myprofessorvoip blog

Professor says agree on a standard!

Why? Because volume means cheaper? What does that mean? Well riddle me this Batman, if the world is supposed to go wireless make it easy on my local Best Buy sales rep in being able to identify a solution for me when I ask him to find me a coverage for my roaming laptop. Don’t give him a map with colors on it that will cause him to give me poor information.

Wimax is the first to take off, with deployments ranging all over the 802.1G spectrum. It has a prominent provider of CPE based gear in Zyxel. It already has developed countries singing its praise. All accept the United States. The US does not have one competitor in agreement or where to go next. Granted LTE utilizes most of the current infrastructure as 3G networks go, however WIMAX should be the future for 4G. Not because it was the first to hit the market, but because it just plain made sense.

What ever is chosen, we should know that it will exist over a predominantly IP infrastructure. 3GPP standards hasn’t even agreed on a standard, but Wimax can overly a GSM wireless infrastructure and is ready to do so now. What is the hold up? I’m tired of ordering T1’s only to be raked over the coals of its expensive and ridiculous installation costs. I want to order a connection and have it provisioned just as easy as installing an access point in the 4th floor cafeteria.

I know that is a little naive and I may be a little biased, but I have participated in a Wimax deployment and it was a work of art. Granted Wimax is not without its problems, but I would happily sacrifice growing pains then be a part of the non scalable legacy copper provisioning that has been happening over the last quarter century.

As we stand now, AT&T and Verizon will participate in the When-will-we-have-a -standard LTE. While Sprint and whoever Sprint buys next well be participating in WIMAX. What does this mean? Expensive CPE equipment that does little to fix the mobility problem the US has today. One scenario is that the rest of the world follows Korea and goes Wimax and some of us will be stuck using American only phones. The other part of the equation would be higher CPE costs because of the limited distribution of the technology and the cost that competitors imposed to stay competitive. Meaning Sprint. 802.1G was supposed to be the answer for 4G why not all consolidate our resources to agree on one standard. Count chips after that.

Way to easy. If you want a comparison of the two technologies please go HERE

This is more or less a very objective discussion on technology in general. Looking back in the early stages of IT, forums were the way to bring in new ideas and open discussions on technology strategies. I attempt to participate in a variety of discussion in order to stay afloat in my profession in order to have knowledge as to what the future holds as far as technology is concerned. It is very difficult to follow at this stage. And the need to focus on active participants from the consumer industry is needed.

Technology companies are the only companies that still utilize R&D budgets today. There are no more companies with desire to pay groups to provide solutions for business needs as far as technology goes now. This has hurt the playing field in many ways. Costs have been reduced. Solutions picked on basis of convenience and technology is driven by those who are profit driven. And have you seen requirements for CTO’s nowadays? The requirements are no longer for elite technical professionals, they are for business driven executives with a little bit of tech on the side. Where is the career path going for technical folks? 

This is where participation comes into play. Consumers should run the world, not technology companies. The flow should focus on business needs. R&D groups should be formed in hopes to provide custom based needs for corporations. Technology needs that are out of scope and out of budget should be outsourced for a vendor supplied solution. 

Supporting Example:

Enterprise verses traditional Telecommunications carriers. 

Having eyes in both areas provides me with more insight than most people have. For starters, network monitoring solutions. Most vendors that claim that their solution is the best are fooling only those who are too lazy to invest time to see what they actually want. Any solution should begin with need and followed by how we can achieve this. Most commonly in today’s workplace it is followed by how can we “obtain” this? And you will go on a bender putting two or three solutions together and achieve nothing but higher operational costs. “All” management tools can be created in house with local tools. That’s right, all, in fact if companies sat down and provided resources for excellent R&D they could save allot of money on operational costs and the purchase of commercial solutions. 

In most telecommunication companies, in house development of management tools has always been a necessity. New equipment arrives onsite and vendors participate with the consumer in developing the best API’s or MIB management interfaces so that the company is provided everything they need to manage. 

Now this is just one example and one area where this model can be helped. However, all areas can be helped by this and this is why forums were developed in the first place. To assist the consumer base, and not to assist the commercial market in developing new solutions.  Companies settle for solutions. Enterprise Security and VOIP have been bottle up into solutions and provided to consumers who take on the operational support costs and not fully understand if this solution is what they are actually looking for or does the name solve their last assessment. 

If I had the time I would put together a forum. As you can tell from the site, the professor gets busy. However, to fix the open community I would make time. I would like to take all small business into a forum and assist in providing solutions that may or may not include those that necessarily cost money. Develop security solutions that do not require a huge support contract in order to maintain. Help take open source VOIP to provide telephony at cost verses one size fits all solutions that are overkill. 

