Hi Daniel,
Here's some answers to your questions.
1. Does the AG work with H323 endpoints?
In short no, and this is unlikely to change as they are very different systems.
2. We're looking for an easy, no cost, non-commercial, direct IP dialing
way to connect to h.323 endpoints using a simple client (preferably portable
but not entirely necessary) in Windows. I've tried OpenH.323, TalkEZ and
Ekiga. No solid, repeatable results. It has to be simple enough for novices,
too. Click, type an address and go. Can AG be a simple solution? If so, how?
I've not tried H323 with these clients but I have had success with Jitsi and
Cisco's Jabber Video client for connecting to SIP based video conferences. It
might be worth seeing if they also work with H323. You could use Seevogh as it
has this capability. Whatever you choose be sure to test it with all the
different types of hardware you need to connect to as some devices are better
with different software.
AG is very flexible but certainly not a simple solution. It isn't really a good
replacement for anything you could do with skype. What it does do well is link
larger rooms together with many cameras and changing requirements. It is not
something ordinary people will be able to use on a work station.
3. Not including the above on h.323, what if any encryption does AG
support? I'm also looking at direct medical use, including non-h.323
solutions. Medical use, by U.S. HIPAA law, necessitates encryption by its
privacy protection intent.
This is quite the complex question! There is some encryption and security
capability, but it mostly secures access to the venue server and the venues.
The tools that actually send and receive the audio and video do not have
encryption support as far as I know, so someone sniffing the audio/video
packets could easily listen. You could tunnel that traffic through secure VPN
connections but that's a royal pain because the Venue server effectively can
dynamically allocate multicast addresses to a venue. You could of course modify
Vic and Rat (the tools used for audio and video) to support and use the
encryption needed, but that isn't a quick job. You'd also need to run your own
separate servers for the VenueServer and Unicast Bridge so it could be resource
intensive. In short it's possible, but it might be more work than you have time
for.
I'm not aware of a video conferencing system supporting encryption of the
audio/video, but not having looked for it I couldn't say.
4. A non-AG question string: If CalTech's EVO video conferencing
platform was open source at one time, why can't I get the source code. Believe
me, I have more than tried. If you're working with the commercial iteration of
EVO, SeeVogh, and read this message, come on and give a guy some help to
acquire the old open code. Also, what about EVO's predecessor, VRVS? Does
anyone know where I can get the last known code? I'm not a coder. I have,
however, learned that coders exist in the wild. A paradox is that they do not
actually live in the same mental universe. They are fortunate.
I'm not sure about that one, but probably start by emailing or contacting
someone associated with the original open code. I don't know if anyone
currently involved with Seevogh had any involvement with the older code. Even
if you get the code, you'll likely need to get someone to do a lot of work to
make a workable solution, and likely would require running a server to support
it. Probably much more expensive than just using Seevogh.
I hope this helps, I'm sure someone will correct me if I was wrong about
anything :)
Cheers
Andrew
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