If you have a choice of IAX or SIP then I'd go with IAX.

In terms of security it's safer as there's less ports to open. It's also
NAT friendly too.

The RTP stuff is handled in the same data stream as the call setup and
so requires less ports opened on your firewall. It also has bandwidth
conservation abilities. Frankly though, for most SOHO and SME uses I
don't think you'd notice the bandwidth savings. 

IAX is also useful in that it doesn't often appear on your ISP's "banned
protocols" list. Many SIP users complain that their ISP is adding
significant jitter to any traffic they see aimed at port 5060. Many
providers block it outright in favor of their own ITSP offerings. Yes
it's illegal and the FCC have fined a few of them but with the maximum
fine being only US$5000 it's not much of a deterant. 


On Mon, 2006-04-24 at 17:34 -0500, Alex Neuman van der Hans wrote:
> Neil A. Hillard wrote:
> > That's like comparing apples and pears!  _IAX_ may well be better as I
> > believe it uses a single port and plays better than SIP with NAT.  I'm
> > only currently using SIP so I can't say from experience.
> >   
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-IAX+versus+SIP
> 
> Some info. You can google around for more, but it's pretty well covered. 
> Don't know from experience either - most voip providers here in my 
> country will either stick proprietary/confusing/crummy boxes you plug 
> standard telephones into, or offer H.323 (which is NAT-hostile). *Some* 
> will provide SIP if you ask nice.
> 
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