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Canadian Telco Telus Moves All Call Traffic to the Net
justice0x1 writes "An article on the Tornonto Star about Canada's Telus making a large scale motion to move all call trafic over to IP caught my eye today. 'Telus will become the first dominant phone carrier in North America to make the risky transition, a move much talked about and which Telus will make happen on a dramatic scale.' Since I work in the Telus Internet Service department, it will be interesting to see exactly how this new technology fares. Seems almost premature to me, but I guess it's all or nothing with telecomunications these days; you need to get an edge on the competition somehow. Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?"
Hi, mom? How're you doing? All is well wi....
What kind of bandwidth would this require?
"Sorry, but your call could not be connected at this time due to a 404 error. Please reconfigure your phone line and try again."
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
I wouldn't trust them to carry voice over IP over the public Internet any more than I trust their DHCP servers to consistently provide an address.
Hence the IPCop gateway on 24x7.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.
Just wait for the Slashdot effect to strike...., then you an have dropped packets, shift in time and all sort of digital noise... No need to add analog noise to it.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Turnabout is fair play it seems. No more than 5 years ago, I was using a phone line to access the internet. Soon i'll be using the internet to make telephone calls.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
I'm sure this will eventually be the way of all telcos, but shouldn't they have waited until the Internet is a little more stable? I'd hate to be blocked off from the rest of the world if a router goes down in Seattle or something. This would be a huge increase in 'net traffic, and knowing Telus' ISP uptime personally, this kind of worries me.
It should be noted that altough everything is transporter over IP, they are (probably :)) not transferring their voice over public Internet and it is not even connected to Internet in any way.
It's still a private network, they are just shifting to a more generic and cost-effective infrastructure. So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..
In fact it was just a matter of time. At last, telcos are realizing that technology is a helper and not a foe. Probably 3rd generation as designed is not going to generate the expected revenue and some side paths need to be found.
In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.
How different/irritating was the call that they needed to add the noise. Also does SprintPCS do this too? I would imagine that having no noise in a call would actually be a marketing edge (remember the pin droping commercial!)
later,
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
I wonder how much bandwidth they are going to allocate to a phone call once it's pure VoIP? and will it change according to load? what will be the effect on modem/fax data?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
I used to have to yell at my roommates to get off the phone and stop hogging the phone line.
Now I'll have to yell at them to get off the phone and stop hogging the bandwidth.
Dude, using IP dosn't mean they are transfering call trafic over the general internet. I really doubt they are going to give each phone line a real IP address rather then a 'local' one.
:P probably not).
It would be pretty cool if they did. Imagine an RFC standard phone protocol that was implemented on lots of telephone like devices. In conjunction with DHCP you could have an internet phone that worked as simply as a regular phone. And you could talk to anyone with a PC and/or another phone (maybe by typing in the IP address?
Well, I can dream, can't I? (or is this not that far off? I know you can buy IP phones today, but I don't think that they can work with both the general internet and the general phone system)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This method certainly can't make them go out of business any faster than the other Canadian telcos.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The benefits, however, are enormous and noticeable, particularly on a carrier's balance sheet. Telus stands to substantially lower its operating and capital costs with the new infrastructure, and will be in a position to offer customers new business services that can combine voice, video and data. "We literally have three infrastructures," says Pathak, explaining that separate networks exist today to carry phone calls, Internet and data services, and video. "The goal is to merge into one simple platform.
So their ultimate plan is to have Video, Phone and Data linked into the same system? An Extreme bandwidth use, but one that would raise some hopes of breaking down the current 'methods of communication' fragmentation and simply leaving us with one single, integrated, communications method.
Now that raises all sorts of possibilities in terms of remote conferencing, especially as the younger, technically proficient generations move into higher echelons of the decision making process in government and corporations.
Any ideas on what OS is used to control this?
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
So.. if you're dialing up the net on your modem, you potentially doing IP over PPP over Voice over IP ? I guess then you could load up a VoIP app and make a voice call too :)
OK, so you wouldn't be dialing long distance in the first place, but still, it's a lot of protocols.
In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.
They should drop calls and overcharge customers too to complete the picture.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now we can slashdot a pay phone...
a bit outside of Québec City (I no longer work for them), I would say this is a generally good move. Most of the equipment, at least in Québec is shoddy stuff late 1950s. Needs constant maintainence. I can definitely see why they're upgrading.
They're not going to go on general IP network but with a carrier-class MPLS network. Lets see who they will choose for their backbone, Cisco, Juniper or perhaps Chiaro or Hyperchip??
didn't Bank of America lose about 14,000 ATM machines to the SQL Slammer worm?
moving data across a public network isn't safe or intelligent. Let's hope they open their eyes before this foolisness gets any further.
Will the software used for this transition support IPv6? Will it be BASED on IPv6? I mean, the point of IPv6 is to give us more IP addresses than the initial 256 * 256* 256 * 256, and moving an entire phone network would only make the IP addressing problem worse (if not using v6...), right?
Informatus Technologicus
This is stupid. I don't think Telus actualy add noise on the line. The journalist don't realy understand or think his readers are a bunch of clueless.
