VoIP Regulation, SIP Insurrection

Chris Holland writes "As voice communications are evolving beyond traditional phone systems and making better use of the Internet, Aswath Rao is offering regulation-advocating counterpoints to Dr. Daniel Ryan's original analysis of various VoIP industry players' arguments for deregulation. Many of the above discussions revolve around closed, regulatory-scrutiny-fostering voice communications ecosystems reserved to a small, resourceful elite. Meanwhile, an open Internet protocol which provides support for all forms of real-time communications including Text, Voice and Video, with a few open-sourced server implementations and free client solutions is starting to gain serious ground: The Session Initiation Protocol enables just about anybody with little resources to become their own Real-Time Communications Giant."

Comments

SIP behind Nat

[Albanach]

Sip works well, but doesn't like NAT'd connections though it can be made to work. IPv4 and forcing customers to use NAT are the technologies that will continue to be used to keep provision of a lot of these technologies in the hands of the ISP's with the potential to bill customers.

The ability to circumvent NAT is why programs like Skype have such popularity and why Linux users looking for more control have been quick to investigate Asterisk and it's IAX2 protocol.

Open standards are all very well, but for the time being at least, SIP is going to be a good technology so we can connect our computers to big carrriers and interoperate with the POTS. Other technologies have the potential to completely circumnavigate POTS and the big carriers - you cna bet your life they'll do everything they can to make sure they're not adopted.