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Vovida's VOCAL Softswitch Freed
bko writes: "Our software, VOCAL, won a Computer Telephony
Magazine award for Product
of the Year (it's at the bottom of the page), mostly because they liked the idea of Open Source
Voice over IP software. Well, we've finally been able to release all
of it (not just part) at our website. CVS access
coming soon (we hope). Currently compiles on Red Hat 6.2 and Solaris,
diffs accepted for more OSen (I'll do FreeBSD when I get a
chance). Since the site is vague about what's in VOCAL, try this Technology Overview (sorry, pdf) for more info. Basically, there's a working VoIP softswitch in there, under a BSD-style license." Open Source Telephony software is a good deal all around, so this is quite nice news. (See also this story about David Sugar's Bayonne Project.)
What kind of software? Conventional OSes like Windows NT, Linux and Solaris are buggy, slow and complicated. There is only one system which can save the operating system market.....AROS!
Doesn't most traffic going to Earthlink and AOL still pass over normal dial-up links? The RBOC still gets their pound of flesh there. Then the ISP backbones are made of long haul circuits that mostly come from long distance providers (at reduced rates because of the size of the ISPs).
The only place the RBOC isn't doing so great is DSL where they have to rent out copper and equipment space at pretty low rates. Now long-distance companies may well be losing more long distance voice revenue then they are gaining in data circuit fees. Maybe. I don't think so. Even if it is true, they are losing more due to deep rate cuts to stay competitive.
No it doesn't. First people could break into the VoIP "gateway" boxes and either splice off a copy, or do a man-in-the-middle attack. Or they could do a DNS attach and do man-in-the-middle. Or rather then being a company employee with router access they could be someone who broke into the router (or the box on the employee's desk!).
Oh, and about that teen with alligator clips? What makes you think the ISP has no wires? Wires go out from your house to the ISP, from the ISP to the other house you call, and wires and fibre all over the ISP's backbone. Oh, and there could be three or four ISPs involved....
The alligator clips should be able to go at the NIs at either home. Some of the other connections can be decoded with relatively inexpensive hardware. Other connections require more, but that hardware might be borrowed or stolen....
Plus some people aren't fond of the government being able to listen to them. That isn't any worse with VoIP, but it could be a lot better (I assume a lot of those people try running VoIP over SSH or encrypted VPNs of some sort -- but the people they talk to don't always have that)
Well I know more people that have broken into random Unix systems then any sort of central office phone switches, but I haven't done an extensive survey.
Until about a month ago I did :-)
Who needs to? Cut the cable, paste on new ends, and slap the router in between. A short outage won't normally be checked into. Even a long one will take a while to get remote hands there.
But forget that. If you tap at an ISP hub many of the connections will be 100Mbit ethernet and 1000Mbit (1Gbit) ethernet. Plain old ethernet. Same thing everyone and his brother knows how to tap. You won't get to do that at the transit routers (at least not for large ISPs) but customer aggregation routers'll be easy to hit. Most of these hubs are unmanned. I would guess that most of the rest are subject to social engineering.
I'll agree with different (except maybe at the house NIs). At a lot of points it ain't harder though.
That would depend on what the customer wants. I would assume most would want a distinctive ring, or visible indicator and the call to complete. Others would want more of a STU-3 emulation and to have the call rejected (and logged). Either of those are better then the nothing you have now.
I assume some would want a more complex policy (calls from inside the company must be encrypted, distinctive ring for outside unencrypted calls...). Without encryption being a standard part of VoIP that makes it a lot harder to build this sort of thing in though.
I agree 100% with that.
Encrypting a stream (w/ blowfish) seems to take well under 5msec on my (two year old) machine. Five years ago (which I think is when VoIP was formed) it would have been 10msec. Not too bad if 250msec is your goal.
Now I don't think 250msec is a good goal. Isn't that like .25 seconds?!! I think 100msec is the upper bound for things like command line user interfaces, and I think GUI's as well. If 100msec is the goal, 10msec is a lot harder to justify, esp since coast to coast latency tends to be 70ms on leased lines.
