Prophecy 2006

I've just heard from Voxeo: the V.25 release of the VoIP Phone application has known issues that prevent NAT traversal.

I expect a new version pf VoIP Phone in the next few days, at which point I'll post all config variables, both on the VoIP Phone and in the firewall, needed to make VoIP phone work.

The VoIP phone application has a small red button in the middle of the window -- clicking on it turns it into a small red square.

I've learned from Voxeo that the red button lets you record phone calls. They show up as wav files in your installation directory; I've tried it and it works.

The VoIP phone app included in V.25 doesn't act differently than the V.22 release. I've had the same peculiar problems with the options.

The "specify IP manually" check box is always checked. I've given up and entered my local IP address manually.

I don't know what "local user" means. My FWD login? And what is my "spoof RTP IP"?

"Select audio devices" doesn't select my default audio devices by default.

There's an optional log window at the front of the IP phone, but the log shows the top entry and doesn't show the scroll of messages as they go by. Even if you scroll down to the bottom of the window, the next message causes the sroll bar to reset to the top. That makes it a bit difficult to watch the messages go by.

I could not get VoIP to work with V.22; here's a progress report on V.25.

VoIP configuration is done from the "Voxeo Management Console." This is apparently another name for the "VoiceCenter Home." A bit of naming inconsistency there! You reach it via the Statup menu's Voxeo folder under "Voxeo 6 Home." (Yet another name for this same page.) The address of the page is actually on your machine's web server, port 8888, page mc.php.

1. Entering my VoIP (Free World Dialup): no problems.
2. Entering my VoIP password: for some reason, this is shown in plaintext on my screen! A bit of security issue.

Sometime after I used "voxeo install," or perhaps it was "voxeo run," my Start folder acquired the missing Voxeo folder with links to the Voxeo applications.

Here's a list of startup notes as I attempt to get V.25 up and running.

1. Download and first install. Both downloading the software and running the installer proceeded witthout a hitch.
2. Runing VoiceCenter home. That's the first glitch: there's no "Voxeo" folder on my start menu; somehow it wasn't put there by the installer.

   And, actually, now I'm a bit stuck. The only executable in Program Files/Voxeo is "voxeo.exe." If I use an iconic view, double-clicking on voxeo brings up a command-line window which disappears immediately.

3. After a bit of fooling around in a command-line window, I type "voxeo status" to discover that vxml is running but none of the other services are installed. "voxeo install" gets everything installed. "voxeo run vmanagerlink" should bring up the VoiceCenter control panel, but fails. The web browser is launched and goes to 127.0.0.1:8888, but there's nothing there.

The first release I instsalled of P2006 was version 22, and it required 1 GB of RAM — far too much for my somewhat ancient laptop. I downloaded the lighter version instead and used Microsoft's speech API for text-to-speech support.

The current release of P2006 is version 25, and it fits in 1/2 GB of RAM. It installs without any difficulty.

I was never able to get my Free World Dialup account to work under version 22. I will report on version 25 shortly.