Quoting Trei, Peter <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>:
I don't quite understand why getting encrypted VoIP working on a Palm Pilot (16-33 MHz dragonball) is the 'Holy Grail'. I would have said that the HG is an affordable, working, portable and pocketable encrypted VoIP system with free software, regardless of platform. The Ipaq is 2-300$ more than a Palm device, but is that the whole issue? Ipaqs have much better cpu power and memory, and decent Linux ports. Go for the low-hanging fruit first.
"Everyone" has palm pilots already. WinCE-based PocketPCs haven't made much of a dent in the marketplace. There is also a very large developer community for palm apps, and they're widely deployed in corporations. If you're assuming users will buy a dedicated device *and* put linux on it, that's reasonable (or sell pre-packaged systems). Otherwise, you also need to develop for WinCE on the PocketPC. I still would like to see from someone who is good at integer voice encoding whether a 33MHz dragonball can do tolerable-quality voice at 14.4kbps; I'm sure it's good enough to distinguish "ki" from "eight-ball", but I'd like something good enough to distinguish "weight, y'all" from "eight-ball" Since it's very unlikely any pda will have full duplex audio anytime soon, I think the bluetooth headset is the only viable solution; I'm going to get one for my t39m soon enough, and then I'll experiment with linux bluetooth support and try to get bluetooth audio integrated into OSS on my laptop, as a proof of concept. That done, it's just a question of running linux on an ipaq for a simple demo, with libgsm compiled as integer; then maybe something more efficient. I'm pretty sure someone has made the bluetooth headset work with linux already, so it's just a question of kernel patches. The security of this would depend somewhat on the bluetooth encryption, although I'd be happier trusting unencrypted but low-propagation bluetooth vs. a PSTN/cell link. -- Ryan Lackey [RL7618 RL5931-RIPE] ryan@havenco.com CTO and Co-founder, HavenCo Ltd. +44 7970 633 277 the free world just milliseconds away http://www.havenco.com/ OpenPGP 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F