supus said:
Watashi_FR said:
You forgot to mention it costs USD55
is two variant - costs USD0 (Free)
Unrestricted licence for a single installation more info...
http://nch.com.au/action/reginfo.html#uplink
Ah, I couldn't make that out on the website. Also, the link you supply does not seem to point to any license information regarding the Uplink product.
Anyhow, I tried installing your product, and have found a couple of quirks. First, the installation instructions provided with the program are somewhat basic and focus entirely on the Axon IP PBX (understandable since that comes from the same company), I doubt if many people would be able to get things up and running easily on 3CX or any other IP PBX. Second, even though your product can run as a service (on XP, I haven't tried on Win2K or Win2K3), Skype has to be installed and running (which means some user should be logged on to the PC running Skype), which is a major drawback (but this is imposed by Skype so not too much can be done about it). Third, I had a problem when in a test installation I had Skype refuse access to Uplink (just to see what would happen), Skype seems to have no option to allow a previously blocked program access to it and even reinstalling Uplink did not help (I didn't want to go as far as to reinstall Skype). Fourth, when attempting a SIP to Skype call, how can one access a Skype contact from their contact list? Skype IDs are alphanumeric and most softphones (as far as I know) cannot call Skype IDs, only numbers. Fifth, from what I can see Uplink installs some sort of audio bridge between itself and the sound interface on the machine, re-routing audio to a SIP extension. Clever trick, but it seemed to mess up my sound configuration (my microphone refused to unmute with Uplink installed).
Overall, even though I appreciate the effort (especially if the product is indeed free) and I acknowledge that a lot of people would want a solution to link Skype to SIP, I believe that the proprietary nature of the Skype protocol (and the quirkiness of its API) eventually leads to a situation where the integration of Skype into a soft PBX simply isn't worth the effort. Skype is now hugely popular and widely spread, but then so was ICQ at one point in time. With VoIP booming the way it is right now and more and more hybrid solutions for SIP being offered to the general public, I predict that in a few years time Skype will have largely disappeared (or adapted to support de facto standards, more likely, since I doubt that eBay would want to write off their investment that quickly).