Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

I saw this talk at DebConf16:
https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/139/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOHeSxKCiN4

From https://ring.cx/ :
Ring was recently accepted into Debian testing:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

hmmmmmm....... another one.
Is there any one that works on ALL platforms and have outgoing calls to ANY phone?

EDIT: and most importantly, the one that allows me to create account and add only the people I want and not the whole phonebook.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Is ring efficient for multi peer sessions ?

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

You can't use one account for multiple devices, so this will be added to the ever growing pile of good concepts nobody will ever use due to the developers' disconnect with real life. What were they thinking? 'Hey, please add me on Ring, and add me again for the Ring on my tablet and again for the Ring on my phone and again for the Ring on my other computer and don't forget to add all of my Rings on all of your Rings as well.'

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Its been a while since FOSDEM when I went to their talk about it, but the "easy to use" interface seemed anything but... filled with hidden options that arent at all apparent, like dragging one contact on top of another one to initiate a group call.

But honestly, its about time that Video Conferencing became something like e-mail rather than many individual apps that more or less do the same thing but not in an interoperable way.

I meant video call with several persons ... That's where google hanghout is good at.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

I installed (earlier version) two months ago (may 10) on :
-w8.1 SoC Tablet Lenoyo Yoga 2-851f
- w8.1 (ultrabook lenovo u430 touch)
-Linux mint 17.2 xfce (Dual core Intel CPU U4100 1.3 Ghz, without camera)

the procedure i used to install on linux system as it was on
https://ring.cx/en/download/gnu-linux

Tested using a different name id for each machine.
Chat options work with all three.
Audio work in all three, but I didn't test conference mode (more than two connected to talk using audio)
Video worked between w8.1 machines. The linux machine has no webcam.


-it seemed to me an interesting option. All your data is kept in your device.
-You can put text messages to be seen when the receiver gets online.


To chat is good. How to send audio or photos or videos I couldn't I didn't know.


I uninstalled on all systems windows and linux.

After uninstall on windows, it still info on registry
Firewall rules
and stuff like that...

Also the data of chat conversations it remains after uninstall on
c:\users\youuser\AppData\local\Savoir-faire-Linux
c:\users\youuser\AppData\local\Savoir-faire-Linux\Ring
c:\users\youuser\AppData\local\Savoir-faire-Linux\Ring\peer_profiles
c:\users\youuser\AppData\local\Savoir-faire-Linux\Ring\profiles
c:\users\youuser\AppData\local\Savoir-faire-Linux\Ring\text

the peer_profiles and profiles folders contains vcard file(s)
the text folder has JSON files containing
I think I'll test the new version.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

.....and what about this one?

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Ring dev here.

Ring allows for conference calls, it uses SIP underneath.

We don't yet support out-of-call group chats, but that will be possible in the future.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Ring Dev here.

Multi-device is coming soon. We will even bring usernames, so you can call "aviau" and it will ring on all of my devices.

Usernames will work with a decentralized blockchain-based registrar.

Multi-devices will require you to "authorize" your new device on any of your existing devices.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Yes, Ring allows for group video calls. It works with SIP underneath. Its as good as SIP is.

Note that Ring works without a central server, so the mixing has to be done on your machine.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

https://wire.com/download/
Wire is available for all modern platforms and devices.

IOS, Android, OS X 10.9, Windows 7 or above.

...mmm. and Gnu/Linux?...


For Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Opera.
On my Linux Machine:
Didn't work for Opera 12.16
I really like 12.16 and it works the best on my computer.

Didn't work for Chromium Version 47.0.2526.73 Built on Ubuntu 14.04, running on LinuxMint 17.2 (64-bit)

And I don't go to install/upgrade web browsers for test that wire.


After reading this on the terms of use
I guess :
-is not decentralized-
-is not fully open-source
-use my bandwidth, cpu, and harddrive for ??

... I prefer ring :) or look for another.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

For those interested, all these promised features have today been released in the 2nd beta of Ring: https://ring.cx/en/download

It all seems to work astonishingly well and the look and feel of the clients has progressed immensely over the past months. Now I just need to figure out how to initiate a group chat, and most likely some way to easily send images inline to each other in single or group chats will be needed to win more people over, but for now I'm very pleasantly surprised and look forward to this becoming the way of communication.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

I can only agree! This should be the new "default" IM/SIP client. :)

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

https://blog.savoirfairelinux.com/en...l-gnu-package/

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Interesting.
Can i install and use on my beloved N9 and Jolla?

