September 2004 Archives

Now you can take your RSS feeds with you, wherever you go. I thought this was an interesting release in light of the fact that I wrote about RSS today.

I've been getting lots of great feedback on TMCnet's News Alert Service. This is a keyword based service allowing you to track anything we cover and we cover just about every technology that you need to know about. Once a day, you receive an e-mail for each tem you are tracking. Common terms from this week are WiMAX, CRM Excellence, DOD, WiFi, VoIP, White Paper of VoIP, SIP, H.323, Linksys, Bio-Key, VoIP Developer, Avaya, and Cisco. The service can be used for personal research, to eliminate the need to have to constantly search for the latest news and for competitive intelligence. This last area makes a tremendous amount of sense as it allows you to stay on top of everything your competitor does. Many people use it to track what is happening in their own company as many times we have the news before a company's own employees do. Use it well and I hope you find it useful.When you sign up for the News Alert service you immediately receive a confirmation e-mail that you must click on to authorize future alerts. Please check for it and if it goes into your spam folder, please unblock TMCnet e-mails so that you can recieve future news.TMCnet has also had RSS Feeds for a while and once you enter you your keyword preferences into the news alert service, you will receive an XML URL that you point your news aggregator. Here is the URL for a VoWiFi feed for example: http://rss.tmcnet.com/rss/rss.ashx?cnl=e0H1eHdfH48Hd7H25H7dH27H.Here is an excerpt of an explanation of RSS Feeds from O'Reilly XML.comRSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.
 Here is a sample of an alert for the word VoIP from yesterday:Hello,
These are the stories from the past 24 hours matching your selected keyword, "voip":

Influential Military, Broadcast and Corporate Speakers Coupled with End-User Applications Conference Makes SATCON a Must-Attend Event http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077733.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 2:42:54 PM

Globecomm Systems Receives Two U.S. Government Satellite Infrastructure Contracts Valued at Approximately $5.9 Million, Which Includes an Initial Award Under an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077723.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 2:14:54 PM

DataLogic International Adds MicroLan to Panther Trak(TM) http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077705.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 1:18:38 PM

Dictaphone Announces Joint Marketing Agreement With The Call Center School http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077693.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 12:53:56 PM

Comwave Deploys Kagoor's Session Border Controllers For New North American VoIP Service http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077662.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 12:08:21 PM

Time Warner Cable Launches Videoconferencing Initiative with Viseon's VisiFone http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077528.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:15:56 AM

Airspan Announces Sale of WipLL 700 MHz Networks to Green Hills Telephone and other US Operators via System Integrator Stutler Technologies http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077522.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:11:54 AM

Airspan Announces Sale of WipLL 700 MHz Equipment to Cavalier Group, LLC http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077506.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:03:06 AM

Email Vendor Everyone.net Beefs Up Private Label Email Program; Provides New Billing Automation Tools and New Spanish Web Mail Interface http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077495.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:02:29 AM

Spirent Extends its Leadership in Push-to-Talk Handset Test; First Commercial Solution for Lab-based Evaluation of Handset Performance http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077494.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:02:28 AM

Viola Networks Secures $11.1 Million in Additional Funds http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077482.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:02:08 AM

Convedia to Participate in Global MSF Interoperability 2004 Event; Company Will Provide Multi-Service IP Media Server Functionality across Global Test Sites http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077467.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 9:01:25 AM

Popular Telephony and Logicom Collaborate to Deliver Peer-to-Peer VoIP Solution to the Consumer Market; The First Residential Peer-to-Peer IP Phone for Serverless Communications http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077439.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:45:59 AM

deltathree Appoints Noam Ben-Ozer to Board of Directors http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077428.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:32:21 AM

Net2Phone to Report Fiscal Year 2004 Earnings on October 13; Company to Present at Conferences Globally http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077414.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:31:16 AM

Ubiquity Software VP Jeff Liebl to Present at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077408.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:31:06 AM

Axiowave and Veraz Partner To Enable Carriers To Offer ATM-Grade SLAs for VOIP Services http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077402.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:30:56 AM

2004 MBG Conference to Address Telecommunications Expense Management and the Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077398.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:23:28 AM

