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Voice Over IP Goes Global, The DNS Way
awehttam writes "A couple of geeks have setup a non-profit public DNS root designed to map phone numbers to Internet protocols.
These days we're hearing lots about Skype, and Voice over IP. Asterisk - the open source PBX - is nearing its version 1.00 release, Free World Dialup has applied to run the .tel top level domain, Good old Bell's are migrating to native IP, private sector layer 2 clearing houses are exchanging bits between companies the like of Packet8, China Telecom, MIT and Harvard and even the various regulatory agencies are pondering just what to do about things.
In the mean time, consumer SIP phones are dropping in price, and free and open source software is helping to drive a new generation of provide the services networks." Read on for more.
"You just knew the other shoe had to drop. E164.org let's people register their existing phone numbers, and aim various services including VoIP towards a URL on the Internet. Now you can have your calls sent to your Free World Dialup account, or routed to your home Asterisk PBX instead, possibly where you have a $20 card attached to your phone line letting you make and receive calls through both your regular phone line and the Internet. E164.org isn't just about VoIP though, it can also map phone numbers to Email addresses, Instant Messager URL's, or any other protocol that fits in the "foo://bar" scheme of the 'net. :)"
Personally, I prefer TeamSpeak to Skype. The interface isn't quite as nice, but for group conversations it works alot better (IMO). Less bandwidth too, which is better if you're using it for VoIP while gaming..
I've been using vonage.com for my primary home line and fax line for a while now and I absolutely love it. Not only can one talk a lot more for a lot less money, the other features that are included are remarkably useful. I love transferring calls from my home phone to my cell phone before I walk out the door, and I'm planning to put together some code that interacts with Vonage's web "dashboard" to allow better integration with the rest of my digital life.
Marrying phones and computers in the home is going to open a whole new avenue of technical exploration, and unfortunately, exploitation as well..
Josh.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Great idea, but one flaw.
modem dials
person on the other end picks up
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR PTSSSSSSSSSSSS"
You'd need a PBX with a FXO card to transmit voice over a regular phone line.
Asterisk is an awesome piece of code. They have presented at several hacker cons in the South East (Phreaknic, Interz0ne), and I have been quite impressed. Most PBXs handle things like T1 frame generation, TDM, switching, etc in hardware. Asterisk does it all in software using Linux
Might work in the US but here in the UK we have to pay (rather a lot) for local calls.
I'm not going to pay $0.08/min (peak) for someone in the US to talk to someone down the road.
And that's assuming the software is infalliable. Immagine if it broke and you started placing calls to Azejabstan for £2.50 a minute? Given the average buggyness of most software combined with the general attractions of phone systems to phreakers I would expect a call charge after the first month that could be accidentally confused with a Chinese phone number, international code and all.
Beep beep.
VoIP is very good competition for the POTS phone companies. Its funny now I see plans for $50/mo unlimited long distance. A few years ago I can remember a friend paying gigantic sums of money on long distance phone bills. Now for $50, its an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
As with anything running over the public Internet, there will, at times, be issues which cause disruptions in service; ie. a M$ worm sucking bandwidth, neighbor downloading lots of pr0n and slowing down your cable modem connection, etc.
The key to voice quality with VoIP is latency. Most VoIP endpoints have a built in jitter buffer which is able to recover from some latency, usually around 3ms, but after that is begins to be difficult to carry on a conversation. The latency here is the latency between you and the provider's media gateway, such as an Asterisk box. Normally if you have less than 50ms of latency, then you'll notice no degradation in call quality. If you begin to have more latency, the quality of the call will begin to drop off.
I've been using Nuvio for almost 6 months and it rocks! Latency on my cable modem is around 30ms back to their servers so I rarely, if ever, have a quality issue. Their web interface is pretty cool and they do some cool stuff you can do with regard to voicemail and e-mail. Plus it's not PC based, just plug your regular phone into the adaptor they send you and you can take your adaptor with you when you travel, plug it into any broadband connection and still make and receive calls just like you never left home. This is pretty cool because I travel a lot and if the hotel has broadband in the room, it works great. I even have a few virtual phone numbers across the country so people I know in those cities can call me for free.
As someone mentioned before, it's a lot like cell phones. You just have to look at what you're getting and decide if it's right for you. If you'd rather pay less than with a regular phone provider and be able to make TONS of long distance calls where an occasional dropped call is ok, then go sign up with Nuvio. It's really as good as the reception is with a cell phone, and most of the time lots better. It all depends on the latency.
When someone 'calls' user@domain.com, they have a choice of how to contact you. Typically the service provider will match caller capabilities to the registrations in the service database.
The end result could be REALLY cool. You might not get my phone, but you could automagically send me email. Or I could divert you (if you calling device was capable) to a blog / presence URI that explained where I was and what I was up to. Never mind the ACTUAL implementation of presence and instant messaging that ALSO leverages this infratstructure.
Every time I hear about proprietary solutions to VOIP (like Skype) or people going on about Jabber I sort of shake my head and wonder why?
