If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
#46
|
|||
|
|||
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 |
Ads |
#47
|
|||
|
|||
OT - Skype alternative?
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 |
#48
|
|||
|
|||
OT - Skype alternative?
"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? |
#49
|
|||
|
|||
OT - Skype alternative?
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!" |
#50
|
|||
|
|||
OT - Skype alternative?
"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. |
#51
|
|||
|
|||
OT - Skype alternative?
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!" |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|