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Not yet. We are all waiting. ;)

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

On Sailfish, technically, yes, and it should be fully integrated in Messages, Phone, People and Accounts: https://github.com/alok4nand/telepathy-bell

However, it seems like development was stopped at the end of the summer, so it doesn't support the latest features yet. Hopefully the developer or someone else will continue the good work at some point.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Another very important thing currently missing which I forgot to mention is offline messaging: if you try to send a message to a device which is offline, it will never arrive, not even when it gets back online.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

if you like offline message, you need a central server.
The interesting thing auf Ring is that is decentralized and base on open standard (SIP).
Better you are always online, so it send the message if the other is back online.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

No, you don't.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

So explain me how to do offline message without server?
Or maybe define offline messaging how you understand.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

How about, your sending device queues the message, and if immediate delivery is not possible retries it after a timeout.

Hence, no central server needed :D

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

And that doesnt work?
Offline messaging for me is
1. i´m sending and go offline
2. counterpart is offline so he not will receive.
3. when he go online, message arrive

So message has been stored somewhere since sending was fine (central server)

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Central server is considered poison, we want nothing like that ever near our precious messages :D

Remeber, we are talking about peer-to-peer, distributed network.
Of course there are ways to make offline messaging work like you described without a central server. This requires that the message is queued on some other peers.

Consider this scenario, then;
1.) I want to send a message to recipient B who is offline.
2.) My message goes to several peers (X, Y, Z in the network).
3.) I might log off myself from the network or not
4.) Recipient B comes online, and when any of peers X, Y or Z notice that, they forward the message.

again, no central server needed :D

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

ok. This form i agree :D

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

So the delivery is based on the willingness of X, Y or Z? How long do they store the message? How large message are they willing to store? 160 chars? A photo? A video?

I'd love to see a fully p2p decentralized system, but offline messages are a requirement for me. Running my own XMPP-server makes this possible.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

https://ring.cx/en/about/technical#OpenDHT

Ring seems to provide offline messages. Not sure about the specifics. I hope it will only work for text though to avoid clogging the network.
To be successful and have widespread adoption it needs to be snappy.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Well, I don't know about that document, but it definitely doesn't work the way a normal person would expect yet (the, quite reasonable, expectation is: everything is delivered, always): https://tuleap.ring.cx/plugins/tracker/?aid=765

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Yeah, that's the main issue IMHO - it's not easy to do in a way where it can't be easily misused to DoS the network.

Limiting what you can send can send to pears that are offline could definitely help - eq. only text messages for example, and even that in a limited amount.

That's still IMHO the main use-case - you don't usually send a wall of text to someone who is offline - rather something like "checkout this youtube video, LOL" or "the meeting tomorrow at 5 was moved by an hour", etc.

A hybrid solution might also work - you could "send" anything to an offline pear, but the message(s) will actually be queued on your side, while a short text-only summary would be stored in the network.

If the peer comes online before you go offline, the message(s) will go directly from you to the peer and the summary stored in the network would be canceled/ignored on delivery.

If you go offline before the peer comes online, the peer will only get the summary - kinda like how you might get SMS messages that someone called you while you were not available. If the size limit for the "summary" is big enough (eq. a few hundred chars,
compressed during transit) this should be fairly transparent to the users.

Now thinking about it, peer- side storage actually already happens in Bitcoin and other crypto currency networks - the peers store & validate the transactions + some metadata. It's not far from that to peers storing messages in transit - and you avoid the problem of an ever growing blockchain crypto currencies have by throwing messages away if they are not delivered after a while (7 days ?).

Well, one could still run his own ring agent somewhere (own server, a VPS, RPi behind the fridge, etc.) - but fully de-centralized would certainly be better. :)

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

After reading https://ring.cx/en/about/technical#OpenDHT and https://tuleap.ring.cx/plugins/tracker/?aid=765 I think I know how it is supposed to work at the moment;

• Offilne messaging works only with text messages (of some size xxx bytes?)
• If the recipient is offline, the message is stored for 5 minutes in DHT (Distributed Hash Table) that the networked hosts share together
• If the recipient does not come online in 5 minutes, the message timeouts and never reaches the recipient
• This happens also if the sender is on-line all the time, (which is a bug IMHO...)

