To SIP or to IAX that is the question

Using Trixbox aka Asterisk with in the Locustworld’s wireless mesh has some great features. Using SIP has with in the Mesh works as well as Asterisk IAX. Asterisk IAX has the ability to transverse through NAT firewall and a single port. I currently am using IAX because of the availability in and out side the of the mesh cloud. Ok I better explain myself. I use softphones on my wireless mesh. I connect the softphone to an open source pbx (asterisk). Using softphone that is installed on my pc and laptops I am able to make VoIP telephone calls to POTs and with in my wireless mesh internet service. SIP and IAX are used as protocols that are used to connect the softphone to pbx. SIP is very popular and also has some amazing features like video. IAX is only popular with the Asterisk community but has larger benefits for using IAX beyond the LAN or Wireless LAN.

Currently there is no difference in quality with SIP and IAX the difference is the ability for IAX to transverse routers better than SIP. SIP has a large community of user and developers and provides a better softphone in terms of operations and features aka video. The comparison between SIP and IAX can go on and on. Currently I am using eyebeam for SIP and iaxlite for IAX. I like the simplicity of iaxlite. It does what it supposed to do with out all the bells and whistles. However I do like using Counterpaths’ Eyebeam product. Two products that do similar function but differently. Is the question which product is better or which protocol is better? Both products do the job for me. I would like IAX product to also work with eyebeam but it does not. Wireless Mesh has built in SIP features and does not support IAX native. That is to say it doesn’t have any IAX features but IAX does work with wireless mesh.

The Answer: SIP and IAX for now