I guess an engineer tell him: "The voices was so clear we decided to compress it further. This add a bit of noise".
Make more sense to me.
From what I can see everything is heading toward one device - the PC. The PC of the future, as many of us know, will be compact enough to put on a table top (or under your TV) and will be a compliment to your lounge/living room as it may be well designed and stylish.
So, what's going to come through this little wonder? Well pretty much everything. People will have wireless digital phones which connect to this 'base unit' via bluetooth or other wireless tech. All this telephone traffic will travel across a VoIP system and additional features will most probably be video links through built-in cams and possibly a text message feature to send info such as telephone numbers or addresses through on-the-fly without having to talk it out loud on the phone.
Also coming down the high speed net links will be television on demand. No more arial/satellite systems, just pure internet provided media. It could be argued that radio is very much internet based already - I for one have no arial set up for FM signals.
The international network coupled with a micro-PC in every home is the way of the future. Faster internet backbones will provide a media-rich lifestyle.
By treating voices and video like any other piece of data, such as e-mail
Soon Canadians will be getting enlarge-your-penis and invest-in-nigeria phone calls.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The main VoIP standard is H.323 - Check out OpenH323, an open-source implentation of this technology.
" To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. "
How 'bout editors that can actually, you know, edit?? Would that be too much to ask?
Let's look at this from a US perspective. Right now, unless you can also sell long distance in the US, you must rely on another carrier to handle that portion of a call. What, besides federal regulations, is stopping the ILEC's from just firing the calls over their network to the endpoint (if they happen to service that endpoint) bypassing the LD carrier? Yeah, those pesky regulations might be a problem but has that stopped anyone? Does this save us money in the future or do they charge more because it's VoIP?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
Either way, it's nice to see someone finally moving toward a full scale VoIP implementation. The technology is amazing (I'm pretty good with Cisco's voice stuff) and I'd love to see more people go this route.
Tom
I'm going to have to call her later on. She's like, into Lord of the Rings and other geeky stuff. BTW, what's Linux???
Karma whorin' since 1999
..I use Vonage for my phone at home. I do not even have a land-line installed in my apartment. I find the features to blow any phone company away, and the price and service is excellent.
Besides the overall geekness of being totally VoiP, I have had nothing but good experiences with it.
And I get to have an LA and NY number....
Rob
In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!
I was going to use a modem over VoIP! Curse you, Telus!
Are they using IPv6 for the voice transmissions? It sounds like a good idea to me (not beeing a field expert tho..) since there are a lot of QoS features and security features in v6, wich would require a lot of extra hassle with v4.
Anyways I'm moving as far away from telco business as possible. After 20 years, as a customer, I'm less than satisfied with the 'competitive' pricing of services.
Remarkably enough, telephone technology hasn't really changed all that much since it's invention. the infrastructure has changed vastly, but for the most part, you can still use a first generation telephone over copper, with the exception of the cellular model. This is probally why it's no great shock to me that mobile phones are the first to actually experiment with adapting.
My first reaction to this move to tcp/ip based voice communication is great, dispite the fact that the telephone it self has a remarkable level of simplisity to it. Speaker, amp, microphone, even without a touch tone generator most networks i'm familar with still permit the rotery system, a call can be placed by touching wires together in that rythmic fasion.
So what is there to be gained by TCP/IP transport for telephone use, assuming we are talking about the classic land line as well as the mobile, a great deal i'd say. Fax machines for one thing will no longer be barred by that pesky 9600/14000 bandwidth issue, color faxing can be an option. A "mobile" could in theory be jacked into a land line and calls can be recieved regardless of reception, eliminating the need for features like call forwarding. A push to upgrade to this cheeper form of transport could push the telcos to actually upgrade way out of the way regions to this new digital system, so even Farmer Joe miles away from the CO could get reliable network access. Let alone the boom to the deaf community.. even with present mobile text and instent messaging it has practicaly rendered ye old TDD terminal obsolete.
But... there is a major downside. It puts control of network access back to the telcos, well not like they don't have it already. We create a dependence on high technology, requiring all homes being essentally wired for network. We also create a dependence on power, not that classic telephone doesn't take a bit of juice, but imagine if everyone's house had additional DA converters, and essentally hubs rather then splitters. Privacy could be made a think of the past, as packet sniffers could be employed to actually track specific people without the physical access that is presently required.
But I'm leaning more tward the side of the fact that there is just so much crap I want rendered obsolete, and a level of digital intrigration I would like to achieve. I no longer want to be barred by the limits of dialup service being the only thing that can be actived on demand, I want phones to be TCP/IP ready.
And yes... I want mobile phones to actually provide high speed internet and I want it everywhere! And if this means I can't use my circa 1970's phone that I bought specificly to be compatable with my first acustic(sp) modem and so be it.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I am writing this letter to request ISP service from you. After that is completed, I will be able to telephone you to arrange a domain transfer.
Incidentally, do you know to whom I can write to arrange for water service so I can watch CNN?"
I wonder how long it'll be before the internet is converted into a real world wide web, and every means of communication will run over IPv6 (or another new protocol)...