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

This basically means it is unusable.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Guys, what you want is http://matrix.org. It's not p2p -- rather, it is "federated", which mostly gives the best of both worlds: like email, you can choose a server that you trust (run by someone else, or run your own), and you can already talk that way with anyone connected to your own "homeserver"; and in order to communicate with users on other homeservers, the homeservers communicate between themselves (again, think email) -- so it's not client-to-client (hence not true p2p), but it's not that far from that...

The advantages are:
(a) You are in control of the "network" -- nobody can ever come one day and decide to shut it down (like Skype or Gtalk) or ban unofficial clients (like WhatsApp);
(b) the server is "always on" (thus serving as the "agent" @MartinK mentioned); you can connect to it from one or more clients, and history gets synced between all of your clients (because there's a central server).
(c) communications within your homeserver remain in your homeserver: unless a user from another homeserver "joins" a "room" hosted in your server, communications never go to another homeserver, only to clients connected to your homesrever (and you have full control over which users -- both from other homeservers, as well as on your own homeserver -- you allow to join your rooms).

The network supports chat, voice and video (the latter two using WebRTC).

E2E encryption is in the works (may already be done, I'm not sure of the current status), though it has some costs (which are inherent), such as not being able to view history more than once (so if you don't store your history client-side, it's gone; and this may also affect multi-client behavior) --- and given (c) above, it may not be that important in many situations.

There's an "official" homeserver instance running at matrix.org, they are saying they intend to adopt the github model: free for open rooms, but charge money for private rooms. However, currently private rooms are still free, and it's a good way to get a feel for the network before setting up your own homeserver.

Everything about the network is open: specs, server source code, client source code. There are "official" reference implementations of a homeserver, as well as clients for iOS, Android and Web (all open source), and also a bunch of 3rd party implementations (both server and clients).

I don't know of any clients that currently run on the N900 (not sure about other t.m.o devices), but there's a python SDK (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-python-sdk) which could serve as the basis for one...

Just to be clear, I have nothing to do with matrix.org; but as someone who has been feeling the pain that a lot of you are expressing in this thread, when I finally came across matrix.org a few months ago I felt that this is the best attempt I'd seen yet at really creating an open communications network that would ease a lot of that pain...

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

@dovf:
and whats the advantage compared to XMPP and its wide distribution?

@gaelic:
Such general statements are mostly wrong. What you mean is: "There is ONE scenario which makes this service unusable FOR ME".

This way you can mark any technology as "unusable".

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

No, if messages go to the bin because someone is not permanently online (device shutdown, vacation abroad, dead zone, grab a beer from the cellar, you name it) it is unusable as of the status of today.

Such general statements are mostly wrong.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

The official answer: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.h...atrix-and-xmpp

Personally, I'm not convinced that there really is that big a difference. I have no experience with XMPP MUC (or whatever it's called -- using XMPP in a group- or room-oriented fashion). But that may be an indication of part of the difference -- I've never encountered a means of using XMPP for group- or room-oriented communications that is as easy as matrix is...

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

And a key sentence from that response: "The whole subject of XMPP vs Matrix seems to bring out the worst in people. Rather than fighting over which open interoperable communication standard works the best, we should just collaborate and bridge everything together. The more federation and interoperability the better."

Matrix is very open to bridging. Ultimately, I don't care what network anyone else uses, as long as I can communicate with them while I'm using a client and network that works best for me. So XMPP vs. Matrix really is kind of a non-issue...

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

All popular chat solutions today are unusable.
They all use a central server instance which can be hacked or controlled by individuals who wants to read my private conversations.
Only p2p messengers are usable - as of the status of today.

Got that?

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Yeah, but that behaviour is a BUG --> it will be corrected.

Re: Ring - secure and distributed voice, video and chat platform
 

Do you know XMPP transports?
The problem with such extensions is that someone has to maintain them. Its useless to have a "WhatsApp" transport which do not work because of protocol changes.