Comwave Deploys Kagoor's Session Border Controllers For New North American VoIP Service http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077378.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:05:54 AM

Covad Statement on California PUC Rate Decision http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077357.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:02:11 AM

Bank of America Begins Rollout of Cisco IP Communications System to 180,000 Desktops at 5,800 Locations Throughout the United States http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077345.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:01:31 AM

Kevin Power, a Seasoned Telecom Veteran, Joins Popular Telephony Advisory Board http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077344.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:01:29 AM

Argentine Enterprises Driven by Cost Reduction, but Still Select Providers on Service Quality, According to Yankee Group Survey http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077324.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 8:00:55 AM

YAK Communications Inc. Reports Record Year End Results http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077308.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 7:31:03 AM

Dictaphone Announces Joint Marketing Agreement with the Call Center School; Companies to Generate Exposure for Complimentary Learning Management and Training Solutions http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077304.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 7:30:56 AM

Rostrvm Solutions takes the 'C' out of CTI http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077302.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 7:30:47 AM

Zhone Expands Triple Play over Fiber Carrier Solutions with New PON ONU Supporting IP Video http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077279.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 7:01:04 AM

Copper Mountain Announces VantEdge Solution for Emerging Ethernet and ATM FTTx Architectures http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077249.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 6:01:15 AM

Stratasoft to Present Conference Session At INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO Fall 2004 http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077233.htm
Posted: 9/28/2004 5:30:54 AM

Yap International Appoints Telecommunications Executive Joseph Weaver as President and Chief Operating Officer http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077190.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 6:46:04 PM

IP-PBX Software Provider Artisoft to Acquire Vertical Networks http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077188.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 6:29:42 PM

Yap International appoints Telecommunications Executive Joseph Weaver as President and Chief Operating Officer http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077183.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 5:50:39 PM

LongBoard Partners with GIPS Licensing VoiceEngine(tm) to Deliver Unbeatable Voice Quality for the LongBoard OnePhone Application http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077177.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 5:25:29 PM

Scott County Telephone Co-Op Selects ''Last Mile Link'' System from Wave7 Optics for New ''Triple Play'' FTTP Network http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077160.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 4:11:54 PM

FoneFriend Plans to Acquire an Additional 40,000 VoIP Customers http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/sep/1077158.htm
Posted: 9/27/2004 4:07:54 PM 

 

 

First of all congratulations to all the award winners! Many service providers have been asking me how they were selected for the Internet Telephony VoIP Service Provider award. Apparently they want to put out press releases, etc. Here are the details on this honor:

Cisco has been making serious headway in the VoIP space lately. Two recent stories show that they aren't slowing down one bit. In a CNET story titled Cisco inks another big VoIP deal, Bank of America is going to deploy 180,000 Cisco phones! This is on top of recent successes with Boeing and Ford. Meanwhile Washington Technoloy reports that Cisco VoIP products were approved by the DoD or Department of Defense to us laypeople. The specific equipment that received certification includes Cisco Catalyst 3550, 4500 and 6500 switches; Cisco 2600 and 3700 gateways; and CallManager 3.3 call processing software.

I received this rather detailed e-mail on configuring hardware for AT&T CallVantage. Havent tested this myself but it looks important enough to pass along. This is likely the AT&T Callvantage article being referred to. Hello,

I just spent the entire day trying to figure out how to get port forwarding working on the DVG-1120M or a way to get it to work behind a firewall/router, i came across an article you posted on it a few months ago. I have found out several distressing facts about the DVG-1120M and AT&T's service that you might find interesting.

* Bad networking logic, when the 1120 connects it sends some information about its connection to at&t using an http form post method, part of the connection data that is sent is the 1120's WAN IP, most routers support NAT but none support filtering IP's out of http data thats just not done.. so AT&T only tries to send packets to the IP specified in that HTTP post (rather than the IP its recieving this data from, which would be logical) so it cant communicate to the 1120 unless the IP the unit has for its WAN port is publicly reachable and can be routed to the 1120. So thats why it doesn't work. And its been like this for over a year. They have been telling customer's "new products/updates should be rolling out in about a month" for over a year! They did update their firmware earlier this month but it seems to have broken port forwarding completely

