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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. :)"
Privacy is a big issue here. What's to stop me from hooking a $30 voice activated phone recorder to the line and record all of your conversations? I don't know how much I trust someone I've never met and who has no real oversight to protect my privacy. Scratch that.. I do know that I don't trust them at all.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
The phone and cable companies could always start charging by the hour for internet access to specific technogies/ports/whatever (such as whatever VoIP uses). Then we'd effectively have long distance charges for every call, next door or Thimbuktu
Why do you call the Voice Peering Fabric a "clearinghouse"? By functionality, it is clearly a "peering center" and not a clearing house.
Maybe less fancy and more clarity would improve the eloquence of the posts...
if we end up relying on making phone calls via the internet, what's to stop the next killer virus knocking out our phone 'lines'?
I'm afraid telcos are letting their legal departments burn the midnight oil in patenting anything obvious and even remotely related to this.
The combination of two obvious technologies (telephony and TCP/IP) should not be patentable.
We'll see how this turn out.
The various Linux telephony projects being mentioned left and right are hopeful developments.
Now that (soon to be "legacy") regelar phone networks are being migrated to TCP/IP, I think the time has really come to finally seriously start making the switch to ipv6.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Teamspeak is great!
A group of my friends have a Teamspeak server set up (on my cable line) and we leave it going 24/7 so anyone can join when they like and see if anyone else is around; typically if we are not on TS, we don't wont to be bothered or can be 'knocked' by IM.
Teamspeak is more like IRC in that you can have lots of people on channel at the same time. Its really reliable too, our uptime record on a dodgey old 350Mhz SuSE box is 64days - only interrupted by a blown PSU.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Expect to see legislation with some assinine label like "The VoIP pro competition rules". This will be of course a couple of millions lines of regulatory text that will be sold to the public as "deregulation".
What will this legislation accomplish? It will help the baby bells and large phone companies hold on to their market shares and stifle competition.
Jaded? Me ? Naaaaa, just experienceed with more than a decade of being told "We are for de-regulation" while signing bills that give the big guys even more. The FCC unep ruling recently is a perfect example of such double talk.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
If you think that the people behind e164.org are in it for the good cause, you're kidding yourself. There already is an official phone number to DNS tree: e164.arpa, as designated in RFC 2916. This is a fight for the root of _the_ registry of all POTS-number to VOIP/email/web mappings. There's money to be made, and lots of it.
1) Buying the Asterisk-compatible card does not help out the company who has done 95% of the development, both hardware and software, that makes that board do something: Digium.
2) Digium has announced an FXO module for the TDM400 board that replaces the X100P. In other words, you can add up to 12 FXO (talks to telco) or FXS (talks to telephones) interfaces in the same computer, instead of just a couple.
There's nothing immoral about buying the off-brand X100P's, but it doesn't help you to get the next version of the X100P developed, or the software to make it work...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
then I would just route it through port 80... it's not to tough to beat the system...
and anyway if my cable company started charging by port I would surely find a different provider
There's no way for the little guy to make any $ with it so it will be owned by the big corps forever. No, Asterisk is not the answer because, while it works, it is totally not a commercial product. And even if you productize Asterisk how do you sell it? Companies are not going to put their mission critical phones on some open source thing. Would you? (IT and telephony guys only please)
you should be able to type in e.g. "call.joesmith.com" and the phone should do a DNS lookup to get the phone number.
:)
probably because there are too many joe smiths.
Phone numbers pretty well for the most part.
I wonder if google has thought about google phone? Make it part of the new Google IM service and offer a free gig of on-line voice mail. Comppressed using Speex from the Ogg project just to make it all as geek cool as possible. Of course the should make a Linux i386 version as well as a Linux PPC version to keep it all geek cool
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Unless your cell phone bill is $0.00 you are actually paying for those calls. Your provider has simply determined they can charge you a flat rate at your usage level and still make a profit.