No more large bunches of different cables for internet, phone, cable tv, etc... One cable, one protocol would make maintenance easier and cheaper on the hardware side. It'll also make expansion easier like the idea for The Grid, the internet that would expand into space.
On the other side security needs to be beefed up with better encryption, but that shouldn't be too big a problem with enough numbercrunching processors.
Time for a new slogan, "One net, one people"...
home
...will this breed a new generation of Canadian phreakers? YOU BET IT WILL!!! :-D I'll be the first one to try and "research" that network no doubt about it ;) Someone should probably mention security to them...
Sprint says it's going to do the same thing.
By "the Net" I assume you're referring to the internet.
I just thought I should let you know that IP is not the same as the internet. You know, just to keep you from embarrasing yourself on the front page of a really popular website that has "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters".
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
As a few posts have already descibed, VoIP is not the same as voice over the internet. The VoIP that Telus is using is actually being carried over dedicated data circuits which offer, not only high speed (OC-12 +), but also end to end Quality of Service control. Indeed, these dedicated data circuits may well carry some internet traffic as well, but Telus is able to run the voice traffic at a higher priority than the less time sensitive data.
In fact, this is already being done by several carriers including Sprint, MCI, Intermedia, Verizon and probably others.
I have also installed numerous private networks utilizing Nortel or Cisco equipment to carry VoIP over dedicated private networks, usually frame-relay WANs. These VoIP calls are 100% reliable and are perfectly clear.
In two cases standard internet connections (cable, xDSL, frame-relay) were used to carry calls between several different offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Mexico. These connections are not always as clear as those running on private WANs but, they have proven to be 98% reliable and are indistinguishable from regular land lines, in terms of clarity, 85% of the time.
That would be "Toronto Star" not "Tornonto Star". Although I do like the sound of Tornonto.... :-)
Some of us *require* real-time transmission (or as close to it as we can get) - in broadcasting, where I work, just to name one. Ethernet is more efficient for an office network because it allows many machines to share resources. At times when the network gets really busy, people notice a delay; annoying, but not the end of the world. The same principle applies here: if the circuits get really busy, there might be a delay (or even a brief dropout) before you hear Aunt Lona say "hello" at the other end of the line. Again: annoying, but not the end of the world. But now imagine that the connection is being used to control a piece of equipment many miles away. Or, to transport a real-time signal, say, a ballgame from a distant city. Both are true in our case. We need real time, or as close as you can get. When you can't get a satellite channel, the method of choice for a quickie audio remote is ISDN. The telcos hate these nowadays: technically, because you're tying up one "slice" of a T1 group. They'd much rather distribute packets on that T1 like a card dealer in Vegas; if the table is full of gamblers, it just takes a little longer, is all. More efficient. You folks in Canada: don't be surprised if your internet service suffers as a result of this. You're gonna be sharing bandwidth with the call to Aunt Lona ... :)
Telcos may be a good reason for IPv6 to get popular .. instead of a telephone number maybe everyone can have IPv6 addresses with a easy to remember domain like myname.phonecompany.com
That way your phone can be a person's mini answering machine/weblog or webserver/instant messenger device as well.
That would be cool. Of course it would never happen given current state of fcc/monopolies/regulatory crap.
What I'd like to see is a cordless phone or headseat combination which is wireless using 802.11 protocol to communicate WITH my wireless access point and through the internet. Not any of these current cordless phones all using proprietary digital and analog transmission methods knocking down my access point quality every time a cordless phone in the same frequency is powered up. Additionally, this cordless phone must be able to communicate via instant messaging and free voice chat services as well. Doesn't make sence to be paying for both a phone number and an internet account.
The most widely used VoIP protocol is H.323. H323 allows negotiation of a compression CoDec. The base (worst) codec which must be supported is G.711 (64kb/s - this is what goes down an ISDN line - this is regarded as lossless digital encoding).
Latency is dealt with by using QoS. I make calls from Australia to Europe through a VoIP carrier at a cost of about 3cents/minute. The round trip delay appears less than 0.2 seconds. The recommended CoDec is G.723.1 which is 5.3 or 6.3 kb/s (switches dependent on complexity I believe). This CoDec gives speech quality better than a mobile network will give you.
The bandwidth is only required in the direction of speech - when there is silence going the other way the bandwidth drops to near zero (just comfort noise generation and control signals send down the line). Comfort noise generation is done by a funny little algorithm that tells the other end the type of "silence" (static) to produce.
Meanwhile, in hockey news, the Ananheim Mighty Ducks face the Newn Jersney Devils.
(I see the upcoming pot de-regulation is having it's effect)
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
you'll get my old black rotary phone with the real metal bells and indestructible hard shiny plastic and nice neck-cradling handset when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
No electricity? no problem, it still works. Plus, analog has nostalgia value, too!
Maybe there's a cool mod someone's done for old phones like this so that we can convert them to VOIP...
Damn those pesky terrorists
Nothing says "the Internet". The /. headline says the Net, which is dubious and vague. The poster says "IP", which is certainly not Intellectual Property.
None of it says The Internet or The Public Internet.
Infuriate left and right
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030527_381 .html
Switching to IP using Nortel equipment.
check out http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030527_381 .html
You would have made a much stronger point if you had capitalized Internet or said "The Internet".
