Some time ago we found out that we do not need big machines
to establish phone calls any more.
Dialing IP addresses, however, was not quite what we had in
mind - especially when these IP addresses are changing every day.
Email addresses as SIP URL’s was more like what we were looking for.
Of course, there is Dynamic DNS and we used it. Soon after,
remembering our plan not to concentrate information anywhere,
we went on and created Homesip.net, an example for an almost
pure SIP Signaling service using the same IP update scheme via
HTTP known from Dynamic DNS, but again small and simple
enough to run on low-power embedded hardware.
After finding the service was running stable we were wishing
for more flexibility regarding call routing, management of more routers
within one domain and, most importantly, also enabling
User Agents behind non-Milkfish routers to join in and become
callable directly over the Internet.
We ended up with calling this low-level signaling tool DynSIP
because it is a dynamic SIP proxy service (not a PBX, sorry)
which can be updated by common Dynamic DNS Clients.
DynSIP is a practical and educative SIP signaling example which can
help the SIP learner to understand about signaling and call routing
within IP networks using email-like addresses.
The service can be used completely independent of your provider,
internet or telephony, and does not require certain firmwares running
on your router. This way it complements the simple Milkfish embedded
SIP router concept with simple SIP signaling between routers.
The one precondition existing, however, is that you need a working
telephony setup BEFORE using the service, since DynSIP will enhance
your already existing signaling and not substitute it.
With the various Milkfish Firmwares available in the meantime you
do not even depend on commercial telephony providers to achieve
the preconditions for DynSIP.
In summary, as our contribution towards user-managed IP signaling
a public Dynamic SIP Service is freely available for beta testing now
and we would like to invite you to use it and help us improve it.
The outdated Homesip.net service will remain active until end of 2009.
Users are advised already to consider using DynSIP.org .
Please feel free to state your opinion or comments in our forum.
