Basic Usage
3.1. Calling and being called
If you want to call other users and to be callable, you need a SIP address. You can get a SIP address from http://www.ekiga.net as described above.
The SIP address can be used by other users to call you. Similarly, you can use the SIP address of your friends and family to call them. You can for example use sip:dsandras@ekiga.net to call the author of Ekiga.
You can use the online address book of Ekiga to find the SIP addresses of other Ekiga users. It is of course possible to call users who are using another provider than ekiga.net. You can actually call any user using SIP software or hardware, and registered to any public SIP provider
If you know the URL address of the party that you wish to call, you may enter that URL into the sip: input box at the top of the screen and press the Connect button; eg: sip:foo@ekiga.net and pressing the Connect button would call the user at that address. With the default setup, you can simply type sip:foo to call user foo@ekiga.net.
Ekiga also supports H.323 and as such can call any H.323 software or hardware. Please refer to the section related to URLs to learn more about the various types of URLs that can be used to call remote H.323 and SIP users.
Ekiga can be used with several Internet Telephony Service Providers. Those providers will allow calling real phones from your computer using Ekiga at interesting rates. We are recommending you to use the default Ekiga provider.
If you want to create an account and use it to call your friends and family using regular phones at interesting rates, simply go in the Tools menu, and select the "PC-To-Phone Account" menu item. A dialog will appear allowing you to create an account using the "Get an Ekiga PC-to-Phone account". Once the account has been created, you will receive a login and a password by e-mail. Simply enter them in the dialog, enable "Use PC-To-Phone service", and you are ready to call regular phones using Ekiga
With the default setup, you can simply use sip:003210444555 to call the real phone number 003210444555, 00 is the international dialing code, 32 is the country code, 10444555 is the number to call.
Ekiga can be used to receive incoming calls from regular phones. To allow this, you can simply login to your PC-To-Phone account using the Tools menu as described above, and buy a phone number in the country of your choice. Ekiga will ring when people will call that phone number.
You can actually use any H.323 or SIP ITSP provider, including your own PBX at work. However we recommend using the integrated provider.
3.2. Sending instant messages
Ekiga allows you to send instant messages to remote users provided that you know their URL. You can by opening the chat window by selecting Tools -> Chat Window. To send a text message to an user, simply enter his SIP address in the URL field, enter your text message, and click on Send. You can later decide to call that user by clicking on Call User.
You can also use the white pages described later to send instant messages to online users. To do this, simply highlight an user, and select Contact -> Send Message. The chat window will appear and allow you to do a conversation with the selected remote user.
You can also exchanges text messages with H.323 Ekiga users, but only while being in a call. To do this, simply click on the new tab icon, and a new tab will automatically be created allowing a conversation with the user you are in a call with.
3.3. Managing Calls
To view the statistics, please select the Statistics tab in the control panel.
The statistic visualizes the network traffic caused by Ekiga. It draws a graph for each RTP stream. This means that - if audio and video are enabled in Ekiga and the client of the remote party - you will see four different graphs. (incoming audio stream, incoming video stream, outgoing audio stream, outgoing video stream)
- Lost packets: The percentage of lost packets, ie of packets from the remote user that you did not receive. A too high packets loss during the reception can result in voice and/or video distortion and is usually caused by a bad network provider or by settings requiring much bandwidth.
- Late packets: The percentage of late packets, ie of packets from the remote user that you received but too late to be taken into account, Ekiga being sending and receiving real-time video and audio.
- Round-trip delay: The required time for a packet to arrive at its destination and come back. You can see the Round-Trip delay during a call as a connection quality indicator together with the Lost and Late packets statistics.
- Jitter buffer: The Jitter buffer is the buffer where received sound packets are accumulated. When the buffer is full, then the sound is played. If your network is of bad quality, then you need a big jitter buffer, ie a big delay before sound is played back, because you need more time before being able to play audio back.
Your audio and video settings can be adjusted through the control panel while you are in a call. If you want to change the audio input or output devices during a call, simply select the Audio tab in the panel. The brightness, whiteness, color and contrast of your video input device are changed via the Video tab.
Ekiga supports several actions which can be performed when in a call. These actions enable you to control active sessions.
- Ending a call: The communication to the remote user can be ended by selecting Call->Disconnect.
- Holding a call: You can hold a remote party call by selecting Call->Hold. This effectively pauses Video and Audio transmission, to continue transmission again you select Call->Retrieve Call and Video and Audio Transmission will begin again.
- Mute Audio: This effectively prevents all Audio communication to your respective party.
- Suspend Video: This effectively prevents all Video transmission to your respective party.
- Transferring the remote party: You can transfer the remote user to another H.323 or CALLTO URL by using the appropriate menu entry in the Call menu or by double-clicking on an user in your address book, or in the calls history.
All URLs supported by Ekiga (SIP, H.323, CALLTO and Speed Dials) can be used for call transfer.
While in a call you can take a snapshot of the remote party via Call -> Save Current Picture. A PNG-file will be saved in the current directory. The filename consists of three parts: the save_prefix, date and current time. (e.g. Ekiga-snap-2003_06_19-024316.png).
History windows in Ekiga are comparable to logfiles. They keep chronological track of actions performed by Ekiga and provide additional information to the user.