And next provide forums that comment on technology and participate on a consumer level and not a vendor level. 

For example:

In parallel to what is being developed in the mobile ip community, there is a protocol being written to provide mobility using IPv4 and can be used in conjunction with VOIP and mobility platforms. This protocol is called HIP. (Host Identity Protocol). The HIP protocol works in conjunction with dns and public keys to keep host identity intact for hosts. Consumer feedback would enable development for enterprise solutions as well as carrier solutions. You can all see how it applies to carrier based solutions, but in the enterprise, how cool would it be to have users that are quite mobile and still have access to resources provided by their own company. This is just one application, but it would be secure (certificate based) can survive without the need of a vpn tunnel.  

You could carve out a bunch of need for this technology.  In order to do so, we need to change how we participate. Lets not wait until it becomes relevant and then put in a feature request. Let’s mold it relevancy at its infantry. 

The reason this last chapter took so long is because like most of you I work for a living so I needed time to implement before I write a blog. The Professor doesn’t like to provide information unless he has did it himself. (I sound like Kobe Bryant with the 3rd person).

I have been involved in VOIP on and off for 10 years. So I have been eager to see it develop into an everyday phrase. There is not a phone call being made during the day that does not involve VOIP to some degree. Even if you still have that Verizon line at home and haven’t given in to Vonage, Comcast, or Time Warner, you have to know that even your TDM Verizon connection traverse a backbone of H.323 and SIP trunks to make it to the DS0 that is connected to your Grandma’s rotary dialed telephone.

Professor’s Conspiracy Theory

Q1: If the government can force you to go digital television, why won’t they force you to go VOIP?

Q2: If I purchased VOIP service from Comcast or Verizon, then why haven’t they converted my traditional lines with the same lines I use to connect my computers? (Cat5)

Q3: I hear about VOIP, I even have Voip service, where are all the bells and whistles?

Like you I have always asked these questions. When you order VOIP service from Vonage, they provide you with an ATA to convert your analog to digital. They also provide 802.11 and regular ethernet VOIP phones for you to connect to their service. They are not a big enough outfit to provide CAT5 cabling to you as well, but for the most part they provide the cheapest offering because they only have to invest in their core and infrastructure. You depend on your Internet Service Provider.

When you purchase VOIP service from Comcast, they have already done the math. They connect your Telephony Demarcation directly to the MTA so that all of your phones will not be changed and all of your existing wiring will be used, rerun or maintained.

This isn’t because they are making your life simpler. Your life would be simpler if you can purchase an 802.11 (wireless) cordless phones and have video conferencing from an IP handset in your bathroom. Softphones for remote travel options. In other words, IP flexibility. However, think of all of the money Comcast will lose if they no longer had to send a tech to your house because your know using 802.11 wireless router from Best Buy, which is plug and play, and not have to send a tech to search your wires and charge you $90 per hour. Dem boys are Union!!

Comcast has the technology to provided these services. They also have the technology to provide ip presence and other IP related features that exist today. But they don’t.

Okay, Asterisk: How to live free!

What exists in the market today are two different models to support subscribers. An IP PBX and a Class 5 server. Both are similar in terms of provisioning application based services, but are different in terms of scalability. You will not configure a PBX to handle 10k CAPs. (Call Attemps Per second).

Asterisk is an IP PBX. Asterisk can provide voicemail, text to voice, voice to text, trunks, extentions, anything a TDM pbx can provide. Asterisk is more or less a core system. You will have to provide a front end. Other than that I would put Asterisk against any of the PBX’s that I have experience on. Such as the Nortel CS2k/ CS2100 and the Cisco Call Manager.

For the purpose of this lesson, I will tell you how I use Asterisk and how it provides a very cheap and flexible alternative for my home living. I have built an Asterisk server for the sake of providing a cheaper service. Asterisk is free, however the time it took to compile and get working was less than 8 hours. There are many white papers that would assist you out on the web.

Cost: Minimal. I used an old computer with a P4 processor. I purchased refurb for $150. I did not purchase a Digium card used to connect to TDM trunks. So I am not using a T1 or DS0 to connect. This is a purely sip connection. So total price of hardware would be $150

Service: I chose to go with a very lightweight service provider. The quality is not perfect, but it isn’t bad either. I am tinkering around that 50ms range which becomes noticeable. But I am pay $14 a month for the service and a DID.