/. and surf pr0n sites.
/. article title is misleading.
Lower case internet is generally used for any network using IP protocol. Upper case Internet is generally used when referring to the particular instance of an internet that one uses to read
The actual article suggests they are using an internet, not the Internet. But you're right in that the
GX routes a billion voice minutes / month using Sonus gear
this was posted last december.
there's no place like ~
As a former employee of Nortel Networks, I can say they have been developing this equipment for many years and have been testing in the field for at least the last 3 years. 2 years ago a 2 billion dollar contract with Sprint was rolled out with the 2nd generation Voice-over-IP equipment (Nortel Networks calls it "Succession" equipment), and we were already working on the 4th generation of it late in 2001 (when I stopped working there). The 4th generation contained virtually every current phone option + more, and plans were in place already for features through the 6th generation back then. There were also several other companies (Cisco Systems) working on the same Voice-over-ip equipment, but Nortel was at least 4 years ahead of them (at least that's what Sprint and several other companies told us).
,the reason the telecoms are pushing for packet-based phone networks is because its WAY cheaper for them to support 1 network, than it is for them to support internet and phone networks simultaneously and because phone networks must be connected in a web, each local station must connect to every other local station, up to a large scale one where there is a trunk to another large scale.
As far as stability of packet based phone network, the goal is to have 99.999% (5 9's) of stability that is already achieved on our current POTS telephone service, and I can vouch that we were getting very close to that kind of stability with redundancy and nightly sanity tests - no telecom will stand for anythign less out of phone equipment than 5 9's.
Lastly, the equipment being developed by Nortel was amazing and great to work on. All pieces of the network auto-detected each other once connected to the 'net (either over tcp/ip or atm), and would integrate seemlessly with the current phone network making an unnoticable change when it begins to be rolled out in mass. Also
Understand; while it is VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol), it is not running voice calls over "The Internet". When you place a phone call through this service, the packets never share a line with Internet traffic. (Unless they've really screwed something up royally.) The packets use the same protocol (IP) that hosts on "The Internet" use to talk to one another, that is where the sharing of information ends. You'll never see some script kiddee in Tiawan DDOS your IP phone into molten slag, or (if you pardon the mixed metaphor) get a "404 error" trying to ring your grandmother. It's an entirely other, airgap firewalled network. That's important for two reasons; here's why:
First; it's a network that the network provider owns and controls completely. You won't be able to put a phone onto it unless you have a service agreement with them, pay a monthly fee, and use only equipment they have vetted. There will be no anonymity. Every packet you send will be tracable (and likely billable) to you. They aren't likely to allow you to put your Linux Phone onto this system (for fear you'd become that Tiawan script kiddee). Their Internet will be closed. You won't be able to offer an innovative service, unless you have their blessing (read: they get a cut of the profits). Forget about storing voicemail on a local hard disk: that will still be $9.95/month plus $0.11 per kilobyte.
Second, since they now have a closed, controlable, internet they own, why should they promote that Other Interent, or support it, or even allow it to continue to exist?
The good news is that this is a sign of a return to profitability for the telecommunications industry as a whole. We're likely to see our entire communications environment change over to an industry run like this; optimizing for high quality and shunning any change which could impact reliability of the existing system. Here starts a new 150 year era of innovations like Call Waiting and the Princess Phone.
The bad news is that this is a sign of a return to profitability for the telecommunications industry as a whole. We're likely to see our entire communications environment change over to an industry run like this; optimizing for high quality and shunning any change which could impact reliability of the existing system. Here starts a new 150 year era of innovations like Call Waiting and the Princess Phone.
<SOAPBOX> We had 10 years to "make the Internet work", but instead we handed it over to the spammers and the music traders and the Flash-only IE-only web sites and the script kiddees. Maybe now that The Internet is about to die they'll all go find some other network to infest. They've built a walled city inside the noosphere; you can choose to live within the city or live without. Didn't you always want to live in a "Road Warrior" kinda world?</SOAPBOX>
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Anyone who's ever taken a class on networks knows that there is always a proposal out there to add "quality of service" guarantees that ISPs can theoretically charge more money for. However, no ISP we use in day-to-day life has ever actually implemented this, for various reasons relating to the structure of the internet to the billing issues involved.
However, what Telus has done has been to finally create an IP network that can deliver these QoS guarantees to themselves and anyone they sell their VoIP bandwidth to.
I can see the internet splitting into the "regular backbone" and the "bandwidth guaranteed network", and you (or your router) just decide which service you need to use when you route your traffic.
I'd just like to add, having seen (and played with) the elaboration of a large-scale VOIP network over a Cable company here In Montreal, it's funny to see the emphasis of actually stating that they actually had to put background noise on the line. If they are using that pitch, it's surely because they are using a cisco based solution, and it was the cisco engineers who actually implemented this "human-friendly" touch. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if half the staff on this project is manned by Cisco employees.
As a fellow Canadian, I'm interested in this move. Our LUG had a presentation on Linux Telephony, VOIP and such a month or two ago. If you're interested, grab the .
