sipconf: SIP Audio Conference Server

Name

sipconf - SIP Audio Conference Server

Synopsis

sipconf

Availability

sipconf v1.20 released Jan 2002.
The code runs on Solaris 5.8, FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x, Linux (tested on RedHat 6.1 and 7.1), Windows NT/2000/XP with other Unix platforms available upon request.

Description

sipconf is an SIP based audio conference bridge. Visit the CINEMA web page for more information.

Features

SIP for signaling and RTP for media;

Can support multiple simultaneous conferences;

Audio mixing is done. Participants do not get their own audio;

Support video replication. All participant with video capabilities can receive and send video. Hetrogeneous conferences with some audio terminals and some video terminals is also possible.
Playout delay algorithm is implemented to create a synchronised audio stream;

multi-threaded;

Works with sipc and other SIP user agents; H.323 users can connect using the siph323 software.

Conferences can be setup and configured using a web based interface;

Currently supports G.711 A law, Mu Law, G.721, DVI ADPCM, GSM and G.722 (high quality 16kHz) audio codecs;

Can use both IPv4 and IPv6 for both session establishment (SIP) and media (RTP/RTCP). Allows heterogenity;
Support for file sharing among participants;
Restricted conference participation based of SIP digest authentication;
Conference recording of audio streams. Sipconf can now write .au or .wav files for conference audio.
Load balancing among multiple conference servers based on capacity of the conference server and maximum participant count of a conference.
Modular design (components can be reused selectively);

Options

-p portnumber

Port number to listen for SIP requests. Default is 5060

-h

Print usage information and exit

-D sql://user:password@host:port/database

URL for the SQL database that stores user information. The port specification is optional. The -D parameter is optional. If it is not present, sipconf will look for a file named cinema_db.conf in its directory. Additionally, on Unix systems it will try reading the file /etc/cinema_db.conf . This file should contain a database url of the form described before. Normally, these files are automatically created during installation by CINEMA setup programs and hence, they need not be modified. On Windows systems, sipconf will also try reading for database uri under the registry key HKLM\Columbia University\IRT\CINEMA\CINEMA_DB.

-f database-configuration-file

Specify a file that contains the database url.

-X

Run as console application. If this parameter is not specified, sipconf will run as a deamon.

-H

Optional IPv6 hostname if different from the normal IPv4 hostname.

-i

Run in interactive mode. In this mode, sipconf can accept user commands through console input.

-m packetization_time

Specify a packetization_time in milliseconds between 20 and 2000. The default is 20 ms

-n

Use numeric IP addresses in Via headers instead of hostname.

-a

Accept all conferences. This is typically used for testing. If this option is enabled, sipconf does not require the conference information to be present in the database.

-b

Send back audio to participants. This is typically used for testing. sipconf will loop-back the audio to the sender in addition to distributing it to other participants.

-d category

Makes the server print out debugging information to stdout for the particular category. Currently supported categories are all, sql, net, sdp, misc. The option can be repeated to allow debugging multiple categories

Notes

sipconf uses MySQL database for storing configuration information. Details about conferences are stored in conferences table. Conference user information is stored in confusers table. These can be modified using the CINEMA web interface.

Authors

Kundan Singh, Gautam Nair, Sankaran Narayanan (TLS, IPv6), and Henning Schulzrinne at Columbia University, Department of Computer Science

Acknowledgements

sipconf contains RTP code from Bell Laboratories, Columbia University and University of Massachusetts, copyright (c) 1998 Lucent Technologies; all rights reserved.
sipconf uses the mySQL client library, copyright (c) 2001 by MySQL AB.
The sipconf web interface uses fbsql and Tcl.

Copyright

Copyright 2000-2002 by Columbia University; all rights reserved
sipconf is subject to licensing.
Commercial version and licensing available from SIPquest Inc.

Last updated by Kundan Singh