So with $14 a month I am connected to a Sip service provider and I am paying .0012 per call globally. With comcast I pay $19 a month for all US calls. So if I am just comparing Nationally based calls then I make a very minimal profit due to quality concerns.

Applications:

Voicemail is additional with phone service. It is included with Asterisk. Nice part is that with Asterisk you can do what you want with your Wave file. What I have done is configured my Asterisk server to email my wave file to me when I get a call. What I am working on is providing voice to text emailing. There are services out there that I can send my WAV file and they email it back transcribed, but that thats the fun out of it. So bottom line is free.

SMS: Now Comcast supports SMS to Voice services for free. Right now it is a demo, but there is a Perl module that you can use to send SMS to a public SMSC that will forward your messages, but that will take text to voice and I am not a big fan of text to voice. So until that changes I will not be doing this.

Mobility: I can connect to my IP PBX via a soft client. I use many of them and they are all free. One that is readily accessible is Xlite. Comcast has yet to support softclients so this is an added bonus.

Now the way I have my service configured is that everyone in my home is a different extension. So I only have one DID, but for an additional 10 bucks I can get more DID’s. There are other services cheaper, but the total cost of the sip trunk goes up. I don’t need that. I rather have an operator ask you want extension you would like.

Manageablility:

Now you do have web access for Comcast, just like I have web access to my server and any subscriber has access to alter his/her account. I like mine better because it is free. But you can go on the server and look at your voicemail in .WAV files.

Asterisk is a very cool tool that is free and very customizable. I like using pure IP, but you can purchase a card that will have you connect via TDM if you wanted to do so. Only problem I had is RTP proxy. You must have a firewall that does RTP proxy or your voice will never make it in. I use Ubuntu as a firewall so I compiled it very easy. And it is activated in my ipchains rules when every my firewall is restarted.

For a medium sized organization looking to go VOIP, this would be a perfect solution. Even for a large size corporation if you scale it correctly. However, Asterisk is not for the technically weak. So you must be willing to get your hands dirty and your solutions hat on hand. Enjoy.

One of the most frustrating things about being in technology is the amount of operators in the field. Let me elaborate on the term “operator”.

Ten years ago, majority of the information systems staff were operators. People who managed a system around the clock using commands that were supplied to them in hopes to keep the network up and running 24/7. This included making backups, verifying disk space, and also making sure they ran certain commands that needed to be run at off peak hours without fully understanding what the purpose was. It wasn’t their job to find out, it was their job to perform what was asked of them. Similar to my grandmother when she calls Dell support to find out what is wrong with her internet connectivity.

There are thousands of professionals out there who take what is provided to them to perform certain functions day in and day out. These could be network professionals or System Administrators. It is not solely their fault, this is what has become of the field due to vendors who advertise “IT for dummies” solutions. If you are one of those people who purchased a CCNA book, got CCNA certified, and wondered why your salary hasn’t broken the bank yet, you are one of these people.

I have never seen IT that way and I refuse to look at it that way . For every problem, there is a solution. Just because no one has provided a vendor solution, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Example:

I was working a Carrier VOIP project. The softswitch I was using supported SIP, so it was a SIP registrar. Every night at a certain time all SIP connections were going down and causing endpoints to re-register. This problem had been occurring for a long time and without the there were finger pointing without much proof.

I always travel with a linux (Ubuntu) laptop. So what I did was configure a Sip registrar (Asterisk) on my laptop and croned a nmap job as well to verify open ports to the endpoints. I used another script to register to the laptop so that a session was established to another registrar other than the Class 5 server. That night at 2am the same problem occurred. The client lost connectivity and nmap caught the ports that were closed.

The problem easily pointed to the firewall that was setup to detect and act upon attacks and there seemed to be a very mild DOS using port 5060 that cause the router to reject traffic to that port for a period of time. Simple automated approach.

I just used this example because tools aren’t purchased they are improvised. You can ask all of those idiots who purchased a flute years ago and are still trying to find everyday use for them.

People go out and purchase network management tools and utilities everyday  all they are is a bunch of scripts running snmp get and set packaged in pretty java/html pages. When the same can be done on a regular linux platform with cron and referenced in man pages. Why wait for the vendor to upgrade the software to manage switches now, when you can walk the MIBS of the device and update your own scripting.

This is what is wrong with IT. If the paid “network engineers” and “system administrators” cannot develop tools of their own then what is their value add? You can pay the vendor to train a monkey to be an operator.