The problem as I see it, I think Telus has figured out a way to charge for Long Distance with VoIP that THEY implement. I'd be weary of it myself. But who knows, Telus could surprise me, but I doubt it.
-- DuckWing
I have been contemplating this question ever since Houston, Tx went to mandatory 10 digit dialing several years ago. The question of why phones couldn't be set up the way the internet is? using conventional Personal/Business names for dialing and a DNS like server to route the call to the appropriate location. That way it wouldn't matter who your provider is you would always be John.Smith.Home, John.Smith.Mobile, etc. The majority of people using the internet have no idea what an IP address is because DNS works so well but these same people have no problem accepting the fact they must remember their mother/father/sibling/friend/etc.'s voice#/cell#/fax# or that they must look up the number for bob's takeout. If they were on the internet the first thing they would do is type www.bobstakeout.com to see if that worked and ~60% of the time it would. With Telus switching to an IP based system they could easily do something like this (at least for local customers).
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
"Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?"
/. story?
Because circuit-switched voice doesn't suffer from dropouts every time there's a sudden interest in the latest
VoIP is like hauling gravel via airplane. You can do it, but that's not what airplanes are good at.
How will this help in terms of delivering Quality of Service to different classes of customers? I am guessing that using "IP" will make it easier to balance the needs of high v. low level service agreements. Which means higher prices for their services, which = more money.
So they might save money in terms of maintaining infrastructure, and also make more money from better control of their product.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Well Hyperchip happens to be Canadian too!
Based on what I see in the article they are talking about using a VOIP infrastructure to replace their TDM infrastructure between switches.
(I'll use the US network as an example since its the one I'm most familiar with)
Right now each state is broken up into LATAs (Local Access Telecommunication Area - IIRC). Within each LATA there is a LD tandem which lets IXCs (long-distance carriers) accept and terminate calls to the local phone providers within that LATA.
The IXCs in turn have their own switches which are connected to the LD (inter-lata) tandem. The IXC switches are interconnected with each other via a TDM network. The TDM network uses multiplexers to build T1 (E1) service up to high-speed carrier level for transport between physical switch sites. Each T-1 gets broken out again and plugged in individually to another switch somewhere. (I know some switches can handle DS3 directly - I'm simplifying a bit) For the duration of the call a full 56/64Kbps DS0 line is nailed end-to-end.
Since this gets a bit expensive the network isn't physically a full-mesh. Smaller switches (leaf nodes) connect to major switches to route calls across the network. To acheive the P.01 service grade (1 call in 100 blocked) a large percentage of this capacity sits idle most of the time.
By going to a VOIP infrastructure for inter-switch trunking you get several advantages:
1 - Full mesh network. A call from Frog Jump, Kentucky can go directly to Fort Stockton, Texas. This frees up a large number of switch ports at the major sites and can greatly simplify call routing.
2 - Efficient bandwidth utilization. The packets are only flowing when there is audio to send. During pauses in speech (Probably something like 40% of a typical call) no data is sent (silence detection). (NOTE: This is where the noise comes in. A small bit of noise is sent to the near-end receiver during the silence intervals) With compression in he codec even more savings can be realized. Most implementations can detect fax/modem tones and switch over to a full-bandwidth codec so they won't degrade/disable fax/modem transmissions.
3 - Efficient bandwidth loading. Bandwidth can be sized for the total utilization of a switch rather than attempting to discern "average" calling patterns. Having done trunking analysis within a CLEC intra-lata network I can only imagine its a nightmare on LD networks.
4 - Equipment consolidation. The softswitch device can likely be plugged directly into some number of OC-3/12/48 interfaces. This cuts out things like M13 muxes, a DACS, copper patch panels, etc.
5 - Network consolidation. From a single office the IXC probably has a TDM voice network, IP network, frame-relay network, and possibly (especially outside the US) an X.25 network. The more of these things you can run across a single network the more economies you get.
All in all, its a very good thing. Its totally transparent to the customer, but it saves the IXC a big chunk of change.
As both a business and cellular subscriber of TELUS I can say that this switch has not been seemless. Over the past too weeks there have been a large amount of issues with their networks. For instance for 3 days in a row for the first 3 hours of our business day our phones could not dial out, or recieve calls. We were not notified that there was a shortage, and were baffled, thinking it was our Meridian storage. Their cellular service has been spotty at best, again with the lack of ability to dial out or recieve calls (fast busy, no voice mail). This has been a severe inconvenience too me. There are other local providers who have been providing great VOiP service in our center for one, that is clearly a better choice. Telus has also been offering their own brand of VOIP service for residential and business customers. This is not a new endeavor for Canadian telecom, but it is a good switch. Perhaps soon we may see free telecom w/the purchase of internet services (monopoly what?). The question is, when are major corporations going to go with a free software VOIP service (H.323) over expensive proprietary Nortel software.
-eK "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out." (Bill Hicks)
but what are the odds that the customers will get a rate decrease? They say they will cut costs by 20%+, but where will those savings go? Right into their CEO's paycheque. OTOH, by lower prices, they will force other telcos to lower their prices. Which will put them out of business. Which will tie us customers into a single telco. Great. Its not like their customer service didn't suck already, now we won't even have a chance to leave. We're screwed.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
I was involved in the testing process for this technology, and I have deployed some of the world's first exclusively VoIP switches. I tested and tweaked this stuff for over two years.
