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A Stateless IP Phone In The Works From AT&T
Boli writes: "Ran across this broadband phone today. It appears to be based on the Virtual Network Computing work done at AT&T Labs Cambridge. The most interesting feature is that all apps run on a server while the phone is only a display and I/O device. This opens the possibility for a variety of devices to display the same stuff. Imagine transferring a call from the phone to your browser display to paste a graphics file, then transfer again to a cordless. The VNC tools are free (as-in-beer) today." AT&T says they even have a working wireless prototype working in their building. (And VNC is Free as in GPL as well, according to their front page.) How long till conventional phones are obsolete?
According to their dload page the whole bit is also Free as in Freedom.
unless there's scrolling, the monitor on that phone is poorly shaped, unless you're controlling a palm with VNC...
VNC rocks, if only there were some better mac updates that were stable...
I can see some good uses here, like having people collaborate over a word document, which is possible using Windows-only Netmeeting.
What's nice about VNC is that it doesn't strain your bandwidth, especially if these phones can dialup to the VNC server. Yet another thing I'll need to telecommute...
Now you don't only have to talk dirty, but you can sketch picturers of what my body would look like if I hadn't been playing Wolfenstein for the past couple of days and loved on a steady diet of Good and Plenty's and Jolt. My nerdy body was approaching "rather not see naked, but it wouldn't kill me," but I can always aspire for this some other time.
The more technology advances, the better the artificial sex.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Given how little conventional telephones have changed over the past century, how we still use them by the millions, and how we have so many technological and regulatory problems when adopting new communications technologies, I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for them to become obsolete. No matter what new technologies come down the pike.
I'd really like to see this work. But, I recall too many previous attempts to deploy dumb clients and provide all services from a few central locations to be at all sanguine about this.
For example, Java. I make a living doing Java architecure, design, and development. But I recall when Java's promise was to make the dumb web browser into any application we wanted it to be. Companies would put specific services up as applets, and we would always have the latest versions. This failed. We can talk about why, but the fact is that it did.
Jini was supposed to do the same thing. It had a UDDI-like feature so that we would all just plug new devices onto our networks and they would all just make efficient use of each other. We wouldn't need to put all the smart technology in one box, we could distribute the intelligence. This failed.
I could easily name others, but these two were the highest profile attempts in the last five years. And both were from Sun, who at least are masters of PR and spin: witness the popularity of Java in the enterprise. This new phone is from AT&T, of whom Jerry Pournelle once observed that they couldn't market eternal life.
So as much as I want one, and want things like this be to successful, I would be surprised to see this take off, or even make to market. Happily surprised, but still.
I'm a bit baffled why nobody has unveiled basic IP-based telephony. A regular ol' telephone that simply has an Ethernet jack. Great for businesses, and fine for the small percentage of geeks like me that don't have a landline. The phone could be really quite simple -- the telephone equivalent of a computer with a TCP/IP stack, a soundcard and a speaker. I assume that it would have to be tied to a particular service (configuration information burned into the EEPROM), but fancier ones could let you specify the IP of a gateway, I guess. Then, any company with a sufficent number of POPs would be able to eliminate the bulk of long-distance costs, as the calls themselves could simply be routed over the Internet.
I can't say that the plan is flawless -- I leave such details up to much more knowledgable people than myself -- but I still think that this is a pretty basic goal for IP-based telephony, rather than this platform-specific strap-on-some-headphones kind of thing.
-Waldo
Emphasis mine.
I wish I had a spare 1.5meg connection lying around I could use for an voip phone. But all I qualify for is idsl on the soon to be out of business Covad, then its back to either isdn or modem. Design a voip phone with the compression of Divx on a 28.8 modem, and I'm set.
I read that University of Washington broadcasts HDTV over the Internet2. Only need a 200mbs connection. Anyone got a 200mbs connection for 90bux?
Any surprise that it's not going to work that way? I see the only serious buyer for this technology being business, which generally already uses centralized systems.