Three months ago I wrote a perl script for a client that enabled him to automate a packet trace to isolate a problem that was occurring off hours. Every night from 2 to 3 am the script took the trace and then ftp’d it to my ftp server so that I could review and take a look at what was occurring. Now the client is looking into 3rd party vendors that could do the same for them because they fell in love with the concept. I did not have the heart to tell them that it was only 5 mins of work, but this reinforces my view.

Technology is ever changing. Things you purchase today have been available for years. Just because Cisco or Microsoft offers it does not mean they invented it. There are always cheaper, more flexible and cost effective alternatives. Be an engineer, not an operator!

I am not the “Professor” because I know a little something about VOIP. I am the “Professor” because I am an active participant in doing my part to “mature” open source VOIP. Eleven years ago, I witnessed the start of the VOIP revolution. Cisco purchased a company call “Celsius”. With this acquisition came the push for frame over frame-relay and the infamous “Cisco Call Manager”.

For me this became the very first commercial push for VOIP that I could remember. The enterprise was ready, but VOIP wasn’t. H.323 was built for voice and video, and found it’s niche being used to trunk particular gateways together. A VOIP gateway is used to mediate between TDM and standard IP. However, for signaling between the phones themselves and the callmanager, Celsius created SCCP, otherwise known as “Skinny”.

This was the first of many errors vendors made when developing products for VOIP. Cisco wasn’t the only vendor with a proprietary protocol used for delivering services and call setup in VOIP, all of the major vendors utilized proprietary protocols. Remember, this was in 1997 and even though companies bought into the idea of VOIP and cost savings, none of them had any models to build from.

Today, it is a different story. Carriers worldwide have converted their core infrastructure as a necessity to provide the service demands at a reduced cost. “Every” major telecommunications provider today provide phone service off a predominately SIP core. Meaning a call coming in from San Jose, CA destined for Boston, MA will be routed over a sip trunk over an IP backbone to terminate to a VOIP Gateway in Boston for call termination. A a cost savings mostly because of the compression ratio of proprietary Gateways on the market. (Some that offer up to 10:1 compression). Not only is sip being used for IP trunking, sip is also being used to provide phone service for Vonage and many of the most popular instant messaging clients worldwide.

VOIP offerings differ as you move out of the US. I have been a part of many projects in which IP phones are being used in the Residential and Enterprise domains in some cases making the need for tdm connectivity obsolete. Witnessing a housewife make a phone call via an 802.11 phone makes my heart warm. Still in the US we deal with corporations still rolling out proprietary units without looking at the maturity of the technology.

Each year more and more VOIP phones are arriving on the market. Cisco has devoted resources to develop their sip offering. They have already released SIP trunking capability in their product line. With the maturity of SIP and their competition growing, Cisco has to realize that their primary selling point, “their phones”, will be challenged by lower cost and equally reliable IP PBX solutions that offer Open Source interoperability and freedom to use any phone with equally as rich feature sets.

Sooner or later, people will realize that there is no true benefit by going with a specific VOIP vendor. Telephony will still be as autonomous as it was in the past, the only reliance is the infrastructure. And when that is realized, let’s see what Cisco comes up with next.

Note: I pick on Cisco, but Cisco is not the only vendor that tried to fight Open Source interoperability. However, it is the most successful vendor in promoting it’s VOIP porfolio as an enhanced feature set of it’s Network equipment offering.

By now it is common knowledge that Verizon in the US is providing IPTV service. Is it a full blown strategy to take over the digital television market? Maybe not, but it should be. Cable providers are someone limited over what they can provide over HFC, which makes the move to fiber a greatly important strategy. IPTV equipment manufactures are everywhere now. All of the major players are overseas in the Middle East and Africa region partly because these are places that were not Westernize to invest in cable television. Not only that but licensing was a major issue, and curiously it isn’t anymore.

I travel quite a bit and I am one to tell you that if a movie came out in the states, I will have to wait 6 months to see that same movie in Europe. Due to piracy, this time table has moved up dramatically. I now have to wait sometimes less than a month. This will go a long way in promoting cable television and on demand services. When in Kuwait this past January, I was practically watching a close to real time Apprentice Celebrity edition. Not bad considering that prime time television is the entire day.

The need for IPTV is not seen as a necessity in the US as it is in other countries, mostly third world, who already exploit the benefits Voice over IP and Video on demand services, but it should be. The US economy have long relied on technology convergence. While fiber is being rolled out in most countries at a record pace, the US is still focused on finding a technical strategy.

Dubai is one of the countries that are leading the pack. Along with Tandberg, a company known for video conferencing making a strong push in IPTV with proprietary measures to transmit MPEG-4 to a nation and not just to an organization.

