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Open Source And Net Telephony
Gark writes: "There's an interesting article at Upside Today that talks about the Bayonne project, which has the potential to change the telecommunications industry the same way that Free Software has changed computing. It's interesting that the project got its start when a proprietary software developer was going out of business, and decided to GPL their source code, thereby creating new business opportunitites." The article talks a lot about Open Source and the Net, compared to the Telco industry and its history of proprietary systems. It's a good read.
That article was not easy to read. For a while, I kept thinking, "Wait a minute.. this is about open source software... not open source telephony." I mean, the focus of the article was some ten-year-old abandonware made by a company that was going out of business. That sort of grudging "Fine, we're out of business, we'll open the damn thing" mentality is good for the Open Source movement, but it isn't exactly a triumph of ideology.
Anyway, I guess the article in question is more about "internet voice conferencing" than anything else - something that's been around for quite a while, but apparently with ugly time delays. I didn't actually read anything that claimed that this open-source conferencer solved the problem, but I guess the idea is that eventually, we'll solve the problem. And by "we", I don't mean "me", so don't bother asking me for it.
In conclusion, this is a Good Thing, but not exactly earth-shattering.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
A brief history of the telecom network:
In the late '70s a great change happened to the telecom systems of the world - the separation of voice and signaling networks. No longer was signaling (call setup, etc.) done over the voice trunks. Old phreaks may remember when the blue boxes stopped working. This was because of "out of band signaling".. the call setup and takedown, etc. was taken out of the voice lines. Having a separate circuit-switched network for signaling also allowed us to do things like 800 numbers, 911, etc.
Now, the standards for Signal Points (SP) on today's SS7 network are very rigorous. The US uses ANSI while most foreign countries use ITU. Both standards are very very rigid. SPs (depending on their flavor) are allowed somewhere between 3 seconds and 3 minutes of downtime a year. That's for the system itself, not the network links, which fail more often for various reasons. The system has to be there to reroute traffic when the links go down.
Keep in mind this is very oversimplified.
Now, the latest revelation in telecom is the SoftSwitch - a "Software Switch" basically.. These don't run on Windows NT, or *BSD, or anything you might run on a personal computer or internet server. A successful SoftSwitch demands a fast, tight, realtime OS, that can be fitted snugly with the hardware.
I don't think the open source model will work with telecom becasue this is not the kind of thing you work on at home in your spare time. This is not the kind of thing you can release to the community in alpha, and wait for them to lend a hand. This is not the kind of product that would benefit from having the source shipped with it. The customer doesn't have time or know-how to hack on the code and recompile if there's a problem, or the equipment to test it properly before putting it on the network.
Sorry.. Nice idea, but until corporate America is seriously restructured, it won't happen.
wish
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