VoIP + 802.11 = Bad News For Phone Companies

r.future writes " Netstumbler, a site that has downloads for software used by wardrivers, points to an article on Red Herring that talks about combining voice over IP and 802.11 wireless technology. The article states "Individually, VoIP and 802.11 are hot technologies with promising futures. Now they are gaining attention for their potential as a combined force. Convergence, or the melding of voice calls over an IP network together with wireless 802.11 technologies, is becoming increasingly popular. VoIP reduces the need for local carrier origination and termination." both Netstumbler, and the Red Harring article point to the University of Arkansas as a example of an institution that has combined the two technologies and was able to "circumvented its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000 by using voice over IP technology ""

Comments

I use VoIP

[Dancin_Santa]

I have experienced no problems with it since I had VoIP installed by my ISP. Long distance calls to the US are essentially free, as are calls to Germany, Japan, and really anywhere except for Africa. I haven't tried calling NZ yet, but I imagine that it's pretty much the same as calling any other place in Oceania.

802.11 + VoIP == disaster in the making

[puzzled]

We occasionally see annecdotal evidence that 802.11 can successfully carry voice traffic. These events are highly situational and generally only happen in rural areas where a single player controls all the high ground. If you're writing a business plan based on transiting voice on a point to point unlicensed band link you're very brave, if you're planning on doing it point to multipoint you need one of those jackets that helps you hug yourself. I've deployed 802.11b, Alvarion Breeze Access II, and various UNI band access products in a five county area that contains the 53rd largest metro area in the US. Note that I said "I have" - my BP had been 110/70 my whole life but in the last ninety days before I quit that and got a job that paid it peaked at 148/98. Even if you avoid the stock fraud dirtbags, the outright equipment theft dirtbags, the theft by deception dirtbags, and the cheesy mafioso dirtbags with grandfathered licenses in the ISM band, you're still facing the simple fact that any dork with $500 and a building on top of a hill can start a wireless play, crap all over the spectrum, and there simply isn't any recourse. Voice belongs on licensed spectrum and it always will. The *only* exception to this is sideband T1 usage on high quality point to point links - think Proxim Tsunamis at $14k a pair and you're on the right track.

Re:802.11 + VoIP == disaster in the making

[arnie_apesacrappin]

While you may dismiss this as more annecdotal evidence, I currently have VoIP running over 802.11b in a large manufacturing environment. I wouldn't suggest VoIP over 802.11b in a muli-company building, but on a large campus it works quite well.

The equipment is all Cisco and works flawlessly. The only time I can tell that someone is calling from a wireless VoIP phone is when I hear manufacturing noises in the background. The call quality is much better than a cell phone in my experience. Plus, you get all the features of your desk phone anywhere on campus (directory, etc.). It does mean that you lose the ability to use "I was away from my desk" as an excuse for missing a call.

Re:802.11 + VoIP == disaster in the making

[phlawed]

Some input from a guy working for a company selling hardware to wannabe ISPs and Telephony Service Providers. You might say I have a vested interest in saying what I say, as we sell the stuff that works. I'll just avoid dropping any names and brands and cut to the facts.

1.
Yes, telephony belongs in a licensed band. you cannot build a business on providing VoIP in the 2.4G band, unless you intentionally break all kinds of regulations. If you do stick to regulations, any nutter can put you and your customers out of business any time of day, and you can't do squat about it. And even if you can do squat about it, will the nutters care about what you do? Having equipment in the licensed band limits the number of potential nutters, and eases the job of finding "spectrum violators" tremendously.

2.
Providing voice services is a totally different ballgame from providing Internet services.
The Bloody Link Needs To Stay Up All The Time!!!
And the link quality can be utter crap and still carry data traffic in a decent way.
Not so for Voice. Nope. Dropped packets are no good and a retransmission rate above just a few percent Will Impact Voice Quality Badly.