This is just taken out of a article I just read and professor-sized.VOIPo3G This article articulates business strategies that are molding the direction of carriers and cellular providers, however it doesn’t take in account the huge advantage technology wise. It states by 2012, 255 Million subscribers will be utilizing VOIPo3G. However, the demand for VOIP features, will dictate the infrastructure and within the next couple of years you will see more traditional carriers move to an “all IP Infrastructure” to provide cost reduction and to support all IP functionality be it 3.5G or 4G.
Like I mentioned in an earlier blog, WIMAX is ever so real, however the convergence of IP makes WIMAX just another medium to carrier IP. The need for 4G functionality and speeds can be summed up as the need for speed over wireless technology. The introduction of all IP hand-helds will slowly take over the market forcing companies like AT&T and Verizon to keep up with the demand of bandwidth. Instead of competing with WIMAX carriers, these vendors will become WIMAX service providers in order to keep the market from having a much of a choice.
2012 will be fun, but I expect the fun to start way before then.
Professor

Okay. I just finished a Wimax (802.16e) deployment so I am a little biased. I do however feel that 802.16e is the future. There is argumentatively more support in the Wimax community than there is in the pure VOIP community. I have just finished the first ever 802.16e implementation and I am amazed on how many new devices support WIMAX. If deployment of WIMAX became global it could single handedly end GSM. Look at the specs up to 70mbs, 500 meters per cell as opposed to 600 meters for GSM, not only can WIMAX support VOIP and internet, but look for widespread RFID and mobile computer support as well.

There are only a handful of projects this far in my career that I would find intreaging to either design or participate in, one would be another WIMAX implementation that includes IPTV another would be a pure IPTV implementation since I have yet to deploy IPTV.

One thing that still bothers me in the VOIP field is most people operating in VOIP or VOIP security  have no idea what IMS is still. I ran into a guy who works for a leading VOIP integration company with the title of IMS Security consultant, I asked him what Secure P-CSCF products does he sell, he never heard of a PCSCF.

There is still job security in VOIP.

You are only reading this to see if I have any secrets that you don’t already know. I don’t, and you are too old to believe that anything in this world is free. The object of open source is something I believe in and it isn’t’ because it is free. It makes me a part of a community that wants to advance technology and not put money in the pockets of business men who can care less about technology. Ever wonder why Microsoft is so powerful? Because it pays money to engineers to stay ahead of those who work together to provide open source solutions for free.

I don’t mind paying for open source. I would rather pay a small license fee that pays for the effort that hundreds of engineers put into developing creative thinking and not to put people on top of the billionaire list that takes the ideas of open source and expose it. I am not against Microsoft, I am against those who are addicted to Microsoft. Corporate reliance on Microsoft is what I call “corporate ignorance”.

Now I am a hypocrite, I admit it. In fact, I am using a laptop running Microsoft XP Professional. This is the result of corporate ignorance. There are no choices given serious consideration. If a business purchases a computer, by default it is a windows operating system. In fact, most of those making purchasing decisions are not aware of the other choices. A CIO, a CTO, or even a CSO aren’t even aware of the benefits. These are the gentlemen put into the position to mold technology.

The fact of the matter is that none of these gentlemen remember the early 90’s. None of them remember the growing pains of Window’s 3.1. Sure we all remember how happy were were to have solitaire at work. But do we remember how difficult it was to configure a printer or to peer with other computers in the office. The blue screen of death every time the network got congested. It was during that time that Microsoft improved. The patience of consumers were because they were spoiled. Being able to create and edit documents and not have to use a typewriter. And during this time serve as Microsoft’s free Quality Assurance engineers. Reporting problems and ignoring the growing pains. You, the user, made Microsoft. We are the reason we pay $399 for a licensed copy of Microsoft. We are the reason we have to deal with crappy expensive Microsoft support.

We need to change this. Microsoft is not the only target. There are the Verizon’s, the Sprints, the Novell’s, the Sun Microsystems, the Cable providers, and last but not least Apple. You think because Apple has 7% of the market that I should forget them? Look at the price tag on the proprietary systems that Apple produce. Sure I like the Iphones and the IPODS, and Itunes, but come on. I am forced to utilize their products because there is no real competition.

What power do you have? You are the consumer. Do you know if the Linux community grew to 25%, Microsoft would have no choice, but to be competitively priced. That is still not my goal. My goal is to see my kids, your kids, and the kids of every blue collar worker have a computer that didn’t cost a mortgage payment. To construct a document that could be opened on a free software package and not a $600 version of Microsoft Office. (See Open Office). That is the closest thing to free that I can think of. And you need to join me in the fight.