The General History window keeps track of many operations which are mainly performed in the background. It displays information about audio and video devices, calls, codecs and other details. The latest operations can be found at the bottom, older entries are shown on the top. You can access this information by opening Tools->Generic History.
The Calls History window stores information (date, duration, URL, Software, Remote user) about all outgoing and incoming calls. They are divided into three groups - Received calls, Placed calls and Unanswered calls.
- Received calls contains all incoming calls which were accepted by Ekiga
- Placed calls keeps track of all attempts - succesful or not - to call another user.
- Unanswered calls shows incoming calls which timed out or were rejected (if Do Not Disturb is enabled, for instance) by Ekiga.
Double-clicking on a row in the Calls History will call back the selected user or transfer any active call to that user. Notice that you can also drag and drop entries from the Calls History into the Address Book to store contact information.
This information can be accessed by opening Tools->Calls History and by switching between the three tabs.
3.4. Managing Contacts
The Address Book is a feature which allows you to find users to call and/or to save locally your list of persons that you call on a regular basis. It respectively loads the list of users from the LDAP directory and will store locally their addresses and associated speed dials (if any).
To open the Address Book, select Tools -> Address Book and the Ekiga Addressbook window should appear. To your left there will be a list dialog showing the Servers you have added to the list as well as a list of local Address Books. The defaults are the Ekiga white pages, the contacts near you, and the personal address book from Novell Evolution.
Ekiga is able to use several types of address books, allowing to search for remote contacts, and bookmark local contacts. The most common address book type is the LDAP directory where you can find information about registered users. Ekiga is able to browse any LDAP directory and use a specific attribute as calling URL. For example, you could have an LDAP directory in your company, with a specific attribute containing the local extensions of all your colleagues. Ekiga is able to use such an LDAP directory. Simply select in File -> New Address Book, and choose remote LDAP as type.
Ekiga is also able to detect other Ekiga users on the LAN using the Bonjour technology popularized by Apple (tm). That supposes you have a local mDNSResponder daemon running on your computer. Finally, Ekiga is able to bookmark contacts in the local address book, shared with the Novell Evolution suite.
To refresh the list of users for a specific address book, simply click the Find button. It will search for all users in that address book. You can contact people by double clicking on their highlighted field. You can also Drag-and-Drop to call a specific party by selecting the highlighted field and dragging it into the Main Window.
In certain cases you will want to search specifically for a person name, his or her call URL, or his location in the Ekiga white pages. The address book window allows you to apply filters when searching for contacts.
The Ekiga white pages will allow you to look for users in your region. It returns a limited number of results corresponding to your search. If the user is associated to a red icon, it means that he is online. If he is associated to a greyed out icon, it means he is offline. You can then add him to your personal address book to call him later.
To add an address book, select File -> New Address Book. A dialog will appear. You then select the type of address book you want to add. The type can be Local, or remote LDAP or remote ILS. Enter the server name. Enter the name, the various parameters and select 'OK' and the new address book should now appear in the address books list. If you do not know what parameters to use for a remote LDAP address book, please ask them to your administrator. The address book parameters can be changed at any time by selecting File -> Properties when the address book is highlighted. It can also be deleted by selecting File -> Delete.
To add a contact to one of your local address books, simply select the address book you wish to add the contact and select Contact -> New Contact. The option of adding a New Contact will appear and you may now enter his name and VoIP URL as well as other settings. After complete select 'OK' and now your contact has been added. You can only add contacts to local address books. The contact parameters can be changed at any time by selecting File -> Properties when the contact is highlighted. He can also be deleted by selecting File -> Delete.
You can also add a contact from the white pages (or any other local or remote address book) by selecting the highlighted contact and dragging him to the specific local address book you wish to add him to or by selecting Contact -> Add Contact to Address Book when selecting that contact.
Finally, you can edit the groups your users belong to using the User Properties dialog from the main menu or from the right-click menu, or using drag-and-drop between groups.
3.5. Managing Incoming Calls
Ekiga supports different policies for incoming calls. Per default it displays a popup window which allows you to decide whether you want to refuse or accept the request for an incoming call. Furthermore Ekiga offers three additional behaviors: Busy mode, Free for Chat and Forward.
If this mode is enabled Ekiga refuses all incoming requests and only allows outgoing calls. You are not able to receive any call and do not notice if another user tries to contact you except when looking at the Calls History.
This mode can be enabled by selecting Call -> Busy in the main window.
If this behavior is activated Ekiga accepts all incoming calls. It does not display a popup window but tries to establish the connection to the remote party immediately.
This mode can be enabled by selecting Call -> Free For Chat in the main window menu.
Ekiga has the ability to forward calls to another host. Which allows you to configure Ekiga to forward all incoming calls to a specified URL. Furthermore it is able to forward calls interactively when you do not answer the call after a configurable amount of time or when you are busy.
Call Forwarding can be configured by selecting Call -> Forward in the main menu or through the preferences window. Notice that you need to specify an URL where to forward calls in the preferences to be able to activate tht option. Open the preferences window by choosing Edit -> Preferences in the main window and select Call Forwarding on the left. You will now see the appropriate section. It contains three checkboxes for the three cases described above and one textfield for the IP address/hostname of the host the calls shall be forwarded to.