voipDS - Home

It is a common knowledge now that 'Voice Over Internet Protocol' (VOIP) is the next big thing since Internet. In next few years majority of households and businesses across the world would be communicating via VOIP and they will be using VOIP devices for their communication.

All VOIP devices like software phones, hardware IP phones and Asterisk (www.asterisk.org) applications allow peer-to-peer VOIP calls. This is an inbuilt feature that is already available in VOIP devices. Peer-to-peer calls do not go through a VOIP service provider and the calls are 'free' as in 'free beer'. In order to make a peer-to-peer call, all that is required is the 'peer connection information' of the other user.

- an easy way to search and download peer connection information from the central repository of other users.

Voice over IP Directory Services (voipDS, pronounced as 'voip' D S) is a service that precisely addresses these needs. voipDS is a central repository for peer connection information and also provides an easy way to search peer connection information of other users.

Any user can connect to voipDS and register their 'peer connection information' (PCI). They can also search for PCIs of their friends and family members. They can then download the PCI and configure their VOIP devices to make peer-to-peer calls.

Business users can also leverage voipDS. They can find their retailer's, supplier's and manufacturer's PCI and establish peer-to-peer communication with them. This would drastically reduce their communication costs.

Voice over IP Directory Service (voipDS) would be available shortly at www.voipds.com. voipDS can be accessed by the normal web based interface or by using 'voipDS protocol'. Web based interface is used for manual configuration while'voipDS protocol' is used for automatic configuration of VOIP devices. 'voipDS protocol' is a device independent protocol that defines the communication between VOIP device and voipDS. Using this protocol, PCI of the users can be registered with voipDS, PCI of other users can be retrieved from voipDS and VOIP devices can be automatically configured to make peer-to-peer calls with the other user.

This site www.voipds.org , provides voipDS protocol internet draft, schemas and xml samples as defined by the protocol. A FAQ is also available to answer some of your questions. An implementation document, that explains the voipDS protocol implementation for majority of VOIP devices will be available shortly.

The directory service and the protocol is part of 'Open source' movement and it is released under GPL . You are welcome to take part in this effort. To take part please sign up for the mailing lists.