August 2005 Archives

What will VoIP look like in a few years from now. There is so much going on in VoIP these days it's hard to say where we will be in year 2010. Everyone has an opinion on where the industry is headed and what that may mean to the consumers and business stakeholders. I thought it was time to call on some industry movers and shakers and have a discussion about "The Future of VoIP". Starting next week I will be publishing multiple telephone interviews on the same topic. There are some big industry names stepping up to the podium and I can't wait to hear what they have to say! Join me right here next week for the first podcast episode in the series, you won't want to miss it!

Yes, truly nuts I say. Microsoft finally owned up to buying Teleo, (why they bought I am not sure and I probably never will understand), Google launched Talk, AOL and it's VoIP service.. bla bla bla. One has to wonder when Pepsi or Coke are going to start offering their own VoIP phone service OR... maybe MacDonald's will bundle it with their wi-fi offering, oh yeah, that wi-fi and a cheeseburger thing kinda flopped, didn't it? What does all this VoIP hype mean and more importantly what does VoIP mean for the consumer? Well, it's not just about VoIP. Audioblogging, Videoblogging and Citizen Journalism are having an impact and are pushing the envelope of media as we know it. Roll it all up and we can see the outline of a digital media blitz. News Corp buying everything in site including alleged talks with a VoIP provider Skype, the writing is on the wall. VoIP, IM, News, Reporting, blogging via text, video and audio properties are being snapped up fast by the content kings. Let's just hope the Internet stays mainly tax and regulation free!!

The next VoIP & IP communications event I am attending will be Jeff's VON. I will be there as a panel moderator, a blogger and a consultant. Some interesting sessions I will be present for: - SIP Update - The Role of IMS in the Network of the Future - VoIP Bloggers Roundtable - Emergency Services for Internet Communications See you there!

The Federal Communications Commission said it would delay a Monday deadline for providers of Internet-based phone calls to get acknowledgments from their customers that they understand the problems they may encounter when dialing 911 in an emergency. But in Friday’s notice, the agency said the deadline would be extended to Sept. 28 for the providers to get their acknowledgments. If by that time a provider still has not received confirmation from a customer, then the company should disconnect a customer’s phone service, according to the FCC order. more..

When I read articles like this one, I have to laugh. Have these guys ever tried to get phone service from an incumbent? It's like trying to negotiate a mortgage for your home. Hmm, no.. that was easier actually. Recently I moved my family across town and when I found out that my cable Internet connection was already installed, well.. I was a happy guy. 911 is fully functional now via Vonage but trying to explain that to my wife holding a 2 month old baby is not so easy. So I gave in and decided to call the local incumbent for a landline, let the saga begin. The local telephone company is on strike, locked out actually. Super, now I get to hop from department to department (they have a few) and talk to various supervisors about my wife's request for a landline I do not need. Finally after an hour on hold and explaining myself away a few times I get a girl who is willing to help. She tells me that she has absolutely no idea when the line will be installed nor can she refund or discount the install fee when the line actually does get installed. Nice service guys. She then goes on to tell me that the best she can do is send me a cellular phone which I would have to pay for or forward the number we wanted to another line. HA! Excellent. So I explain this to my wife and it's apparent she wants the number from the phone company because it's easier to remember. Ugh. Now I get to pay for a line fee from the incumbent just to have it forwarded to my Vonage line! Makes no sense to me. If I had it my way I would cancel the landline altogether. When I first moved in I had Vonage phone service as soon as my Internet was installed, if the cable company were smart they would strategically partner with Vonage and get a piece of that revenue. Now imagine if I had Internet from the Telco as well. No land line, no DSL. No DSL, no Vonage. Being an advocate of IP communications I of course use Vonage in my home but I never thought that it would be the only connection I could get. More on Vonage.. Rich Tehrani on the Vonage IPO Om Malik with Vonage IPO Reactions Paul Kapustka Says "Something Smells" with the Vonage IPO

Skype has said they are opening up their APIs. Does that mean we can add SIP to Skype and rebuild it as a hybrid product? If Google, Yahoo, and AOL are all SIP in their VoIP signaling would I care what Skype does? If Skype were smart they would quickly convert to SIP & SIMPLE+MSRP or XMPP across the board before someone beats them to it. We already know that Skype is using SIP at the Gateway, if they were to use SIP at the endpoint they could really be a long term threat to the portals in particular.

