Myths and legends make great stories. They can make great movies – if the director is up to it. In more mundane circumstances, they’re often similarly used as a metaphor. In terms of cloud computing, some myths are considered as incontrovertible as the Instructions of Shuruppak, by which is meant – it is tantamount to a fact that this is a myth.
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From hardware based....to software based....to cloud
Seasons greetings from the team at Aculab.
Lyrics by Ian Colville, Aculab Product Manager.
If you are intrigued by Cloud Telephony, you might be asking yourself a number of questions. Those questions are likely to include: “What is meant by a Telephony Platform as a Service (PaaS)?” “Is it for me?” “When and why would I use a Telephony PaaS?” “What are the Telephony PaaS options?” Read on for some answers…
In summary, a PaaS could be a server system or it could be a computer language interpreter that enables bespoke applications to be written and deployed. The main benefit being that you can access ‘tools’ to help write and deploy an application, based on technology owned and managed by someone else.
PaaS is different from Software as a Service (SaaS) in that there is no pre-written, configurable application. Continue Reading...
Choosing IP connectivity enables a distributed architecture
In putting IP technology at the heart of the Prosody X design it is much simpler, due to the ubiquity of Ethernet in IT networks, to build multi-board, multi-chassis and multi-location systems using Prosody X. So if the high channel counts of a single Prosody X board are not enough, then it is easy to build multi-board systems.
The traditional way
Before VoIP entered the telephony world, we depended on TDM technology and an array of disparate CAS and CCS type PSTN protocols, and most of the voice-based solutions had a common architecture, simply described as a host server with telephony boards.
Continue Reading...If you recall the scenario, there is a gateway installed between an SS7 carrier network and an emergency services IP network – an ESInet – over which emergency calls are routed to public safety answering points (PSAPs). Calls entering the ESInet via the gateway are SIP/RTP/UDP and, as the NENA i3 specification quite rightly states, in no circumstances should an in-progress emergency call be taken down automatically, just because RTP streams fail.
Whatever effort you put into making the call handling equipment redundant and resilient, it is always best to assume that bad things can still happen. To misappropriate the principle of simplicity from Ockham’s razor, follow the rule of thumb that advises, “Make as few assumptions as possible.” In fact, make one assumption only – expect the worst (i.e., ‘the proverbial’ happens).
So, we can expect situations to arise in which RTP media between the gateway and the ESInet fails.
PSAP equipment must be able to distinguish between RTP failure and real silence by a caller. Continue Reading...
We could have just taken the existing 4-trunk Prosody X PCIe board and added further trunks and DSPs. Instead we took note of customer feedback and went the extra mile to further improve the original design.
The result is a board with vastly increased channel capacities, giving our developer customers the components needed to readily craft large scale systems at a very cost-effective price-per-channel. Whilst many DSP boards top out at 240 channels, the new 8-port Prosody X PCIe board can support up to 720 channels.
What’s the key factor that sets cloud categories apart?
This question, albeit it’s more of a statement seeking endorsement, was recently raised on LinkedIn and it generated a variety of responses relating to security, ease of use, and flexibility, to name but a few. I couldn’t resist the temptation to respond and counter some of those ‘issues’.
Security – any computer connected to the Internet is at risk from hackers, whether it is in the cloud or in a private data centre. Would it be true to say that an SME, with necessarily limited resources, is able to better secure its data than say, Amazon?
In addition, who says everything needs to be in the cloud? Adopting a cloud computing strategy isn’t an ‘all or nothing’ decision.
Oresund Bridge, image via Wikipedia
This weeks announcement[1] by Orange that it plans to roll out mobile HD Voice to several more countries throughout Europe, and from UK operator Three that they will roll out HD Voice capability to ‘most’ phones by the autumn is good news for the spread of HD Voice, but Orange are missing a trick.
Read down to the bottom of the Orange press release and you come to the part about hooking up its HD Voice capable mobile networks with its own broadband fixed network service that currently has approximately 800,000 subscribers. Orange is not planning to enable a customer who might have its wideband service on their home network to talk to someone (possibly a member of the same family) in HD Voice quality on a mobile phone until 2012 or 2013!
If HD Voice is to succeed in a big way, then you have to create a system that allows you (with a HD Voice capable device) to call another person (with an equally capable device) and not have to rely on that person being on the same network as you to guarantee the ability for the call to be setup with the best quality.
If disparate islands of HD Voice capability are developed in isolation, then the technology will never achieve its potential to revolutionise the voice communications landscape. What is needed is a concerted effort, from Orange and others, to create the bridges between these islands. Continue Reading...
[By the way; that’s a gateway as distinct from a router, Proxy server, or some form of gatekeeper or firewall function at an entry/exit point to the network.]
Sure, gateways aren’t wicked or malevolent – like vampires. Come to think of it, though, if it wasn’t for vampires, neither Peter Cushing nor Christopher Lee, not to mention Buffy (who polished off many a vampire), would’ve had much of a career. You’d probably think they’d be inclined to say, “Evil is good!”
So gateways are a necessary evil, which means they’re a good thing. Continue Reading...
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