3.
Carrying both data and voice on the same equipment is a natural thing, right? Sure.
Just be sure you can do ToS end-to-end and 802.1p in every single piece of equipment along the route. And if the radios can't prioritize traffic, find something else. Sorry. Major Requirement.

4.
Testing.
When testing, do not start jumping up and down the first time you hear your buddy's voice over the Internet. Does it work when you start talking real fast? With multiple voice sessions over the link?
Does it work over multiple radio hops? Can two of your customers talk to each other trough the same base station? Trough different base stations? When simultaneously downloading huge volumes of data?

Providing Internet Services is a walk in the park compared to VoIP of any decent quality.

Dag

Dual mode phones

[doormat]

I dont see cell phones that are only 802.11 going anywhere anytime soon, but I do see dual mode phones taking the market. Making a call via 802.11 when available and using the normal cell phone network when 802.11 is too busy or unreliable.

Its coming

[Zaffle]

Many of the people I've spoken to in the area of 802.11, wireless, and telecommunications have indicated this for awhile.

In fact, I spoke with a guy earlier in the year about a wireless internet access product his company provided. When he revealed the device is currently the size of a pack of cigaretes, and will be getting smaller, while providing megabits of bandwidth, I made a comment about putting VoIP into it and turning it into a phone. At that point he shut up and said something to the effect of, yes, well, thats a distinct possibility.
I got the impression that was exactly where they are going.

The idea behind VoIP on 802.11 style networks is if you have a big enough grid, you can do away with cellphones for that area.

There is still the problem of routing calls outside the "cloud" of coverage. Obviously each company would need its own internal phone solution still, but if the "cloud" gets big enough, you'll find that companies start offering 802.11+VoIP to teleco phone gateways.

I find it nice in the sense that the PRS radio system could replaced in these 802.11 hotspot areas. By making a small 802.11 phone, you could provide "free" wireless calls inside a 802.11 "cloud".

I say free, because bandwidth will ALWAYS be the bain of a wireless users existance, until solutions such as UWB (Ultra-Wide-Band (check it out, very exciting technology)) become a reality, wireless will always be slower than wired.

As geeks, unless we work for someone big like IBM, Bandwidth is always a precious resource. You can never have too much. Wireless networks never have enough. Try fitting 20 VoIP calls down a 802.11b wireless network and see how it runs.

I'm not saying it won't work, in fact, I'm saying the oppisite, it will. It will just require some more technology, and a bit more planning than most people realize.

On another slightly related note: Anyone know where I can buy a 802.11b frequency jammer?

Re:Its coming

[silentbozo]

On another slightly related note: Anyone know where I can buy a 802.11b frequency jammer?

I think they're called Microwave Ovens. You'll probably have to mod it to remove some safety features, but it should have the desired effect when turned on in the vicinity of any 802.11b receivers. You might want to invest in a pair of shielded briefs and a grounded tin-foil hat though...

Single point of failure

[Anonymous Coward]

My boss tried to advocate this for our new building. The next morning the halfcompetents who run our IT department had the network go down for a couple of hours. Not to mention the fact that most of the site was paralyzed for 3 days by the last round of worms.

Sorry, you've just bundled all my communication over a single VERY FAILURE-PRONE medium. I'm willing to pay for 5 or 6 9s of uptime rather than cruise by on the cheap. If we had VOIP we couldn't even get in touch with our department tech (savvy and on top of things) when we got DoS'd.

Dartmouth, Vocera

[Dolohov]

This has been a big topic on the Dartmouth campus lately, with VoIP being set up campus-wide. There are lots of people who will just use it with their laptops, but several profs already have a nifty little device from Vocera which hangs around the neck on a lanyard and is mostly voice-driven. (The comparisons to a Star Trek communicator in the article are actually pretty apt, except for the size) Their CEO was just here a couple days ago giving a lecture on the device. Very cool stuff, though most of the software is necessarily server-side, and seems to cost a hefty amount.