However I think there are two bigger reasons encryption isn't part of standard VoIP. Five years ago it was almost impossible to do open source crypto in the USA, and doing closed source export crypto was quite painful. In fact doing close source export crypto is still a pain. Ask Apple why SSH was in the preview releases, but failed to make it to the final release.
The other reason? People don't see it as worse then the existing unencrypted phone system. It may actually be worse (simpler to divert IP traffic, probably simpler to systemicly monitor as well), but most people don't see it as worse.
I have another viewpoint. A new technology shouldn't strove to be "as good as" an old one. It should try to "hit the ball out of the park". Crush the old one. Faster, better, stronger. Old one's not safe? The new one is a Volvo. Old one is a tad slow? New one finishes as your finger leaves the enter key. Never aim for second best, there are enough things pulling you down anyway...
> of the telecos business.'
That's so last millenium! ;)
The Economist magazine's March 24th issue had this to say about VOIP and the telcos:
"VOIP's change of fortune came in 2000 when, one by one, the large telephone carriers started to replace parts of their traditional infrastructure with various types of IP-based multi-service networks. The irony is that the new-style carriers that helped create the IP telephony business when it was still a niche activity for PC hobbyists have found the going tough and are facing a shake-out. Meanwhile, VOIP is thriving within the traditional telcos that tried to stifle it."
The article goes on to talk about telco IP penetration in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Asia is "adopting [IP] telephony faster than anywhere else. China already generates more VOIP traffic than any other country except America. In Japan, 12% of all international calls go over IP networks."
Check out www.vovida.com and see that vovida was purchased by Cisco. Also do a whois on vovida.org and see who hosts the DNS. The software that is given away on vovida.org was primarily written by Cisco employees, and it's open source. Just check out SIPTiger which is a configuration tool for Cisco's own SIP phone.
.com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
I don't want to make some huge proclamation on Cisco and open source, but I think this is very exciting.
[smutt@ruff smutt]$ whois vovida.org
[whois.internic.net]
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Domain Name: VOVIDA.ORG
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.CISCO.COM
Name Server: NS2.CISCO.COM
Updated Date: 18-jan-2001
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
I have no vested stake in VoIP, but it sounds to me as if your "massive problems" lie with your sound card setups and not with VoIP.
ostiguy
that is a software telephone. This is a software PBX toolkit (I don't know enough about its stability to call it a full fledged software pbx).
ostiguy
we use some VoIP on our 100 mbit switched lan, and we have MASSIVE problems with it.
..
.. it don't think that voip will render normal systems useless ..
One big problem is echo. The pbx will allready do software based echo cancellation for calls on normal calls, but you still hear it.
The reason for it is, that normal soundcards (sb live) + headseds still seem to suck. We are now trying usb phones, that should work better in theory
but right now
This is going to be a long, drawn out legal battle with the telecos. People who do not have teleco connectivity on the 'net are going to start seeing the telecos fighting back on 'infringement of the telecos business.'
It doesn't really matter how long it takes or who eventually wins these cases. The telecos have more money than most of the ISPs and have lobbiests already pushing for a 'net tax for the voice over IP. Next we are probably going to find that you cannot connect VoIP to someone who uses a teleco as an ISP.
Should make for interesting case law if nothing else.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
IMHO, Open Source Voice over IP software is a great development and I sense that people don't realise how good VOIP *could* be.
Im currently involved a project for broadband home networking, part of which is a 3COM SIP phone, and there's some damn cool things that can be done - I know, I know there's superior VOIP phones but 3com target small business/home and they support SIP).
*Interesting Aside:* This work is for an Aussie telco - can't say which one ;) - and they have told me to assume broadband connection for all home networking projects which suggests to me that broadband to the masses (we're talking ADSL here, Cable coverage is pretty small in Australia) is coming quicker than I thought!
okay lets see, oh yeah I was mentioning VOIP fun back there, lemme see, where do I start, how about:
Log into any SIP phone and all user preferences and incoming calls follow the user
Free PDA control application to "beam" phone numbers from your PDA (only works with Palm OS, via IR)
Standard VOIP features: conferencing, chat, unified messaging
Software version of VOIP phone on a laptop to make mobile calls (hellooo open source!)
