LI Evolution - the pace quickens

January 12, 2007

I was cleaning out my basement this weekend and came across an assortment of telephony equipment from my past (butt set, continuity tester, bridge clips, punchdown tool, 66 blocks etc.), a little museum of sorts. The last time I used any of it was when I was teaching my son's Cub Scout den how phones and phone networks work (no I wasn't teaching them how to wiretap anyone). As I reflected on my past and my father-in-law's career at New York Telephone (way back before Verizon and Bell Atlantic), it impressed me with how significantly and how rapidly things have changed in the past 20+ years.

In the 80's most everything was still analog and services like caller id, call forwarding were just being introduced. I remember getting "Total Phone" in 1982 in Connecticut, just after we replaced our rotary phone with a touchtone. Of course this was all prior to CALEA and wiretapping was still done by bridging on a copper pair or using a "loop around" trunk that terminated on analog recorders. But by the late 80's digital technology was on a tear and law enforcement was starting to realize what it was potentially missing and asked for help.

CALEA was passed and new solutions were implemented that were able to access call forwarding, conf calls etc. and most of it was done right on the "big iron" switches of the day. But by the late 90's IP services were making their presence know and a new generation of LI needed to be deployed. No longer was traffic going to be delivered over POTS dial up lines, new IP connectivity for data and content was needed and implemented.

And it appears we're on the brink of another change, another generation. Forget the centralized softswitches and media gateways of today's VoIP services, communication is now done with simple SIP clients using standard broadband pipes. So what does that mean for LI solutions? Well they have had to adapt and include "application" servers so that things like conference calls, prepaid calls and PTT talk groups are captured. Deep packet inspection has also become a critical component of these solutions as communication traffic needs to be filtered out as these broadband pipes become consumed with the transfer of entertainment media. And forget about using "well known ports" to identify traffic, protocol characterization is now the key to finding and tracking the targeted traffic.

From the use of butt sets for decades, to nationalized standards in 2 decades, to 2 new generations of IP LI in one decade, the pace of technology advancement, and the equivalent advances needed within LI, certainly is increasing rapidly.

Please feel free to send comments or questions. Till next time ...