Telecommunications

VoIP and Asterisk IAX Clients

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on May 09, 2006 4:24:51 PM

IAX is a VOIP Protocol designed by the folks at Digium, developers of the Open Source Asterisk PBX/VoIP Server.

As invariably every six months I have to try and track down the clients for IAX2, I thought I might as well add a list here. Asterisk/Digium releases a set of libraries for people wishing to develop interoperable software, and below is a list of applications using another FOSS library http://iaxclient.sourceforge.net

IAXClient is an Open Source library to implement the IAX protocol
used by The Asterisk Software PBX

Projects Using IAXClient

iaxComm: a GPL softphone built using IAXClient and wxWindows.
- Runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris.
DIAX: From the home page:
- "This is a full featured and very small (less than 100KB for all the files) IAX based software phone for Microsoft Windows platforms (only).
  The application is distributed as a freeware for personal use."

IaxPhone: another GPL softphone built using IAXClient. Written in VB6.

IDEFisk: Another Windows softphone from asteriskguru.com

KIAX: A QT-based softphone

Why use the IAX protocol, and not SIP or H.323?

While asterisk does support SIP, and can be made to support H.323, the IAX protocol has some inherent advantages over these protocols, because it is small and simple. Also, since it uses just one UDP port-pair for both media and control, it is much simpler to use in environments where NAT is is use, or with network tunneling.

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