Voice over IP is the wave of the future. It has been existent since the late 90’s, but held up by the telecommunications companies because it marks the end of their dominance. VOIP to VOIP calls will always be free. VOIP to PSTN comes at a cost. The goal is to make toll charges obsolete. Ten years ago unlimited long distance calls for $20 bucks a month was impossible. Now it is a reality.

Ever use a flavor of Linux? 5 years ago it took rocket science to get working. And after you get it to work you play around for hours for it to play nicely with Microsoft. With the Dell deal, Ubunto will make Linux the easiest kid to play with in the playground.

Be a hobbyist, be curious, play a role and advance technology. Take the ride with the Professor!

VOIP has grown in the US 125 percent since 2006. That is a major accomplishment. US Growth But I wouldn’t be “The Professor” if I allowed that to be enough. What kind of VOIP growth? I can say that most of the growth has been on the carrier side. Where PSTN interconnects have been substituted with IP interconnects for VOIP customers. Billing has been the same, because of the transparency of the connection. Nevertheless, the ignorance of US in regards of VOIP hasn’t changed at all. Why pay $9.99 a month for unlimited calling when you can pay $4.99? Why pay $4.99 of unlimited calling if you can get it for free?  Most people either do not know where to find VOIP knowledge or are too busy in their lifestyles to find out.  Call it what you want, I call it ignorance. 

Comcast comes to your house to deliver VOIP service. They install a box outside of your house that provides the PSTN to VOIP gateway so that you may use your existing lines already in your house and therefore use your existing phones. They don’t tell you what your options are, and they don’t offer any options. If I am getting VOIP service, I want to know what can change with my lifestyle to make it better. The box that comes with your High speed internet connection is called an MTA. The MTA is connected to a coax and provides an RJ45 connection for internet connectivity. 

In VOIP, cable providers follow the packet cable standard. Okay, back to Comcast, they provide an MTA for your high speed internet connectivity, and the phone connectivity they make a media gateway connection on the pole outside of your home. Before I can explain why I think they do this, I will explain how packet cable providers in other countries work. The same MTA that provides an RJ45 handoff in your home, also provides a RJ11 hand-off as well. (This is what your standard telephone uses).  You have three options, the first option would be to plug your phone into your MTA and talk VOIP  over that single connection. As you know most European households are smaller square foot wise, so one phone is perfectly doable. Second option is they provide you a list of instructions and you can purchase your own phone to plug into a hub or switch located in your home. The third option would be you purchase IAD’s from the provider. IAD’s convert TDM to IP similar to a media gateway, but for a single unit and most likely over 802.11 (wireless).  This way all of your current phones and investments (fax etc) can be used as if the technology never changed. 

This is what technology provides, it provides choices.  Comcast’s choice to provide you with a transparent box that sits where you can’t touch it. Reminds you when you were small and you parents hid cookies from you on top of the refrigerator where you couldn’t reach. The do this because of the union guys and sub contractors. Technicians who make a living off of running new phone lines in your house for $70 per hour. You see MTA’s can be administered remotely. You have a phone problem, why send a tech, I can fix it remotely. I have connectivity issues? It is all IP the problem is either at the CO (remote) or your house, which you can count the lights on your MTA to tell me if it is in the CO or not. That takes the little man out of the picture. It also generates less capitol for Comcast. So that unnecessary step is left in there. 

Technology is great, but until you as consumers start learning how it works we will always be a dominant country with third world ability.

IPTV is here! Well almost. You hear me say time and time again that the United States has always been on a different page as technology goes then the rest of the world. If you don’t believe me, buy a plane ticket and actually go somewhere other than you local mall. Or better yet, get a personality and become a cyber buddy to someone overseas wanting to test their English.

IPTV, just as VOIP, was intended to change the way we communicate and operate in general. It is very common to see someone talk on a softphone overseas. I mean why buy a rj11 (traditional) phone if you can bluetooth or 802.11 a phone off your existing computer. That is the way it is supposed to go. What is the benefit of the technology, for example VOIP, if you can’t go out of town, open your laptop, and start receiving calls to your office line or your home line . The amount of mobile users, meaning recreational and work is growing.

So why isn’t American Marketing telling you how to use the technology? Because Americans have the habit of buying the name, not the use. ATT U-verse comes into your home with an adapter for your TV set. Shouldn’t it stream over IP terminating a fiber connection to your home and allow you to stream to all of your PC’s, in which you bit the bullet and purchase 20” monitors for your computers so you can converge TV and Internet?

