Web review: Get connected with Linux Telephony

– by Tina Gasperson –
Here’s a specialized site for you. Linux Telephony covers everything about getting tele-connected with Linux.Linux Telephony has stepped neatly into the role of the place to go for information about Linux hardware and software that will enable connectivity. I guess you’d call it a portal — if you happened to like the word portal. We’ll just call it a good resource.

At Linux Telephony, there’s information about telephony-related mailing lists, plus articles, news, links, questions, books … even jobs. But don’t bother with the jobs section, it is woefully out of date. Guess there aren’t often openings in such a specialized field.

It has a nice section on drivers too, but the last entry was posted about a year ago. I started to wonder if the site had been abandoned, and double-checked the front page — no, it’s quite current, with a story about the International Softswitch Consortium posted 2/7/01, and every few days before that.

There’s an entire section devoted to something called OpenH323, which I learned is a project that “aims to create a full featured, interoperable, Open Source implementation of the ITU H.323 teleconferencing protocol that can be used by personal developers and commercial users without charge.”

Wait, that sounds interesting. Evidently, OpenH323 is working on providing businesses with the capabilities of Microsoft’s NetMeeting protocols, but for free. Kind of like Jabber — but that’s another story.

Linux Telephony doesn’t fail when it comes to providing links to outside resources, both telephony and Linux-related. I found the site to be thorough, informative, and educational, if somewhat neglected in parts. As always, your mileage may vary.

Go visit LinuxTelephony.com.

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