Firstly, there are reasons why it is taking this long for telcos to adopt VoIP. It simply doesn't work as reliably as traditional telco equipment. Some of the main reasons for its failure are more fundamental than some would think.
First, a building could be half exploded and on fire, and most people could reasonably assume that picking up a phone on the opposite side of the building would produce a dialtone. This is an extreme example, but the idea is that telecom services have been so reliable for so long, that any failure at all is unacceptable.
Cell phones are a different story because the tradeoff for shoddy service levels is mobility and convenience.
When you get anything less that stellar performance out of a desktop phone, people will not be satisfied. I have learned this first hand.
Switched circuit equipment is designed to deliver small chunks of data in a time sensitive fashion. Ok, read that again now. Small amounts of data in a time sensitive fashion.
Now look at traditional "Internet" routing gear and circuits. The problem becomes clear.
Data-centric gear and protocols are designed to deliver as much data as possible in gulps. This is because it is assumes that one wants to get N bytes of data from here to there. These devices are designed to deliver large amounts of data, in a NON-TIME-SENSSITIVE fashion. By time sensitive, I mean size-predictable chunks of data, delivered at predictable and stable intervals.
When data is lost in a switched circuit, the result is a miniscule dropout in a largely stable and predictable service level. The technology is designed in such a way so that loss of a small bit of data is not a big deal, as it results in a tiny "tick" in the conversation.
There are several other reasons why this will fail, but here's one more:
During times of non-talk, the connection appears to go dead in that the line goes silent. This conserves bandwidth which is good, but it provides the user with an odd experience.
It's similar to using a single-duplex speakerphone, only worse, because not only can you not hear the person you're conversing with, you can't hear yourself. You can literally watch someone having a conversation on one of these phones and watch them get confused. If there is someone technical in the area, they WILL ask wtf is going on with the phone.
You end up with situations where both people are like "can you hear me now?" And they trip over eachother as they both try to speak at the same time and stop short, and jerk back in.
VoIP technology (at this point) completely removes the "connection" made between two people when they converse on the phone.
We played with gain controls and squelch and inserting white noise, and playing with the sensitivity. All that. The botton line is that it is nowhere near the same experience, and I suspect that many people will reject the experience until this problem is sorted out.
Thought it was worth noting, Sprint is up to pretty much the same thing right now:o c=FF-APO-1700&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20030527%2F0818 18105.htm&sc=1700
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?fl
All circuits busy.
No reliance on a precision clock reference as would be required in a synchronously switched network. Those clock references used by telcos are expensive to run (hydrogen MASERs IIRC) and require multiple synchronized low-latency sources.
AFAIK, one of the major advantages of VoIP is the cost. Will this translate to lower / more accessible pricing for the consumer? (My vote: Unlikely.)
I am alone, yet I also surf the universal backwash of undifferentiated Being, which is LOVE.
I already am. Vonage runs $40/mo for unlimited calling within the US and Canada. I did the math, and found that I could double my DSL upload speeds (which was needed as the 1.5/128k ADSL connection I had was not quite enough upload) and slightly reduce my monthly telco/internet costs. Since I'm on DSL, I still had to keep a landline, but it's the uber cheap one ($13/mo), had I been on cable the savings would've been even better. I'm totally happy with it. I did need to setup queueing on my outbound router to prioritize VOIP (so somebody hammering my webserver wouldn't kill my phone) but on a normal home network the thing would be plug and play. For that matter, if your home servers are low load you probably wouldn't need to bother prioritizing at the router; I found packet loss in testing (having a freind hammer the server while we were on the phone) but it took me 3 weeks before I got around to setting up the router and we never had a problem in actual use. But I was more than happy to have an excuse to play with altq. ;-)
ehintz
Is anybody else bothered that Telus's Internet Service department is finding this out by reading the Toronto Star?
This is not my sandwich.
As a Telus customer here in British Columbia, this is scary news. They can't even provide reliable ADSL service!
"We're sorry, the number you dialed cannot be reached because you did not get an IP address from our DHCP server. Please renew your lease and dial again."
caaaaan ou h ear e ow?
Sigs are bad for your health.
Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?
Quite simply Large monopoly Telco's have invested large amounts of cash in the already existing (and out of date) telephone network, and would rather blow up the planet than see that change. Have a look at this .
Bell , AT&T will start whining to governments for compensation or tax immediatly.
All I'd like to know is when did the government make it a priority to start protecting large corps from the consumers, instead of protecting the consumers from corps.
I too use Vonage, and have been a little to lazy to set up a proper QoS solution, but would be very interested in a brief summary of what you did.
Being the hack that I am, I whipped up a bash script using ngrep that sniffs the phone calls, pulls out caller ID and outgoing call numbers for syslogging, and can run commands when incoming or outgoing calls occur. I wrote this because I have long running rsync processes that I wanted killed and restarted when a call occurs.
My script:
watchp
-- I speak only for myself.