The answer is yes for those who do understand the technology. No for those that chose to be ignorant to the usage. Why do they want you to hook it up to your TV? Well for starters, our technology stores are full of high depth TV’s without computer hookup. The little converter they will provide will cost you $15 - 30 even more depending on the area. Your ignorance costs you money.

In an Ideal society, when I pay for IPTV, I have that service no matter where I go. If i want to say yes to the wife and go away for the weekend, I want to be sure that my NFL Sunday league pass takes the trip with me. I no longer want to be in the position where I miss TV shows or sporting events. Same goes for VOIP. I want 1 number for people to get in touch with me. One number. And I want it to be as transparent to the user as possible. If I am mobile, at home, or in the office I want full IP mobility.

When ATT U-Verse becomes available in my area, you damn right I will be one of the first to test it limits. But keep in mind, when the technology is really here there were be choices. Do I want Voip from Verizon or Skype. Skype is cheap with similar Quality of Service. So as far as IPTV goes, I want the Skype version, it’s cheaper!

Microsoft, at least for the time being, is the wheel that keeps technology moving. To back up the argument is pretty easy. We all know that Microsoft is on over 95 percent of desktops worldwide. You can also say that IE, Outlook, and the Office Suite is pretty dominant as well.

With that being said I will name a few popular VOIP players. I will not mention Class 5, Class 4 or PBX’s because they have to adhere to the open source standard of SIP. So I will mention yahoo, aim, Skype, MSN and Jajah. Soft phone techology is growing rapidly. Last week from the Dominican Republic I was on a 6 hour phone to the states which cost me nothing using Skype.

If Microsoft chose to implement a softphone within the Windows OS, purely open source. It would dominate the market out of the gate.

Unified messaging is the name of the game as well as convergence with outlook. Many PBX’s with the help of developed software can achieve this, but what sells is if i can go home and it works as well. This is the strategy that Microsoft seems to be going for and this would deploy nicely with built in softphone functionality.

The downfall of open source is too many options. Which is also why I like open source. The downfall to Microsoft is not enough options, which in most cases is why I like Microsoft. To be able to communicate with others without having to worry about interoperability issues or whether grandma is using an MicroLite softphone client or not.

-Derek

This was one crazy week and besides the usual devastating news, there was news that went unnoticed by the American people.  The Pentagon unclassified email system got hacked. After noticing the penetration, probably from their IDS subsystem, the Pentagon had to shut down email. That is big news. You are telling me that NSA, CIA, the Military and the Feds can bug our phones, protect us from Ma Bomba Ben Laden, and delay our planes and they cant keep their own email system up and running? There used to be a time where people would be scared to even try to hack a goverment system. Remember phone phreaking and the trouble that most of the hackers from the 20th century got into? The Feds called Cnn themselves so that they can have it video taped of them busting into a house of a 17 year old boy scared as hell. And those penalties they gave, I forget the boys name, but until he is dead he cannot even step front into a best buy because they sell computers.

Getting back to the Pentagon, hacked??? And who was the idiot who told about it? Embarrassing. The Clinton Administration could keep a secret. Well sort of.  With all of the technology out there, IDS, IPS, advanced Firewalls which possess both of these technologies.  Real time measures which can prevent or minimize damage to any IT infrastructure and you are telling me that my goverment can’t keep an mail server up. Good thing they aren’t using Microsoft or they would really be in trouble.  You didn’t know? The goverment has less confidence in Microsoft servers than we do.

Apple just announced that it will be joining forces with skype to provide IP Softphone functionality in the softphone. This is like the Ravens announcing that they will sign Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison. This is the start of a dynasty baby. So your telling me on a cell phone, I now have the ability to bypass cell and go ip to establish my calls? Hot damn. And when i get in doors I can use the existing IT infrasture to communicate as well? Damn it to hell this fight is fixed. I protest. Motorolla, Nokia, hell even Sony, what the hell are you going to do. You just got pick pocketed. I can’t even watch your commercials anymore. A phone just came out less than a month ago and is doing all of the things you never thought about it faster than you can get a R&D group together to think about it.  This fight reminds me of an Oscar De La Hoya fight in the 90’s. It is fixed.

Enum. The world’s greatest invention. Like most great idea’s, they all fall short when it comes to the strategy to implement them. The internet was created by a need. There was a need to get get messages from point a to point b. Snail mail took to long and order wire was point to point. And if you have to ask what order wire is, you haven’t been in the field long enough.