SIP provides an amazing opportunity to provide integration rich-content and services over a standard infrastructure. I cannot wait for this to start being deployed.
People who have opinions about NATs, firewalls and connectivity issues haven't done their homework. Commercial solutions exist today that skirt the NAT issues and standards based solutions are nearly RFC'ed at the IETF.
The FX100 module is a rebadged Intel Winmodem worth about $9.99. They're taking the p*ss wanting $100 for it.
Even the 'cheap' ones are expensive when you realize what they actually are... Altruism only gets you so far. If they wanted $30 I'd buy from them, but $100? No way.
its kinda funny 10 years ago you had to use p.o.t. service to get on the internet , now you'll be talking on your phone thru a i.p. proticol no phone lines need . I can see maybe in the next 10 years there might not be any phone lines left , and if they are it will be in those areas that are hard to reach with broad band now .
i have no sig
Thanks to efforts like E164.org, one day phone calls will be just another service running on the Internet. There will be no fees for doing simple peer-to-peer connections (me calling you to say hi), however special content and services will still have fees. Gateways to POTS* will be one such service for the foreseeable future.
What this means is that we're in for a revolution. We're rapidly moving from a model where the Internet is run over phone lines to where the phones are run over the Internet. IOW, basic communications go from a metered service produced by a relatively small group of very lucrative companies, some of which are still state-owned monopolies, to the Internet model which we all know: A basically cooperative network where people purchase the bandwidth they need and agree to connect to their neighbours in order to join the big network. As I'm sure you've already figured, selling that bandwidth will still be big business, but nowhere near as lucrative as selling metered service.
The big thing to get here is that the production of value, i.e. stuff that people are willing to pay for, will move from the center of the network to the edges. That is, from the big (sometimes monopolistic) phone companies to you and me. Welcome to the Internet revolution, you thought it was mostly over but in reality it's just starting. Oh, and if you thought the RIAA was running scared, they have nothing to fear compared to the big ol' phone companies.
So what do I mean by "one down, one to go"? Two things, actually. First, e164 directory services are the first step, the second involves VoIP providers creating an environment where they can exchange traffic and get paid for services they provide to other providers. Say a user on your VoIP provider in the US calls a POTS number in Norway via a VoIP provider in that country with a POTS gateway. Peering the actual voice traffic is just one part of the exchange, peering the business end of things is the other. But this too will fall into place, sooner rather than later.
The other thing I'm thinking of as "one to go" is TV. Today most countries are building separate infrastructures running parallell carrying different services: Voice over phone lines, TV over cable or OTA** and Internet over whatever's available. I'll give you an example:
In Norway the Storting (Parliament) has decided to spend $0.5 billion to build an OTA infrastructure to transmit digital TV signals. Once the new network is in place, the old analog network will be switched off. And you thought the US digital TV mandate was bad...
My prediction is that before the new digital TV network is in place it will already by severly outdated, completely overrun by the Internet revolution.
The world is rapidly becoming digital and the Internet is the enabler. There is no future in building any kind of infrastructure unless it is dedicated to carrying Internet traffic. Wired, wireless, optical, satellite, it just doesn't matter as long as it moves the bits.
Welcome to the revolution, we're just starting.
* POTS: Plain Old Telephone System
** OTA: Over The Air, traditional broadcasting
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Don't any of you really understand what e164.org is? It's an ALTERNATE ROOT SERVER. That's right, folks, this is just like someone saying that they have a good solution to the .com name problems - they'll just start up their OWN .com root server and have everyone point to it! Then, you can get whatever domain name you want!!! ...as long as everyone points to that root server. We've been here before - don't any of you remember?
e164.arpa is the "real" root zone that e164.org is trying to replace. There are good reasons for wanting an faster/better/more clueful interface to ENUM, because e164.arpa is clogged with political sewage. However, I would want to see an organization with a little more clout behind them before I'd ever consider putting any time or money into an alternate root service; don't be surprised if suddenly you see a "cost recovery" (cough, cough, , cough) charge for usage.
Mod parent up: this is an important issue.
.com. The fact is, while any old joe can say that you should register your telephone number in their DNS zone, e164.arpa is the domain the RFC says to do it in. Having two such domains is to have two roots for this mapping, with the possibility of discrepancy between them. Surely that's significant enough for the editors to mention?
:-)
I'm disappointed the Slashdot editors didn't notice that e164.org is in essentially competition with e164.arpa; this is very important to understanding what e164.org is about. As the parent says, it's like Alternic or, to avoid the unfair comparison with Altnernic's business practices, New.net.
I don't accept my sibling post's claim that e164.org is not in competition with e164.arpa but is merely "supplementary": that's like saying ".travel" is "supplementary" to
PSTN-DNS mapping is not an easy topic. For example, how would you like someone else coming along and registering *your* phone number in an ENUM server (and so being able to receive SIP VoIP calls intended for you)? I'd be interested to hear how e164.org plan to prevent this.
And finally, VoIP is pronounced as a single syllable, with the vowel sound rhyming with "boy"