empathy cannot connect to my SIP server

[Rykel from Singapore]

Binary package hint: empathy

I cannot connect Empathy to my SIP service, no matter what I input into the setup fields.

The service is Callcentric. (http://bit.ly/myinum)

Even the engineers in the SIP company cannot get their own Ubuntu desktops with Empathy to work.

Please help?

[David Sugar (dyfet-deactivatedaccount)]

There are several reasons why this may happen. The one I am most familiar with is a consequence of Empathy using ephemeral ports. What happens is that while the SIP port of the Empathy client is bound to port 5060 to receive SIP messages, when sending a message (such as registration), the backend for Empathy instead creates a new socket (on an ephemeral port) to send SIP messages. Some SIP servers, to support NAT, assume the UDP port (and address) the incoming SIP message from the client "appears" from is the place to route return messages, and since this is a transitory socket, the response is of course lost and the chain of operation is broken.

Some argue this is a defect of the SIP server, or not standard compliant behavior, and for this reason upstream (nokia SIP stack) will not change it, while others point out true standard-compliant behavior would fail behind NAT, and indeed further, by Empathy not using the same socket to send registration refreshes, there is also no keyhole keep-alive possible for NAT on UDP. However, this does not offer a solution for your real and immediate issue, but rather simply background as to why it is currently broken.

One thing I had talked about with the Telepathy developers at UDS is using sipwitch as a local SIP proxy to solve this, since SIP Witch actually can deal with the ephemeral port behavior already. Another possibility we discussed was perhaps replacing the Nokia SIP stack with eXosip2. However, none of these are "immediate" options to fix this. A third choice would be to try and get a patch accepted for Nokia SIP. The SIP Witch approach is one I do have control over, being the upstream, and I can look at seeing how we can resolve these scenarios.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

Moving back to incomplete because this bug still lacks version information from the original reporter. If you are still experiencing this issue please type 'apport collect 601420' in your terminal as well as provide us with steps to reproduce your issue. If you don't experience this issue anymore please let us know this as well. Thanks

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

Have you tried to follow these instructions http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/FAQ#How_can_I_connect_to_my_SIP_account.3F to configure your SIP account?

[mustangtyson (tysonsmith)]

I found this:
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/FAQ#My_Ekiga_account_doesn.27t_work.

i have an ekigia account.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thanks for the bug report. If its still an issue in Ubuntu-10.10 please go to Help>Debug and there in the drop down menu select sofiasip (while empathy is trying to connect to your SIP) and click the save button and attach those logs to this bug report. so that we could send this bug to the people writing the software.

[mustangtyson (tysonsmith)]

Here is the debug file you asked for.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bilal Shahid (s9iper1)]

i guess you bug is related to this one isn't it see @ mustangtyson and rakel from singapore ?

[Bilal Shahid (s9iper1)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/empathy/+bug/709133

[Bilal Shahid (s9iper1)]

 m i right ?