asterisk users - Jun 2005 - Digium G729 licensing - is it worth the trouble?

I have been impressed with the quality and meagre bandwidth of the G729
codec from Digium. I am in a testing phase of our roll out, we are using 5
Asterisk PBXs in various countries to provide connectivity for our
employees, owners and family. As we are testing, and our setup is somewhat
complex due to the peculiarities of our connectivity, there has had to be a
lot of changes to servers, cards to swap, problems with channel banks, the
usual annoying setup issues. I've also made a few mistakes, believe it or
now...

I have purchased 50 licenses at $10 each from Digium, putting ten on each
server. On the server I do the most testing, the one in my office, I have
moved cards around, resulting in having to re-register the codec. I realized
the cards had been assigned backwards and repaired, and had to call Digium
to inform them I needed to re-register. To my surpise, they would not accept
this. They required I sent them a letter explaining why I had to do this.
Even after I sent it, they would not allow me to register the codecs.
Finally they agreed, but the re-register did not work. After more calls, it
still has not been resolved.

I realize they have piracy problems, but that's their problem. I paid for
the codecs, and I think I should be able to use them. People who are
avoiding the licenses don't call you up to tell you. I don't mind having
to
call and let them know why I need to re-register, but I did not expect to be
refused.

So now I am moving my trunking to gsm, and keeping the office phones uLaw,
allowing Asterisk to transcode. I don't notice a lot of difference in
quality and I have the flexibility of changing network cards anytime I want.
Is there any real reason to put up with the licensing issues for G729?



Chris Mason
NetConcepts
Int:  (305) 704-7249 Fax: (815)301-9759

>I realize they have piracy problems, but that's their problem. I paid
for
>the codecs, and I think I should be able to use them. People who are
>avoiding the licenses don't call you up to tell you. I don't mind
having to
>call and let them know why I need to re-register, but I did not expect to be
>refused.
>  
>
I think you're hitting a major problem here with copy protection 
schemes: once you've managed to find a way to get around them it's 
actually /more convenient/ to use an 'illegal' copy than a legit, 
licensed one.

I think that all it should need to make a codec re-registrable is press 
a button on some webpage that would send you a confirmation email to 
make sure that you are the rightful owner of the codec.

It's just very annoying when you've paid money just to make your life 
harder than if you didn't.
>So now I am moving my trunking to gsm, and keeping the office phones uLaw,
>allowing Asterisk to transcode. I don't notice a lot of difference in
>quality and I have the flexibility of changing network cards anytime I want.
>Is there any real reason to put up with the licensing issues for G729?
>  
>
It takes less bandwith, and MOS is better. It's not very tolerant to 
packet loss though, so iLBC is a good contender instead of GSM.

-- 
Ykoz Un Max - La VoIP en pr?-pay?!
Essayez gratuitement - 5 cr?dits offerts.
---> http://ykoz.net/voip/max <---

On Sunday 05 June 2005 16:31, Chris Mason (Lists) wrote:
> I have purchased 50 licenses at $10 each from Digium, 
Cool, so you have satisfied yourself that you are licensed to use the G.729 
codec and not get your ass sued by the IP holders. Now you can simply use the 
no-license-required codecs from here...

http://kvin.lv/pub/Linux/Asterisk/

I'm probably massively over-simplifying the problem.. but I see this as the 
same problem as having installed the same MS Office 2000 CD + key on 50 PCs, 
but as long as you have 50 unique certificates of authenticity for Office 
2000, it doesn't matter a crap (in the real world) what actual key got used 
on each PC.

gdh

Yeh, I know what you mean re segfaults.. I just worked through the directory
until I found one that worked and had good translation times (9ms on a
P4-celeron)..

"show translation recalc 10" is the magic command.

The codec works fine with the ATCOM -320 phones - in a test environment it
worked fine with a few UK providers.

 gdh

-----Original Message-----
   >From: "Nir Simionovich"<nirs@dimitel.com>
   >Sent: 06/06/05 09:26:32
   >To: "'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial
Discussion'"<asterisk-users@lists.digium.com>
   >Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Digium G729 licensing - is it worth the
trouble?
     > 
   >>>Cool, so you have satisfied yourself that you are licensed to use
the
   >>>G.729 codec and not get your ass sued by the IP holders. Now you
can
   >>>simply use the no-license-required codecs from here...
   >>>
   >>>http://kvin.lv/pub/Linux/Asterisk/
   >
   >I've tried using these codecs in the past, but usually ended up with
a pile
   >of 
   >SegFaults and Machine Halts. Question is, are these codecs maintained by 
   >Someone, and if they had ever been interoped with other equipment.
It's one
   >Thing to implement a codec, there is another interoping it with other
   >vendors.
   >
   >Nir S
   >
   >
   >_______________________________________________
   >Asterisk-Users mailing list
   >Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
   >http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
   >To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   >   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
   >
   >

If you have licenses or experimenting with g729 you might want to look
at http://www.readytechnology.co.uk/open/g729/
it requires Intel C/C++ compiler and IPP libraries.
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Digium G729 licensing - is it worth the
> trouble?
> From: Gavin Hamill <gdh@laterooms.com>
> Date: Sun, June 05, 2005 11:08 am
> To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
>
> On Sunday 05 June 2005 16:31, Chris Mason (Lists) wrote:
>
> > I have purchased 50 licenses at $10 each from Digium,
>
> Cool, so you have satisfied yourself that you are licensed to use the G.729
> codec and not get your ass sued by the IP holders. Now you can simply use
the
> no-license-required codecs from here...
>
> http://kvin.lv/pub/Linux/Asterisk/
>
> I'm probably massively over-simplifying the problem.. but I see this as
the
> same problem as having installed the same MS Office 2000 CD + key on 50
PCs,
> but as long as you have 50 unique certificates of authenticity for Office
> 2000, it doesn't matter a crap (in the real world) what actual key got
used
> on each PC.
>
> gdh
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