In any case, I think this technology is pretty nifty (more so if it included a small camera.) The client-server GUI architecure is unnecessary, though. It'/\fer2=[h
I work for an integrator, and the most frustrating thing we do is support our systems once we have deployed them. Customers love to twiddle with our settings, modify the code, and do various other technically dangerous things. We have just begun using VNC as a remote debugging and support tool. What would usually take hours of phone calls, e-mails, and screen shots now gets covered in a few minutes. I can't count the number of site visits VNC has saved me.
Integration between my business phone and my desktop would be great. The phone could use some type of caller ID to determine which VNC connection(s) to create, and I could immediately be viewing the customers system. This would definitely save time and a lot of frustration.
You don't need access to the "wire" now. Almost all calls are digitally switched, and routing a call to 2 places is almost as easy as routing it to one. Yes, the investigating agency still needs to contact the RBOC, but it is quite easy to tap your phone from a technical standpoint.
Enigma
As stated earlier, it seems that we go through this ebb and flow of "cpu power is better in the client" and then back to "cpu power on the server is where it should be". There are good arguements for both. But with the increasingly more powerful and smaller processors, what day to day app's wouldn't the cell phones/PDA's of the near future be able to handle? I'm not sure. Granted it would be really cool if I could securely connect to my X Server and take care of something I had forgotten to do before I left work.
And I have to say the VNC screenshots are pretty cool seeing different combinations of OS A running in a virtual console on OS B. And props to AT&T (for once) for making it free...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
I love VNC, and it is certainly a good way of building light-weight, reliable clients. But I can't quite figure out why I would like this functionality in a phone. I like phones to be unobtrusive, simple, and portable. And for anything more complicated than a phone call, I'd rather have a full screen and a keyboard.
Using VNC? Oh yeah, that'll need broadband OK. I can see a pattern emerging here:
Java->slow language, made by people that sell big computers.
VNC netphones->bandwidth heavy, made by people that sell fat pipes.
Hmmm. I guess that whole better mousetrap thing is being forgotten again.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
I listened to a sales pitch for a system from 3Com a few years ago that did exactly that. These systems seem to be slowly replacing older pbx systems.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
But the US telcos botched ISDN so much, pricing it as a premium service, that it never went anywhere. There's also the wierd thing that US ISDN doesn't provide power to the phone instrument, while everywhere else in the world, you get power, just like analog phones.
Doesn't the phone on this page look an awful lot like the red "Hot Line" that Commissioner Gordon used to pick up with the cloth?
"Chief O'Hara, to the Batphone!"
"Aye. What's Batman's IP address again, sar?"
"Oh, forget it - you can't draw the Bat Symbol to save your life anyways... Last time we got 20 bottles of Ron Bacari Rum."
"Aye. Thet was noice, wasn't it sar?"
Soko
(Please excuse the rather poor attempt at typing in an Irish accent...)
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Bruce Schneier recently had a bit to say about the security problems of replacing POTS with IP telephony. In short, it's not a good idea. But I see how this sort of system might be useful in a business setting, to replace the PABX systems used in many offices. Heck, it's sure to be an improvement over the PABX we have here in our office!
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Probably about the same time that your new shiny IP phone will work during a power outage.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
If this article does nothing more than turn a few more people on to a great, free, Free tool, then it was worth posting.
Thanks Tim.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
If this thing could only catch on, maybe we'd finally get fiber to the curb. It's clear that DSL hasn't yet succeeded in doing so. It's also clear that the phone companies don't care squat about data traffic. But maybe if phone traffic drove some serious bandwidth, then they'd get serious about it, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
and I have to admit: there are a few problems but this is good stuff!
Bell labs released FULLY (source code and binaries) of software designed to allow users to access and remotely admin their computers from abroad... the only other thing that does something like this is RAdmin and although it does have a few better points, the software (compared to VNC) doesnt warrent the price.
VNC does have a few problems.. one of the most strange problem that can be fixed (not their fault) would be the lag created by your computer uploading pictures of its entire desktop when anything on it has changed... well, this COULD be fixed by just uploading the changed part of the desktop. RAdmin does this and gets better mouse movement/page display, but not when the entire page is changing... then it is uploading entire page and is just like VNC.