I assume that eventually they plan to run some kind of IP service to peoples houses, and use VoIP phones. What would be nice if you could use say, some kind of VPN, to get to a internet router, and obtain a public IP.
Theres your broadband......
Where do I sign up?
Speak for yourself.
I assume this will mean that I will only be able to use my phone 80% of the time too.
Soon i'll be using the internet to make telephone calls.
But when will I be able to use the internet to make a phone call with my modem in order to connect to the internet?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
With calls going over the internet, should I get my packet sniffer ready? Will others be listening in on my top secret calls?
Or are calls "encrypted"?
With this change, did we lose even more of our privacy? Tapping into a hard wire is a bit more complicated than packet sniffing the internet. Not much, but just a bit more.
Any info on the security?
it's not "CoDec" you freak. It's "codec". Even if you want to enSturdlyCaps it, it would become "CodEc".
Codec. Codec. Codec codec codec.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, mine's something of a hack as well, but I suppose it's a step up from a shell script... ;-) I just threw together a quick webpage with the details, hope it helps.
ehintz
The problem is the overhead required to pack it into IP packets - you can easily get 40 bytes of header (IP, UDP, RTP) even without IPSEC or NAT traversal or ethernet or PPP, which obviously is a lot to add to a 10-byte data packet. There are Compressed RTP versions that let you reduce this, and in a Cisco VOIP router, 8kbps coding generally uses 11kbps if you can turn on all the compression, or 22kbps if you can't, which depends on lots of things. If they do Voice Over Frame or Voice Over ATM instead (packing it in link-layer frames without IP), it's closer to 8-11kbps, though some of the ATM options let you handle multiple voice and data streams in ways that can be more efficient.
Bandwidth is only part of the issue, though - scalability and signalling are also major drivers. For a couple of years, the fact that you only need ~1/6th as much bandwidth for voice-over-data as you did for compressed voice was really important, and it does reduce call costs, but the other simplicities are important. Traditional circuit-switched voice networks use a skinny signalling network to build 64kbps data paths, which are carried on switches that are very good at connecting together lots of pieces of 64kbps data, and dealing with the complexities of finding the best available route across the entire network. VOIP networks split up most of the problem into edge-based work (compressing the voice, and finding the right destination, and ringing the phones and such) vs. core work (just basic IP transport) so instead of having a core of very expensive very big telephone switches, which is hard to grow without spending lots of money, you have a core of big IP routers, which are a lot simpler, because they're handling a small number of fat pipes and some routing protocols. All the complex work happens at the edge, which scales well, and at the boundaries between the old phone network's SS7 signalling systems and the VOIP signalling systems - the reasons it's taken so long to do much of this have included protocol maturity, especially for the interfaces, as well as capital replacement costs for the edges.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, since it's Encoder/Decoder it would in fact CoDec.
I just got my first Nigeria-scam phone call this weekend - some of the scammers have discovered that the relay services for deaf people now have web interfaces as well as the old TDD interfaces. The scammer was calling on a Sunday evening before a US Monday holiday, and apparently wasn't thinking about the fact that just because it was working time in Nigeria, that didn't mean it was working time in the US west coast :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Depending on whether they're using H.323 or SIP or another standard, the VOIP tends to use a mix of transport protocols. The call setup signalling does tend to use TCP, because that part needs to be reliable and it's ok if it's delayed a couple hundred milliseconds as long as it all arrives and in order. The voice content itself tends to be RTP (Real Time Protocol) over UDP over IP.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have dealt with Telus for a number of years both as a consumer and as an ISP and I cannot imagine the absolute hell they will put their customers through on this one.... "Customer Service" at Telus is an oxymoron so pardon me while I spit milk out my nose laughing as I read how they are going to lead us into the new era of telecomminucations. If they can't support their existing infrastructures how the hell are they going to manage new technologies?
Anyone else misread this title as "Cmdr Taco Tells Us..."
Here you go, grammar boy:
Ass both a business and cellular subscriber of TELUS eye can say that this switch has knot been seemless. Over the passed to weaks their half bin a large amount of issues with they're networks. Four instance four 3 days inn a row four the first 3 hours of hour business day hour phones could knot dial out, or recieve calls. Wee were knot notified that there was a shortage, and were baffled, thinking it was hour Meridian storage. They're cellular service has bin spotty at best, again with the lack of ability two dial out or recieve calls (fast busy, know voice male). This has bin a severe inconvenience too me. There ar other local providers who have bin providing grate VOiP service inn hour center four wan, that is clearly a better choice. Telus has also bin offering there hone brand of VOIP service four residential and business customers. This is knot a gnu endeavor fore Canadian telecom, butt it is a good switch. Perhaps soon wee may see free telecom w/the purchase of internet services (monopoly what?). The question is, when are major corporations going two go with a free software VOIP service (H.323) over expensive proprietary Nortel software.
You jest, but some are indeed doing so. You see, TiVos in their natural state use dialup to an ISP for programming information. Some folks have their TiVos running over Vonage systems, so they are indeed doing exactly as you describe. Of course, the proper solution is to get a TurboNet card, but that costs money and time...
ehintz
If they handle the VOIP as well as they handle thier DSL internet... You won't be talking to anyone in Alberta or BC for a very long time :(
Sig? What sig?
