I have used Ekiga quite a bit. It is one of the main free software voice over IP clients. It is often installed by default on many GNOME-based systems such as many free software distributions, and it is also available on Solaris.

It also now has a Windows port, so I thought I would try it out. Giving any remaining Windows-using relatives Ekiga means they can chat to you online without you having to install proprietary phone clients that do strange things on your network.

To start with, you need a SIP username, I got a free SIP username from Ekiga's online-registration, but you can get one from any SIP provider, or you can be your own provider by running your own SIP server such as Asterisk.

To start with, lets just use Ekiga's free usernames.

So once you have a SIP username, we want to download Ekiga. the Windows binary is available from Ekiga's Windows-Users page.

Download the exe and click on it. This will bring up a little box asking you for your language. My first language, English, was the default so I went with that.

Next comes the Ekiga Setup Wizard:

Press next twice and you get this:

Press finish. I did this on Windows XP, which brought up a warning me that Ekiga is attempting to connect the Internet. Being a program to chat over the Internet, I pressed "Unblock":

Next is the First Time Configuration Assistant.

It will ask you for your SIP username and password (i.e. the username we created at the beginning of this article), and it will try to detect your microphone, speakers and webcam (if you have one).

Press "Forward" a lot and read through each of the screens. when you are done it will summarise your choices:

Press "Apply" if you are happy, or press "Back" to change them.

So now hopefully you are done with all the hard work. You should see the main Ekiga interface like this:

The first icon on the right allows you to open a text chat with the person you are talking to.

So far, I only really use Ekiga to call my friends over the Internet, I have never phoned a landline, therefore I turned the numberpad off, you can do this by clicking the second item on the left, or by going to the "View" menu, and choosing "View Mode" then "Videophone".

Typing usernames into the address bar is a bit dull, so pressing the third icon on the left of the interface brings up the address book. If you add your friends to the address book then you can click on them rather than having to remember their SIP username.

Ekiga has many more features, but you can easily discover most of them yourself.

Now you probably want to test it. Put sip:500@ekiga.net in the address bar and press enter. This will call the Ekiga 500 echo service. It is a robot who will echo back whatever you tell it, this way you can tell whether your connection, microphone and speakers are working properly.

Happy chatting!