* No port forwarding, yea port forwarding doesnt seem to work at all anymore, previously it worked on 6 single ports (no ranges) which was better than nothing i guess, now it appears to be able to forward many ports in the configuration, but none of them are actually forwarding

* No DMZ. DMZ to a router behind the 1120 would really be helpful, especially now that port forwarding doesnt work, but this feature is not available

* Crippled connection while phone is on, When you are on the phone line the 1120 practically shuts down other net traffic, outgoing traffic is greatly effected even if the outgoing bandwidth that the 1120 requires is only a fraction of your connections available outgoing bandwidth. If it were BEHIND another router it wouldnt be able to effect your whole network like this and the QoS of the calls would be virtually uneffected.

there are 2 ways to get a decent connection working with forwarded ports:

1. Set up the 1120 to use bridge mode (turn off nat, turn on bridged mode) this basicly keeps the 1120 out of your business, the problem is you need more than one public IP from your ISP for it to work

2. use Two routers(but this requires a static IP) and connect one(lets say Router1) directly to your ISP (its WAN would be from your ISP, lets say 65.65.65.65) and for its LAN have some private IPs (like 192.168.1.x) and then connect Router2 upto router1 (its WAN will be 192.168.1.x and its LAN will be (65.65.65.x) then connect the 1120 last and set its WAN ip to be 65.65.65.65! This way the 1120's WAN port as far as it knows is 65.65.65.65 and that address gets put into the HTTP POST data, the packet sent is translated twice (back into 65.65.65.65 though before going out!) AT&T recieves the packet with 65.65.65.65 in it and tries to use that address to connect. Lastly you need to set the DMZ for Router1 to Router2, and the DMZ on Router2 to the 1120 so packets can get back (or set up a static route) It might be possible to do with 1 router too but im not having any luck on mine.

Anyway i thought this info might be useful or interesting to you and i just spent all day/night figuring this all out the hard way, tried lots of different configurations, read stuff all over the net (including your article) and even did packet logging on the 1120's output and I wanted someone else besides me to know this stuff so it feels like less of a waste of time

Google may be launching a new browser according to a story by BBC. The Register also has a story that talks about this new browser and mentions that Google has recently hired a senior Java developer from Sun. Bloggers too are getting into the act, predicting that Google has the opportunity now while the industry is losing trust in the security offered by Internet Explorer.

If Google does launch such a browser, we can expect it to be successful. After all, they have invented the user interface for search. MSN and Yahoo! are basically copying the Google search page. Neither brings anything unique to the table. Dont believe me? Check out MSN Search for yourself. Who does this remind you of?

Furthermore, their interface for mail is excellent. Better than the competition according o most who have tried them all. They have the potential to do a great job with a browser.

Imagine, Google will be able to tie in mail and search and blogging into such a piece of software. This will give them a tremendous competitive boost but not advantage. Microsoft owns desktops and is rapidly building search into all of their products and the OS. The only way to fight back is with a strategy that levels the playing field. The browser is the OS of this decade and if you get some traction where people browse you can really start to leverage your disparate services.

I say if Google isnt planning to do this, they should. I am confident that they will develop a great browser and when they do, there will be some serious competition between them and Microsoft and of course, we all win.

When I first wrote about Asterisk, the open, Linux based PBX it was for the January issue of Internet Telephony Magazine. I expected Asterisk to do well but I didnt expect the groundswell of activity that I have recently witnessed. For example, at our Internet Telephony show last February in Miami, their booth was mobbed. At our VoIP Developer show last August in San Jose, once again their booth was mobbed and their networking reception had steady traffic, including many people that drove down from Linux World which was taking place in San Francisco the same week.

I am sure they will once again be mobbed in LA, where Internet Telephony Conference & Expo will take place in less October 4-7. This week the company is busy with the AstriCon event which is taking place in Atlanta. I understand there are over 350 people signed up to attend the event which is quite impressive.

I just learned that Tom Keating blogged that Asterisk was announcing version 1.0 of their product at this event. Open source telephony is gaining momentum and Digium/Asterisk is on the cutting edge. You definitely want to get to this event to learn more about what open source can provide you.

AT&T has certainly been on an announcement frenzy. Here is their latest announcement on their VoIP teleworker trials for multinationals. AT&T and others realize how huge the VoIP opportunity is internationally and that is where most of the money will be made.