Also remember you save money when using VOIP (apart fromt the fact the VOIP phone's cost 3 years worth of phone bills up front!!) as you are now transmiting voice over IP packets instead of in house systems.
Thats no big deal now since anyone could always switch to cable, or some workaround with a wireless network can be made. Phone companies knows this, and many will try to leverage their way into the other markets that can hurt them (take away business) so I don't think it will be in their best interest to lose customers, because they won't play fair.
Notwithstanding, many people I know don't use their telephone company as an ISP, so unless a telco is planning on buying up Earthlink, AOL, etc., they don't pose that much of a threat.
360 degrees of Karma
There are three main issues of VoIP security. One is authentication: Is the party who answered the call the intended destination? Another is nonrepudiation: Once a destination accepts a call, is there anything in place that prohibits it from denying receipt of the connection? Finally, there's privacy: Is the call content secure? Authentication and nonrepudiation are important.
Without gateway-to-gateway encryption, VoIP packets are vulnerable to sniffingng. All it takes to intrude is one IP packet monitor sniffing somewhere on the network, watching for VoIP packets and storing them on a hard drive for playback later on.
In addition to commercial devices for monitoring and troubleshooting IP traffic streams, sniffers are available as free software and most come with source code (or as source code) that can be easily modified for tapping.
It's kind of like the early days of cordless phones. It took a while for users of those to realize they were being tapped. FCC regulations prohibiting the sale of the scanners that pick up certain bands allocated to wireless telephony didn't provide much of a barrier. And the information necessary to modify common scanner models was widely available. Later, the same became true with regard to analog cell phones.
IP packet monitors are much like those scanners. Few of the commercially available devices snoop VoIP streams right out of the box. Neither can most of the free software tools available enable VoIP snooping without modification. But either can become a fully automated, programmable VoIP tap. Why aren't VoIP calls encrypted? Because on-the-fly encryption and decryption takes time, and time is at an utter premium in a VoIP connection. The overall latency of a VoIP call must be less than 250 mSec to approximate toll quality. Add milliseconds, and the perceived quality of the call drops. For an industry still working for broad acceptance, call quality is paramount.
Even though encryption is a component of the H.323v2 standard, it's likely to be one of the last features implemented. Although each involves different skills and technologies, the same blackguards who'll tap your PSTN lines are the ones who'll sniff VoIP links. Any data that can be stolen from analog conversations is at risk in a digital link too. The difference, generally, is that analog lines can be tapped only one at a time, VoIP lines can be tapped by a whole T-span or more at once. There's also no real way to detect a VoIP tap, except by locating an unauthorized system on the network.
Internal snooping is easier and more likely than an outside tap, unless your network can be compromised at some outside point.
But the most important thing to remember is that VoIP calls can be tapped. Until you have gateways that encrypt the call end to end, treat VoIP calls as "unsecure" - especially if they leave your private network. And any calls passing through the 'Net should be regarded as no more secure than a CB radio conversation.
Good article on VoIP... RFP: VoIP invasion, are you ready for it?
Be advised, the article is over 10+ pages long, and it gets boring
view the source Luke!
360 degrees of Karma
That's a question of what equipment you use. Sure, some VoIP equipment suck, but you'll find plenty of normal PBX's that suck just as much.
Of course, if you're using VoIP over networks that are also being used for data transfers without switching or quality of service limitations on data transfers, VoIP will suck, because someone will eat up the needed bandwidth.
As for Vovida's system, it seems mostly geared at integrators that wish to put together either custom systems or telephony "appliances" to place with customers. It seems well suited both as a full PBX solution for corporate use, as well as for components if you want to build larger, carrier type, systems.
Obviously, if you want to build carrier type systems you'll need to know what you're doing, and the software is only a small part of what you need.