PicoPhone is a simple Internet Phone, which allows multiple concurrent calls, has chat functionality, delay control, silence threshold control, works well with NAT routers.

I made it, because all the Internet phones around are quite heavy and use complicated protocols, such as H.323, which has problems with NAT routers. PicoPhone uses a simple UDP-based protocol, which works very well with NAT. The program accepts connections on UDP port 11676 and makes connection to that port.

Optionally a port number can follow the address (the colon is used as a separator), if the connection has to be made to another port (the NAT router on the receiving side should convert the port number to the default 11676).

PicoPhone allows multiple concurrent calls, but the audio device should allow multiple output streams to be opened simultaneously. Conferences are not set up automatically, i.e., if A calls B and C, B and C won't hear each other: B has to call C, or C has to call B for the complete conference to be set up.

On incoming calls the program plays the file ringin.wav, which should be present in the default windows location for wav files or in the same directory of PicoPhone.

Operation

Enter a fully qualified domain name or an IP address and then press the Call key. You can put a comment before the address, but in this case you should enclose the address between < and >. If not specified, the address uses the standard PicoPhone port, 11676. A port can be specified after the address, using a colon as a separator. The syntax can be therefore:

address, or
address:port, or
name , or
name

When the second two forms are used, and also the first two forms, when the address is a DNS name and not an IP address, the address will be saved and it will be available from the drop down box for the next time.