Overall: I have to give it out to these guys at the labs.. to make such a quality product and then release it for free (source included) so anyone can modify it... that also runs from any JAVA enabled browser... these guys deserve major thanks.
It's simple.
Most people order phone services to get *services*. Most people aren't going to want to deal with a fat client, particularly if the fat client requires them to do all the maintenance on it.
Most people don't grow their own food. Most people don't build their own houses. Most people don't do their own medical work. People pay each other to take care of things.
A fat-client phone that requires most people to make sure it is up-to-date with the latest software, to patch security holes, to do their own trouble-shooting and debugging, etc. isn't going to go over with the majority of the populace. Geeks would love them probably, of course.
As long as paying for telephone service as a service is around, the model is going to be pushing for thin-clients because it simplifies the maintenance and service issues, and keeps the costs down.
The ideal architecture would allow for both fat and thin clients, to let those who want to deal with fat clients be able to use them.
There is also another reason why cheap, thin-clients are a good idea -- cost. A cheap, reliable PSTN phone is under $10 USD -- almost everyone can afford one of those. An IP phone with LCD display, CPU enough to handle real time VoIP, RAM, ethernet interface, DSPs, etc. is not cheap -- and the more complexity you cram into it, the more expensive it gets.
People want services, not do-it-yourself kits.
Why is there no basic IP phone?
:-(
dammit! I want a simple phone with 1 or 2 ethernet jacks, maybe with a regular phone jack aswell. This phone would let you dial the IP address of another such phone and then the two phone could talk!
Why does this not exist? why do all IP phones have to be reliant on some kind of expensive complicated single-point-of-failure server???
This would be a great product. Geeks would snap it up, law firms could use it to make encypted calls between offices (i'm thinking vpn here)... It sounds really simple to me too. hmmm... maybe i'll have to build my own...
don't give me crap about latency. business class ADSL gets you 30ms pings to nearby cities, and home DSL is generally under 100... if it's good enough for Quake i'm sure it's good enough for voice.
Why would you want a phone on a desk? Coreless, at least, and mobile (GSMCTS please), optimally, are the right thing.
Why would you want an IP phone with no apps that integrate with the network or nodes on the network? Sketchpad? Faxes??!! How retro. Gimme a break. Does this thing integrate with PCs, integrate with IM, do anything useful?
Why would you want a phone with a color LCD display? Do you want a $600 phone? Cordless, mobile, small as possible is nicer, and on the GSM handset cost curve would be good too.
Why would you want a phone that makes you run new wiring or an oddball network on existing phone wiring? Bring the broadband wiring to one desk. All else in the home should be wireless.
Why would you want a phone with latency issues? Is your internet provider ready with a QoS-aware network? Should they be? And if they are, would it cost any less than the PSTN?
Why would you want a phone that exposes latency and reliability issues in 802.11b, which are not important to data, but could make a wireless IP phone perform very badly? And is 802.11b coverage in your home as good as your $30 900Mhz cordless phone coverage?
Why would you want a phone with less than the voice quality provided by an analog line? Why not implement the ISDN high quality speech CODEC (not even ISDN phones do this - terrible shame), at least? What is so good about "toll grade" that people can't seem to think about better quality?
Sorry, until IP phones do something I'm willing to pay to have, I would rather have a smaller/cheaper/longer-battery-life mobile than an IP phone.
I wrote parts of this stuff
As far as single points of failure and security issues go, take a look at the reliability and security of the current PSTN verses the current Internet. It is indeed possible to build a centralized system with 99.999% uptime.
And each person always has a single point of failure -- their own endpoint or phone. Which is more likely to maintain a 99.999% or better uptime -- the thin-client simple, stateless phone, or the fat-client service laden, stateful phone? (Which is more likely to crash, your calculator or your computer?)
If you looked at the AT&T phone described in the article, you would see that the applications are not moved at all. Only the data. And moving the data from end to end is the point of communications, after all.
Except you know what Edison said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". Seems like you have some sweating to do!!