Google has finally given us a glimpse at their new IM + VoIP client Google Talk, now in beta. You will need a Gmail account for this as well. I actually like the interface, very simple. In the coming days I will do some test calls and report back on call quality, firewall traversal along with some ethereal traces.

Some of you may have noticed that I was working with David Bryan to create a new P2P SIP project, that being Aside Technologies. Aside was to build a P2P SIP toolkit for those interested in integrating this new extension to SIP into their offering. Before even getting started we encountered some legal issues and have since decided to walk away from the company before David integrated any of his IPR. He spent the better part of the last 2 years working on it and we felt before integrating his technology and IPR into the company we would feel out the industry for a while. We had not even set up Visual Studio yet on the first engineering PC at Aside when I received the letter from the lawyers. We both felt it was not worth getting into a legal battle over as there are far too many opportunities out there for David and I as independent consultants. It's too bad really, Aside was on track to do some really great things. Anyone interested in P2P SIP should add David's website as a favorite, he is seriously plugged in. So there you have it, Aside Technologies is now history and I am now officially consulting again. Those interested in buying Aside.com & Aside.net.

According to Investors.com Google may be looking for a VoIP play with this new offering and potentially could buy Skype. It would certainly appear as though Skype is looking to sell and it would make sense that Google would want an IP communications end point. I think it would be better for Google and open IP communications in general if they went for open standards as opposed to Skype. Excerpt.. Of course, there also has been speculation that News Corp. was making a $3 billion offer for Skype, the VoIP phenomenon. Maybe Google will make an offer.

Looks like AOL is on the right track with this alliance with Jabber but does this mean they will convert their proprietary protocol to either SIMPLE or XMPP? Hmm, probably not anytime soon but we do know that they are using SIP for their VoIP deployment so keep your fingers crossed. Jabber News (<- looks more like a promo) Email... The Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP), known for its' highly programmable presence and messaging framework and unique capability to bridge applications, networks, devices, multi-media, and protocols, is extending even farther. Jabber, Inc. has recently signed an agreement with America Online, Inc. to offer federated instant messaging (IM) services between enterprise users of Jabber XCP and users of the extended AOL®. Instant Messaging Network. This includes the AOL® Instant Messenger™ (AIM™), ICQ® and Apple® iChat services.

