Ekiga (formerly called GnomeMeeting) is a

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

and

video conferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

application for

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. It is distributed as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. It was the default VoIP client in

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

until October 2009, when it was replaced by

Empathy Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...

. Ekiga supports both the SIP and

H.323 H.323 is a recommendation from the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) that defines the protocols to provide audio-visual communication sessions on any packet network. The H.323 standard addresses call signaling and control, m ...

(based on

OPAL Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silica (SiO2·''n''H2O); its water content may range from 3 to 21% by weight, but is usually between 6 and 10%. Due to its amorphous property, it is classified as a mineraloid, unlike crystalline forms ...

) protocols and is fully interoperable with any other SIP compliant application and with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

NetMeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows Vista). It uses the H.323 protocol for videoconferencing, and is interoperable w ...

. It supports many high-quality audio and video

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or da ...

s. Ekiga was initially written by

Damien Sandras Damien Sandras is known in the free software community due to his work on GNOME, more specifically on Ekiga, the leading Open Source softphone for the Linux desktop. He is one of the founders of FOSDEM, an event dedicated to free software deve ...

in order to graduate from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). It is currently developed by a community-based team led by Sandras. The logo was designed based on his concept by Andreas Kwiatkowski. Ekiga.net was also a free and private SIP registrar, which enabled its members to originate and terminate (receive) calls from and to each other directly over the Internet. The service was discontinued at the end of 2018.

Features

Features of Ekiga include:

Integration

Ekiga is integrated with a number of different software packages and protocols such as

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...

directories registration and browsing along with support for

Novell Evolution GNOME Evolution (formerly Novell Evolution and Ximian Evolution, prior to Novell's 2003 acquisition of Ximian) is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with ...

so that contacts are shared between both programs and

zeroconf Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manu ...

( Apple Bonjour) support. It auto-detects devices including

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

, ALSA and legacy OSS soundcards,

Video4linux Video4Linux (V4L for short) is a collection of device drivers and an API for supporting realtime video capture on Linux systems. It supports many USB webcams, TV tuners, and related devices, standardizing their output, so programmers can easily ...

and

FireWire camera FireWire cameras use the IEEE 1394 bus standard for the transmission of audio, video and control data. FireWire is Apple Computer's trademark for the IEEE 1283 standard. FireWire cameras are available in the form of photo cameras and video came ...

User interface

Ekiga supports a

Contact list A contact list is a collection of screen names. It is a commonplace feature of instant messaging, Email clients, online games and mobile phones. It has various trademarked and proprietary names in different contexts. Contacts lists' windows s ...

based interface along with Presence support with custom messages. It allows for the monitoring of contacts and viewing call history along with an addressbook, dialpad, and chat window. SIP URLs and

/callto support is built-in along with full-screen videoconferencing (accelerated using a graphics card).

Technical features

Call forwarding Call forwarding, or call diversion, is a telephony feature of all telephone switching systems which redirects a telephone call to another destination, which may be, for example, a mobile or another telephone number where the desired called party is ...

on busy, no answer, always (SIP and H.323) *

Call transfer A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing telephone call to another phone or attendant console, using a transfer button or a switchhook flash and dialing the required location. The transferred ca ...

(SIP and H.323) * Call hold (SIP and H.323) *

DTMF Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...

support (SIP and H.323) * Basic instant messaging (SIP) * Text chat (SIP and H.323) * Register with several registrars (SIP) and gatekeepers (H.323) simultaneously * Ability to use an outbound proxy (SIP) or a gateway (H.323) * Message waiting indications (SIP) * Audio and video (SIP and H.323) *

STUN STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT; originally Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) through Network Address Translators) is a standardized set of methods, including a network protocol, for traversal of network address transl ...

support (SIP and H.323) *

support * Audio codec algorithms:

iLBC Internet Low Bitrate Codec (iLBC) is a royalty-free narrowband speech audio coding format and an open-source reference implementation (codec), developed by Global IP Solutions (GIPS) formerly Global IP Sound (acquired by Google Inc in 2011). It w ...

GSM 06.10 Full Rate (FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 or sometimes simply GSM) was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. It uses linear predictive coding (LPC). The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/a ...