The reason I mentioned the internet is so you have the concept readily in your mind of how the internet works. How DNS works is very fundamentally identical as how ENUM works. Enum is a protocol and philosophy built upon the resolution of TN’s to keep VOIP calls on the internet and routable to other VOIP calls. All IP traffic will stay local to the internet and not touch the PSTN at all. The downfall for carriers is bypass of toll charges. The upside to VOIP users is the bypass of toll charges.

If you are interested in ENUM go to www.enum.org.

South Korea: VOIP

In South Korea, they are blocking anyone using an outside voice provider other than their own carriers. This is abusive and should be govern by an outside entity. This goes along the same lines as freedom of government and expression. The world is in the midst of a convergence.

On the same note I would like to add, what South Korea is doing is no different than what they are already doing in China, the Middle East countries, and parts of Europe. The push for traditional carriers to maintain control over Voice is borderline humanly illegal if you ask me. To bypass toll charges is every man’s right. Just like it is my right to bypass tolls on any expressway if I chose to take the long way that is. I understand that the Service Providers in a tough period. I understand that VOIP is taking a toll on economies and that most providers are struggling to keep up. But this is a time for convergence. Every market goes through this.

Most carriers have a strategy, which is to move to VOIP and develop application services. Meaning offer VOIP related services amongst free access. Why would I subscribe to Vonage if Verizon will offer me free access? I mean if I have an issue, I dont need someone from Vontage telling me to call my service provider, I can report the issue at one stop. Vonage cannot offer 911 services, Verizon can off e911 services that work.

In stead of looking for ways to stop VOIP, service providers should look for ways to capitalize off of VOIP services.

Getting back to South Korea? If I were them, I would charge for allowing VOIP. Of course that is double charging customers but at least they would keep VOIP essentially free to those who want to use the service.

Workaround. This is what i am good at.

1) Use VPN. IPSec traffic is sent using IP ports 50/51. VPN to a vpn service provider or to your home and connect to your VOIP service provider from there. IPSEC adds overhead, but not enough to kill your voip call.

2) The service provider cannot block H.323 or Sip. But they can block RTP. So finding a way to mask RTP w/out Nating could be challenging but there are programs out there to traverse the Nat w/out harming the integrity of your voip call and w/out killing session parameters.

I have only put about 5 mins of thought into beating South Korea. If anyone would like to add anything please feel free.

Okay as an American you may not understand the use of Jajah. I mean most Americans have not even used or heard of a softphone. I mean if you pay $19.99 a month unlimited calls within the US, why would you pay $5.00 unlimited calls worldwide? I mean who would use a phone on their or home computer? That is inconvenient. Well Jajah is the future of internet calling. It maps calls from a phone number to a phone number using IP. It’s main competitors are rebtel and hullo.

T-Mobile just financed Jajah and maybe looking to aquire!! Man VOIP is fun!!

And if that isn’t enough, I guess Jajah is the one making moves. Duetsche Telecom just donated $5million to the cause.

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000216387&fid=942

Skype now have improved service.  Skype just agreed to a deal to have VSNL International terminate their Skypout calls. Meaning the outgoing and incoming calls you experience w/ Skype. Quality will only go up because before this move Skype did not really own any of their own facilities or have agreements on Pops that carried their service.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1668

Remember as a kid there was that one kid in the neighborhood that no matter what game was played (football, baseball, freeze tag)? They just exceled at it. And even if they weren’t that good in whatever they played, they believed that they were the best. Well I just remembered that kid’s name at it is “Microsoft”.

Microsoft is trying to become a major player in the VOIP phone market and it has the tools to do it. It plans to integrate Microsoft office with it’s VOIP phone offering to create Skype-like integration with your email contact listing. It will work and make Microsoft dominate because grandma’s, children, the icecream man, hell everyone uses Microsoft office. Via legit license or not. If, I am sorry, when Microsoft makes this leap, services like Enum will really take off.  (Enum is a directory for voip subscribers that really never took off). But now they will.

In the United states, we will never really appreciate VOIP because long distance are cheap, due to VOIP, and we can afford it. Now go to another country, lets say Cambodia. Cambodians pay an arm and a leg. And they cannot use skype to bypass toll charges because the goverment closely monitor’s VOIP services. And they will and can block them so that their carriers get all the toll charges due to them. The goverments have not went against Microsoft yet.

I admit it, I moonlight with Apple, I have even went all Unix in order to forget Windows. But Microsoft is like having a successful ex girlfriend. You keep wishing if only you had put up w/ her bullshit for a little bit longer and try to imagine where you too would be to this day. If I havent said it lately, “I Love You Microsoft”.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019322&pageNumber=1