Sophie: gnugk-2.3.1-1mdv2010.1 x86

gnugk-2.3.1-1mdv2010.1.x86_64.rpm

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
 <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="LinuxDoc-Tools 0.9.21">
 <TITLE>The GNU Gatekeeper: Introduction</TITLE>
 <LINK HREF="manual-2.html" REL=next>

 <LINK HREF="manual.html#toc1" REL=contents>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<A HREF="manual-2.html">Next</A>
Previous
<A HREF="manual.html#toc1">Contents</A>
<HR>
<H2><A NAME="s1">1.</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1">Introduction</A></H2>


<H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.1">About</A>
</H2>

<P><B>
<A HREF="http://www.gnugk.org/">The GNU Gatekeeper</A></B>
is an open-source project that implements a H.323 gatekeeper. A gatekeeper
provides call control services to H.323 endpoints and is an integral part of
most useful Internet telephony installations that are based on the H.323
standard.</P>
<P>According to Recommendation H.323, a gatekeeper shall provide the
following services:
<UL>
<LI>Address Translation</LI>
<LI>Admissions Control</LI>
<LI>Bandwidth Control</LI>
<LI>Zone Management</LI>
<LI>Call Control Signaling</LI>
<LI>Call Authorization</LI>
<LI>Bandwidth Management</LI>
<LI>Call Management</LI>
</UL>
</P>
<P>The GNU Gatekeeper implements most of these functions
based on the
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/openh323">OpenH323</A>
protocol stack.</P>
<P>Recommendation H.323 is an international standard published by the 
<A HREF="http://www.itu.int/">ITU</A>.  It is a communications standard for
audio, video, and data over the Internet.  See also Paul Jones' 
<A HREF="http://www.packetizer.com/voip/h323/papers/primer/">A Primer on the H.323 Series Standard</A>.</P>
<P>For a detailed description of what a gatekeeper does, see
<A HREF="http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/h323/topic06.html">here</A>.</P>

<H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.2">Copyright</A>
</H2>

<P>The GNU Gatekeeper is covered by the 
<A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General Public License version 2</A> (GNU GPL v2).  In addition, we explicitly
grant the right to link this code to the OpenH323/H323Plus and OpenSSL
library.</P>
<P>Some protocols implemented in the GNU Gatekeeper are covered by patents
(especially the firewall / NAT traversal protocols).  To the best of our
knowledge, the GNU Gatekeeper Project has a valid license for all its
releases, but users making derived versions of this code must ensure that
they have a valid license before enabling those features.</P>
<P>Generally speaking, the GNU GPL allows you to copy, distribute, resell or
modify the software, but it requires that all derived works must also be
published under the GNU GPL.  This means that you must publish full source
for all extensions to the gatekeeper and for all programs where you
incorporate code from the GNU Gatekeeper.  See the file COPYING for details.</P>
<P>If that's not what you want, you must interface to the gatekeeper through
the status port and communicate with it via TCP.  This allows you to
integrate basic functionality into the gatekeeper (and provide source for
that) but keep other parts of your application private.</P>

<H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.3">Name</A>
</H2>

<P>The full name of this project is <EM>GNU Gatekeeper</EM>, but it may also be
referred to as <EM>GnuGk</EM>.  The use of "GNU" in the name is to emphasize
that this is free software.</P>

<H2><A NAME="download"></A> <A NAME="ss1.4">1.4</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.4">Download</A>
</H2>

<P>The newest version is available at
<A HREF="http://www.gnugk.org/h323download.html">the download page</A>.</P>
<P>The very latest source code is in the CVS at 
<A HREF="http://openh323gk.cvs.sourceforge.net/openh323gk/openh323gk/">Sourceforge Web-GUI</A>.  Beware - that's the bleeding edge.</P>
<P>You can also download executables for a number of operating systems from
<A HREF="http://www.gnugk.org/h323download.html">the download page</A>.</P>

<H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.5">Mailing Lists</A>
</H2>

<P>There are two mailing list for the project, one for developers and one for users.</P>
<P>General user questions should be sent to the 
<A HREF="mailto:Openh323gk-users@sourceforge.net">users mailing list</A>. 
You can find the list archive 
<A HREF="https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=openh323gk-users">here</A>.  To join this mailing list, click 
<A HREF="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openh323gk-users">here</A>.</P>
<P>To report problems or submit bugs/patches, send email to the
<A HREF="mailto:Openh323gk-developer@sourceforge.net">developers mailing list</A>.  The list archive is 
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=openh323gk-developer">here</A>.  Please send user questions to the users mailing list and keep
this list for development!  If you want to contribute to the project, please
<A HREF="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openh323gk-developer">join the developers mailing list</A>.</P>

<H2><A NAME="ss1.6">1.6</A> <A HREF="manual.html#toc1.6">Contributors</A>
</H2>

<P>The current project coordinator is
<A HREF="http://www.willamowius.de/gnugk-consulting.html">Jan Willamowius</A>
<CODE>
<A HREF="mailto:jan@willamowius.de">&lt;jan@willamowius.de&gt;</A></CODE></P>
<P>The main features and functions of version 2.0 are contributed by Chih-Wei
Huang <CODE>
<A HREF="mailto:cwhuang@linux.org.tw">&lt;cwhuang@linux.org.tw&gt;</A></CODE> and Citron Network Inc., including
thread-safe registration and call tables, new routed mode architecture,
H.323 proxy, H.235 authentication and MySQL backend.</P>
<P>Michal Zygmuntowicz <CODE>
<A HREF="mailto:m.zygmuntowicz@onet.pl">&lt;m.zygmuntowicz@onet.pl&gt;</A></CODE> has done some great work on
Radius support and other improvements.</P>
<P>The initial version of the gatekeeper had been developed by
Xiang Ping Chen, Joe Metzger and Rajat Todi.</P>

<HR>
<A HREF="manual-2.html">Next</A>
Previous
<A HREF="manual.html#toc1">Contents</A>
</BODY>
</HTML>