Open Standards VoIP Security - On the Fast Track I had the opportunity to speak with Rohan Mahy yesterday and we had some great conversation about existing and new VoIP Security specifications proposed by the IETF. We talked about TLS, SRTP, S/MIME and some newer specifications which are looking very strong and from what I heard from Rohan these standards will all but solve the VoIP identity, eavesdropping and spoofing issues. According to Rohan, some firms already using this technology include Cisco, Xten, Snom, Nokia, and NTT Labs. Download the VoIP Security Interview MP3 | 3.5MB | 18Mins Some questions answered: - What VoIP security standards are available to vendors and developers today? - What new specifications are coming down the pipe? - How does this technology compare to PGP VoIP from Zimmerman? - What is the outbound originated requests draft? Download Rohan's description of TLS, SRTP, S/MIME and the new Certificate Management Service for SIP MP3 | 1.25MB | 7.25Mins Some questions answered: - What is TLS, SRTP & S/MIME? - What is the new Subscribe Notify specification using certificates? I also asked Rohan what he thought of P2P SIP: - What part do you think P2P SIP will play in this? - What do you think of Skype and their recent valuation? Download Rohan's Comments on P2P SIP and Skype MP3 | 1.5MB | 9Mins Rohan talks about traditional SIP mirrored network services as an alternative to pure P2P SIP and provided some interesting comments on Skype including the fact that Skype is using SIP on the PSTN Gateway they connect to for Skype-in and Skype-out. Which means that Skype has had to build and now maintain transcoding and protocol translation gateways. Rohan Mahy is a senior consultant on SIP, VoIP, and Network Address Translation. Previously, Rohan was Chief Voice Architect at Airespace, working on integration of location and real-time services into the Airespace wireless LAN system, and assisting partners with implementation of voice over wireless LANs. Prior to Airespace, Rohan worked for Cisco Systems for eleven years, most recently as a Network Architect in the Voice Technology Group, where Rohan led initiatives in voice security, configuration and administration, distributed call control, and NAT and firewall traversal. Rohan is a well known leader within the VoIP industry, including regular speaking engagements and heavy involvement in the IETF, where he is co-chair of both the SIP and SIPPING working groups. Rohan is also co-chair of the recently formed SIP Forum Technical working group, and active in the design of the reSIProcate open-source SIP stack.

I received a call early in the evening last night from Carolyn Schuk over at Voxilla. Apparently they listened to my interview with Cullen and wanted to hear more about open standards P2P VOIP. Here is a link to the article and the phone interview with Carolyn. The Article at Voxilla http://voxilla.com/voxstory170.html The Recorded Interview | MP3 | 4MB \ 12Mins http://sipthat.com/mp3/Voxilla-P2PSIP-Lagerway.mp3

P2P VOIP was made famous by Skype, but what does the future of P2P VoIP look like? Cullen Jennings - Distinguished Engineer in the Voice Technology Group at Cisco, has some great insight into what just took place at the 63rd IETF Meeting in Paris. The exclusive interview | MP3 | 8MB | 24Mins: http://sipthat.com/mp3/SIPthat-Interview-Cullen-P2PSIP.mp3 Cullen makes some great comparisons to Skype and talks about some very interesting applications for open standards P2P VOIP, disaster relief communications and security came up. Some questions answered: - What was this adhoc meeting on P2P SIP all about at the IETF? - Do you think P2P SIP will have a profound affect on VoIP? - How would P2P SIP compare to Skype's P2P model? - Is it better or worse than Skype's model? - Do you see P2P SIP replacing the SIP Proxy in traditional SIP networks? - Will there be a P2P SIP Working Group in the IETF anytime soon? - Where do we go from here? Comments are certainly welcome. I will be posting links to the mailing lists and other resources in the next few days. UPDATE | Tuesday Aug 9 2005 P2P SIP IETF Mail List: http://lists.cs.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/p2p-sip

Nearing an end, the 63rd IETF meeting was from most reports a success. Even though I could not make it to this meeting (my 1 month old son decided it was not a good idea I have had some reports come back from a few colleagues who did attend and commented that there certainly was progress made on the IP communications front. In talking with Cullen Jennings, Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, he mentioned that there was an adhoc meeting on P2P SIP which 125 people showed up for. "This is a large group for an adhoc meeting" said Cullen. He also said there were some well defined ideas of things that P2P SIP could be used for. There was also talk of creating a working group (WG) for P2P SIP. On the MSRP front it would seem as though this is pretty much done as there were no open issues raised and it looks like this is on it's way to the IESG. More to come shortly...

Robert Murdoch yanks the carrot. There are some great comments on Cringely's Skype/Murdoch story tht have filtered through slashdot and now Simon of AlwasOn has posted with some interesting views. It wouldn't suprise me if Skype did sell for that much, is it worth it? Uhhh, who cares. They did a great job of building a proprietary NetMeeting and their timing was incredible. Past that, their future is foggy. Soon we will see new companies using open standards and will accomplish all that Skype has done and much more in short order.