These figures don't incldue IP header overhead.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..
Actually you CAN slashdot the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Netowork). And you always could. The equipment is sized to handle the expected peak loads with some slop. But there is nowhere near enough equipment in place to handle every phone being connected to another phone.
You can slashdot it at several levels. The commonest is the "all-trunks busy" level - where all the routes from the calling phone to the called number (that the switching equipment knows how to use) are busy. In the older exchanges that produced the tones that sounded like a busy signal but twice as fast. Modern stuff gives you a recording.
You can also tie up all the equipment that gives you a dial tone and collects the digits you dial, by getting enough people on the exchange to try to make calls at once. Usually this just means you wait a second or so for a dial tone - and maybe not even notice it. If it's REALLY severe you might wait seconds, or minutes, and then it is really noticible. But it's also really rare.
The last time I recall that actually happening where I lived was the Loma Prieta earthquake, and the time before was the assassination of JFK. Before that was at an old relay-based exchange (using line-finders rather than registers) where the line finders didn't time out, and a tornado had shorted out enough lines - which made them look "off-hook" - to busy out all the line-finders that could give my phone a dial tone.
Again, modern equipment is more informative: When things get hairy the people operating the network can switch it to a mode where, when you take your phone off the hook, it first connects you to a recording asking you to hold off unless it's an emergency, then giving you a delay followed by a fair chance at a dialtone. (I THINK it actually deliberately delays you a bit even if it COULD have given you a dial tone right away, both to throttle you and to give you a chance to hang up if it wasn't urgent.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm seeing lots and lots of posts indicating this is a good thing. Sure it will save the phone companies money... but do you think penny for penny the savings will be passed to customers? Hell no, and short of that it's not worth it. Circuit switching is much faster than packet switching, the equiptment is also much much more reliable.
I'm a Canadian, and I used to live in one of the Telus-dominated areas of the country. When I moved out of their service area, I called and asked them to cancel my service, but they didn't. In fact, they continued to bill me for four months on a number that wasn't in use. I didn't know until a collection agency called me trying to round up $250 dollars in back charges. I told them to $#%@ off, then sent a letter to Telus about it, but I don't expect them to do anything about. They're no Micro$soft, but they've got a firm enough hold on the market that customer service is a luxury they don't need to offer. They might as well spell their name Telu$.
..although they do eventually learn. Telus IS in some ways like Microsoft--useless technical support and usually their 3rd try at something is when it is truly useful (just like with Windows). That, and whenever they mess with something add "enhancements" they introduce 2x more new bugs.
I have to say beyond that Telus is fairly reliable (for everything but wireless/cellphone stuff), despite having crappy customer service. Lately however, Telus has been messing with things and it has affected my DSL service. Perhaps this was due to "improvements" in their Calgary network. Hopefully, this doesn't follow the path my last run-in with Telus did, or I'll be changing telephone providers very soon:
When my old ISP (CADVision) was bought out by Telus, I found that although service was not affected much at first, they completely botched the transfer of CADVision customers to their infrastructure. They missed all deadlines by a few days, ruined my hosting configuration (without warning my email and web page stopped working right). After waiting on hold for up to an hour for phone support or for days via email (exruciatingly delivered via dial-up as the DSL was out). I would get ill-informed, conflicting advice on how to move things along.
I was so pissed off that rather than allow Telus to honour the 1-year contract I signed with CADVision, I cancelled my service entirely before they fixed the mess and went with another ISP. They were cheaper, had a more flexible choice of service plans and better, faster service. I decided to host my own web, email and DNS servers on leftover and existing hardware running Linux, so that any screwups would be those I was responsible for (and I could use a "connectivity only" package at a 35% savings over Telus' closest offering). I was already using fixed IPs for some services, so I figured I might as well handle everything. The only problem is that since Telus is the established monopoly, so ALL DSL providers must rely to some degree on Telus infrastructure, and that Telus sill gets a least a small portion of my money.
Incidentally, in order for your ADSL modem to work, Telus has to light up your line at the CO, and the biling contact for that phone number eventually covers the cost of providing the DSL signal--all you would be stealing from Telus (or the targeted victim) is the IP address and whatever other services offered with their package (web space, email etc).
Public, private, doesn't matter they will find a way to screw it up. Frankly I have so many stupid Telus stories I can't figure out what to say next.
Belive me, huge pile of suck.
The most widely used VoIP protocol is H.323. H323 allows negotiation of a compression CoDec. The base (worst) codec which must be supported is G.711 (64kb/s - this is what goes down an ISDN line - this is regarded as lossless digital encoding).
H. 323 is not the most widely used protocol. Most gateways are running SIP these days. IAD's tend to prefer MGCP (as it is a much more flexable and powerful protocol than SIP). For phones probably the most common is SCCP (skinny) that Cisco is pushing, but their phones will also run SIP or MGCP. And there are many SIP Phones out there. H. 323 is a relic and is not being used much in the real world. It is a terrible protocol. None of our customers even want it. Everyone seems to want SIP that is where everything is headed.