The New York Times had an interesting article titled Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras (registration required) in which Mayor Daley says the cameras will make the city a safer place. 250 cameras will be installed and using sophisticated technology, they will be able to spot a person acting suspiciously around a sensitive area. For example if they leave a package outside a building or walk in circles, authorities will be alerted and the police will be dispatched.There are obvious big brother implications here but in a world where terrorism is such a threat, many would err on the side of caution. Still, I believe it be to be in politicians to be as sensitive a possible to those who may take offense to the rapid rise of cameras in public places. The article ends with the following:"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."Perhaps You aren't Mr. Daley but still, that's a lot of area the city owns and if I am not mistaken, they can lay claim to parks, the air we breath, all vertical space from the Earth upward, etc. At some point we want to be assured that cameras wont be installed everywhere the city owns. After all, you own numerous public rest rooms as well.I suppose this is inevitable in the age we live in. Lets just hope it doesn't get out of hand.  

A few years back I attended the 3GSM show in the south of France and no, it wasn't sunny... Pretty cold and drizzly, thank you very much. Suffice it to say, I covered the whole show -- Every Exhibitor. Not much else to do there I am afraid. Oh sure I could have gone to a restaurant and had a baguette, some brie and red wine. But I don't drink and those Europeans are a Wily bunch. Just when us Americans are hungry, they close all the kitchens -- somewhere between 2 and 8 PM. If you are lucky, you'll find a 2 day old grilled cheese sandwich labeled elegantly Croque Monsieur. BTW, the French don't necessarily close the restaurants when they don't serve food. They are there so they can express tremendous surprise at your hunger and proclaim that they don't serve food. I think the kitchen staff may secretly be on strike. The French love a good strike. Getting back to 3GSM, one of the first exhibitors I saw was a company called SMS.ac. I figured they had something to do with SMS but didn't give it much thought beyond that. They put me on their distribution list for press releases and they sent me lots of intriguing info over the years. I never had a chance to follow up and write about them until I received the following e-mail from their PR team:

Sure, technology is great but the problem with it is if it breaks, and it always does, it takes time to fix. I am experiencing the fun of dealing with ever-braking technology. I have a  Dell laptop at home and it has two problems,. The first is that it overheats and shuts off from time to time. I raised it up off the desk and this has helped but not cured the problem. More recently, the internal WiFi card (802.11b) disconnects from the network randomly. Furthermore, my Optimum Online cable modem has a  problem with upload speed. It is very slow.This past weekend was a blast, trying to upload photos to ofoto. I had a few hundred megabytes to send and once the transfer started I would do something else, only to find out that the transfer abruptly stopped in the middle. Pretty frustrating I tell you. I have a 3 year extended warranty on the laptop but sending it back to get get fixed means that the laptop wont be usable for a number of days and it is used as a business laptop (not TMC BTW) and I can't spare it. I decided that since the WiFi access point is near the laptop, I could just connect a cable. That worked well and one problem is now solved., Next i need to call the good people from Optimum Online and try to rearrange my life into one of those famous 4-hour windows.Isnt technology supposed to make our lives easier? When technology gets to the point that it takes more time to fix than it saves, you have to reevaluate your gadgets and your life. 

TMC just announced a new party for vendors in the speech and contact center business to come network. It should be lots of fun. Here are the details. Hope to see you there. ESPN Sports Zone
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
8:00-10:00 PM

Here is the invite and RSVP info for the speech event.

Conferencing via VoIP is the way to go and WebEx recently decided to take the VoIP plunge by using media servers from Convedia. Convedia should be proud as WebEx now joins Genesys who took the Convedia VoIP plunge a few months back. In related news, the Wall Street Journal reported today that shares of Ptek Holdings (PTEK 1 Month Chart) took a plunge when one of its largest customers, IBM decided to switch conferencing vendors. In part of the quarterly report filed by Ptek their was an illuminating statement: "IBM is actively exploring the use of new technologies, such as voice-over-IP to help lower its costs of conferencing." Looks like the conferencing market is moving very rapidly to VoIP. Conferencing vendors better act quickly or be left in the dust.