It's partly being touted as an alternative to cell phones (reception sucks up here) but 802.11 reception is too limited to make it worthwhile for those of us who live off-campus. Still, I'll be watching carefully to see how it goes.

Re:GREAT IDEA!

[mbd1475]

By using its existing TCP/IP networks and spending $4 million for a Cisco Call Manager, the university circumvented its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000.

GREAT IDEA! They spent $4,000,000 to save 500,000.

Of course, this is Arkansas we're talking about. They aren't much good with the number-learnin'.

(and there's no mention of other facility/staff expenses, either, so who knows how much money this really "saves")

As a senior business student at the University of Arkansas, I can confidently say that you have no concept of returns on investments. I can guarantee that the University of Arkansas knows exactly how much money it will be saving, and exactly when this investment will pay for itself. Our Information Systems department emphasizes such business decisions from day one of upper-level ISYS classes.

Incidently, the Sam M. Walton College of Business is the #28 public business school in the nation, and is in the top 50 rankings of public and private business schools. If you'd like to grasp a concept such as ROI, you might apply.

VoIP questions

[DanThe1Man]

Are there any VoIP software that lets you call from the internet to an actual phone? I've seen tons of internet to internet proprietary phones, but never one like that.

Does anyone know software like this?

Is there a reason software like this dosn't exsist?

What would need to happen to get software like this to work?

Reasons for reduced cost

[mtnharo]

For a large university campus, the old phone system would have probably been a very large PBX type system.

If it's anything like the system at my school, you're looking at a phone for every dorm room, office, and possibly class room. The backend hardware for that was probably a bigger investment than what they just layed out for the new VoIP system. Then there's probably a service contract for when things break (which they are almost guaranteed to eventually) or need replacement and upgrades. A contract like that on a 20-phone PBX at a small business can be a several $K per year, so imagine how that scales to a university wide system.

Lastly, the university phone system must have had a lot of trunk lines to the local telco. The phones on campus here use a 5-digit extension for on-campus calls, but are also part of the local telco system if you add the area code and 27 to the extension. If the new system uses a different scheme, such as a single trunk number + extension for calls from off campus, that would change the cost to the telco quite a bit as well. Eliminating the need to have an entire phone exchange or 10 (first 3 digits) reserved for university numbers, and cutting down on trunk lines needed by routing other calls through the internet as direct VoIP calls would have a huge effect on the phone bills.

I don't profess to be a telecom-expert, but I figure this might explain some of the costs associated with the old phone system. If anyone has deeper knowledge of this subject, I would love to learn more.

Re:Why don't you pay your AT&T bills, GNU hipp

[Pxtl]

Until someone can provide a VoIP solution that can actually be configured to work behind a NAT for a normal user, this shit will always be impossible.

I have spent _years_ looking for a good VoIP solution - but for some reason, the average videogame is more network-friendly than this major enterprise app.

I'll explain it plain and simple: I want to connect to Port X on IP Y and have a voice chat conversation.

Alternately, if I cannot directly point Port X to IP Y to computer Z, I want computer Z to register its name with a third party, and I use the name and that third party to connect to computer Z.

I don't want to have to forward 90% of the IP range to my computer. I don't want to upgrade my NAT to a "compatible" router - everyone else has to program for the hardware, yet for some reason the VoIP standards bodies thought the hardware should conform to them.

I don't want to need a 3rd party unless I'm connecting to something otherwise unreachable from the outside (anonymous user behind a NAT).

Thats it.

Why is it in every game I can say: I want to run a server, and I want it to run on ports X, Y and Z, and just tell everybody else "hey, connect to my IP on port X" I can, and they do, and we play. But, if I want a voice chat, I have to rewire the whole friggin' internet. No, I can't change what ports it runs on. No, all users involved need to leave all their ports open.

Its pretty sad when X-fucking-box-live is outdoing the entire tech-industry for usable cheap VoIP.