Software:KPhone

KPhone

Developer(s)	Team (See web-site)
Stable release	Kphone SI 1.2 / 22 November 2008 (2008-11-22)
Operating system	Linux
Type	Voice over IP, instant messaging, videoconferencing
License	GPL-2.0-or-later
Website	KPhone's home page

KPhone is a SIP User Agent for Linux. It implements the functionality of a VoIP Softphone but is not restricted to this. Licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, KPhone is free software. KPhone is written in C++ and uses Qt.

Application

KPhone establishes Sessions via the Internet and so enables communication between the endpoints. Audio is the "session type" used most frequently, but others are possible (see below).

The main features:

• Multiple parallel sessions (in the case of audio, one may be active, the others are held).
• Own ring tones or "ring music"
• NAT-traversal and STUN support
• Supported sound systems: ALSA and OSS
• SRTP encryption for voice
• Presence information
• Call Hold
• Call transfer
• Call forwarding
• Auto Answer

The following media types for sessions are supported:

• audio
• video (with the external application vic)
• application (used to triggerExternal Applications)
• instant messaging

KPhone uses the media type application to launch communicating applications on both ends of the call. The user manual discusses the supported formats and how to install such an external application. A good example is KPhoneIM, a simple point-to-point IM application, other examples are the MICE Tools of the project MBONE such as vic and wbd (whiteboard).

KPhone itself supports STUN for NAT traversal. It may be used for the building audio solution and for KPhoneIM immediately, other external applications may need some adaptation to make use of it. (See the user manual of KPhoneSI and of KphoneIM for more). The MICE Tools do not support symmetric signalling, so NAT-Traversal is not possible with these tools.

History

KPhone was originally developed by Billy Biggs (then student at the University of Waterloo). KPhone was presented to the public at the 2nd SIP bakeoff (1999) at pulver.

Further KPhone development was done at Wirlab (Seinäjoki, Finland ) from 2001 to 2005. Wirlab's first Kphone release was published March, 13th 2002.

Since autumn 2005 KPhone is located in the Sourceforge.

The project hasn't been updated on Sourceforge since 2013-04-15.

External links

• KPhones-Website
• An earlier KPhone 4.2 Review
• Internet telephony with KPhone,Linux-Magazine, Feb. 2006 (pdf)
• Five no-cost phone clients for Linux, Linux-Magazine, Sep 2007 (pdf)