, MS-GSM,

G.711 G.711 is a narrowband audio codec originally designed for use in telephony that provides toll-quality audio at 64 kbit/s. G.711 passes audio signals in the range of 300–3400 Hz and samples them at the rate of 8,000 samples per second ...

A-law, G.711 μ-law,

G.726 G.726 is an ITU-T ADPCM speech codec standard covering the transmission of voice at rates of 16, 24, 32, and 40 kbit/s. It was introduced to supersede both G.721, which covered ADPCM at 32 kbit/s, and G.723, which described ADPCM for ...

G.721 G7 is the Group of Seven, a group of seven industrialized nations, formed by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. G7 or G.VII may also refer to: Military * G7 howitzer, a light howitzer developed by ...

Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntrodu ...

G.722 G.722 is an ITU-T standard 7 kHz wideband audio codec operating at 48, 56 and 64 kbit/s. It was approved by ITU-T in November 1988. Technology of the codec is based on sub-band ADPCM (SB-ADPCM). The corresponding narrow-band codec based on ...

CELT The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...

(also

G.723.1 G.723.1 is an audio codec for voice that compresses voice audio in frames. An algorithmic look-ahead of duration means that total algorithmic delay is . Its official name is ''Dual rate speech coder for multimedia communications transmitting at ...

, G.728,

G.729 G.729 is a royalty-free narrow-band vocoder-based audio data compression algorithm using a frame length of 10 milliseconds. It is officially described as ''Coding of speech at 8 kbit/s using code-excited linear prediction'' speech coding (CS-ACEL ...

GSM-AMR The Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR, AMR-NB or GSM-AMR) audio codec is an audio compression format optimized for speech coding. AMR speech codec consists of a multi-rate narrowband speech codec that encodes narrowband (200–3400 Hz) signals at var ...

, G.722.2 SM‑AMR-WB.html"_;"title="AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑ SM‑AMR-WB.html"_;"title="AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing_Intel">AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB.html"_;"title="AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html"_;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing_Intel_Integrated_Performance_Primitives.html" ;"title="AMR-WBusing_Intel.html" ;"title="AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB.html" ;"title="AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing Intel">AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB.html" ;"title="AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WB">AMR-WB.html" ;"title="SM‑AMR-WB">SM‑AMR-WBusing Intel Integrated Performance Primitives">IPP) * Video codec algorithms: H.261, H.263+, H.264, Theora, MPEG-4

History

Ekiga was originally started over Christmas in the year 2000. Originally written by Damien Sandras it grew to being maintained by a team of nine regular contributors by 2011. Sandras wanted to create a

Netmeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows Vista). It uses the H.323 protocol for videoconferencing, and is interoperable w ...

clone for Linux as his graduating project at UCLouvain. Ekiga was referred to as GnomeMeeting until 2004 when a name change was thought necessary by the developers. Concerns were cited that the original name was associated with a dead

product called

, and not always recognized as

software. It was also proposed that some people assumed they needed to run GNOME to run GnomeMeeting, which was no longer the case. Eventually on January 18, 2006 the name Ekiga was chosen based on an old way of communicating between villages in Cameroon. Around that the time the direction of the software project was changed and it turned into a SIP client. The following shows major version releases: * March 2004 – Version 1.0 under the name GnomeMeeting * March 2006 – Version 2.0 was released under name Ekiga, it was bundled with

2.14 * April 2007 – Version 2.0.9 was the first version to include support for

* September 2008 – Version 3.0.0 * March 2009 - First release of the 3.2.x series. Added support for G.722 audio as well as unified the support for H.263 and H.263. * November 2012 - Ekiga 4.0.0, "The Victory Release", is a major release with many major improvements. * February 2013 - Ekiga 4.0.1, "The Victory Release", this version has many improvements. * 2015; - Ekiga 5.0, new Version with GTK+ 3 and new codecs announced.

References

External links

* {{GTK VoIP software Free VoIP software Teleconferencing Groupware Social networking services Online chat Free instant messaging clients GNOME Applications Videotelephony 2000 software Videoconferencing software that uses GTK Instant messaging clients that use GTK Voice over IP clients that use GTK Université catholique de Louvain