then we closed that. Then
Skype was working again.

Even on the desktop version, you'll get ads, but what you see for ads
seems to vary by the OS. What I see in Windows is slightly different
than what I see on this Mac.
I don't use any of these products so it's somewhat new
to me, but I have noticed articles about both security
and privacy problems with Skype in the past. So I was
prompted to get a handle on it and figure out the options.
I figured maybe there are safer and more civilized options
that are less well known.
I can't say that I really understand it any better now.

And I still don't understand the actual mechanics involved,
and the technical options available, in regard to
communicating directly with another machine across
the Internet. I don't understand why there aren't simple
relays somewhere, where two people can get some kind
of IP and passcode, then both connect to the relay.
But in asking about that it seems clear that no one here
really understands it either. So my only guess is that
companies like Skype(MS) or Team Viewer must be acting
as commercial versions of such a relay.

Teamviewer assigns each computer a unique ID number, so they must be
keeping some kind of records of who's who on their servers.

That seems to make sense. I don't see how anyone
could call directly to a remote machine that's not a server
operating at a dedicated IP address. And ISPs moved to
block that option for non-business customers many years
ago. So sharing an Internet connection point seems to
be necessary. But the the question becomes: What's the
possible variety -- and respective functionality -- of
Internet communication relays?

Part of the reason I find it all so hard to grasp is that
I don't use any similar products and don't consider them
to be safe. But that's a different issue: Whether remote
calling could be done in such a way as to avoid remote
networking vulnerabilities that accout for so many online
security issues.




--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 53.0.2 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 52.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"