g729 pass through vs codec - transcoding?

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hello,
I work for a company who has recently setup a large Asterisk environment to eventually cover over 1000 locations in all.
The project is managed by an outside consultant who installed the 'g729 Coder/Decoder, based on Intel IPP ’ . I have been tasked with setting up a similar (but much smaller) environment for the owners house (house is an understatement really). In trying to decide on what codec’s to use, I came across the fact that the g729 codec we are using in production apparently breaks the License agreement with Digium for Asterisks, and I didn’t want to do that on a project I am responsible for.

However, I have been told by our CIO that Asterisk (in production) isn’t doing any transcoding so there is nothing wrong. Obviously he refuses to see the big picture here, and I have been trying to convince him that if its installed, it is breaking the License agreement. All the Asterisk installs used to support this project ONLY use the g729 codec for incoming and outgoing, and it looks like g729 pass-through is actually working, but I want to be sure.

The question is, is there any way I can tell from the logs or whatever that transcoding using the codec has taken place? And also, I have read that some of the advanced features of Asterisk require transcoding to work, but cannot locate a specific list of features that require this to know if we are using them.

I would really like to get our system back within the license agreement, regardless of how our CIO feels, and need some ammo (proof its being used for transcoding) to further push the subject.

Thanks

2

Howdy,

You should consult with an attorney as to the ramifications of using any license or patent-violating code within your organization.

Remove the offending code, see what breaks. If something stops working, then clearly the offending code was being used.

Any time Asterisk touches media - think Dial flags or conferencing or features.conf items or prompts or sound files in a format other than native G.729 - it’s doing transcoding.

It’s pretty sleazy of any consultant to take money out of Asterisk, while turning a blind eye to license and patents, because they want to save a buck.

3

Also, if something’s truly only doing pass-through and not touching the media, the IPP wouldn’t have been installed. So, clearly something’s making use of it, and that’s just garbage.

4

Actually, it is a breach of Intel’s copyright in the IPP code (as that has no commercial use constraints), a breach of the copyright of the non-Intel parts, as a combination of GPL and no-commercial use code has a void licence, and in many countries, a breach of the patent rights for the G.729 algorithm.