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P2P Meets PSTN, With Bellster
flinderhans writes "Jeff Pulver, the guy who started Free World Dialup (free VoIP network) and had the germ of the idea that turned into Vonage, has launched a P2P network called Bellster that allows users to share their private lines to make calls anywhere on the public-switched telephone network. Interesting stuff, even if it doesn't look quite ready for prime-time."
using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)
You need an asterisk box to participate. This won't be mainstream with that sort of requirement.
Germ of an idea? Slashdot editors win again!
I'm a fan of the P2P concept, but I'm not sure I'd want to be involved anonymously -- after all, I definitely do not want someone using my phone to make obscene or harassing phone calls.
Be relentless!
This really sounds like it could be useful. Phone companies are such a horrible monopoly... this could be a good start in getting rid of them while transitioning off their service. It might be somewhat inconvenient though... if you want to use your phone line, but someone else ties it up for awhile. I wonder if they have a solution to that problem
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
f0ne: *RING*
d00d: Hello?
k1ddi3: Hi, is your server running?
d00d: Yeah.
k1ddi3: Well, you'd better catch it!
d00d: *slam*
k1ddi3: PWN3D!
I called my [garbled] and we [unintelligable] about the &6&^7^7^9&&&[NO CARRIER]
Alright for you americanos, but over in blighty local calls cost... my phone bill is bad enough let alone letting some random person crank it up!
thats what we had ANSI for..
I use VoIP and cellphones because i want to avoid the cost of a regular phone line.
While this is an interesting idea, i cant see how it could save me money, and i can see how the quality would be poorer.
Also, the US is the only place i've lived where local calls were free. In the UK i could get cheaper calls to the US than to my next door neighbor at certain times of day.
Why do you need a PBX? Yes, I suppose it's easiest to do this using a PBX that supports VoIP, but that's not the only way. Couldn't you do the same thing with a voice modem? It's also pretty simple to interface a sound card to a phone line.
I live in a place with very few high-speed connections, hardly any Internet users, and a max of 1000 people are a toll-free call away - if I have to go tit-for-tat I'll never make any love to pay for what I take because no one will want to call anyone in my area. In general, does a tit-for-tat model make sense when P2P introduces geographical or other dependencies? Does it make more sense to credit an open line rather than actually allowing someone to call using it? How do you prevent fraud in a system like that? (i.e. my phone is in iowa, you don't want to use it, i swear)
http://voipstore.pulver.com/product_info.php?prod
I haven't gotten one.. yet. I'm curious how it will handle NAT'd public WiFi spots when you can't poke a hole through the NAT/Firewall. Apparently it still works if it's only NAT'd once (multiple NAT's within NAT's cause the phone to fail I read). Maybe it goes into Poll mode or something.
Still, cool either way.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Now this is some cool stuff. The only problem is that who is going to pay for a phone line if they can use this p2p?
The idea must suck if it's being compared to a germ.
This is just the repackaging of ideas that were being worked on about ten years ago. And, it sounds very much like something a company I worked with before was wanting to do as well (except it wasn't free). It will be interesting to see how well this develops. Could be fun to play with.
Hmm.. I wonder.. ISPs get carrier exemptions so they are not responsible for what their customers do. Phone companies also get carrier exemptions, except I believe they have to file for common carrier status (not sure). I wonder if this becomes popular enough if John Q. Public could arrange to get common carrier protections.... hmm...
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
So, while I think this is really an awesome adaptation of the technology we have, and certainly a great perspective of what Asterisk is capable of, it'll be a while before this sort of things becomes mainstream and people want to hook up to it.
In the FAQ it talks briefly of privacy, saying there isn't any.
I have an Asterisk PBX at home, and it is very easy to set the system up to log and record every call. Imagine if I joined Bellster (which I don't plan to, my VoIP services are already insanely cheap) what type of privacy violations I could commit? Granted it would be illeagal to listen to or record a conversation without either parties concent, who would know?
Who would want to route their calls through some random stanger's phone. Is there any practical way to keep the calls from being recorded and the phone numbers from being captured by this third party?
Great. Just Great
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
P2P networks like this are built on foundations of trust, a foundation which does not exist.
Beyond the toll dialing (which could be prevented by proper configuration of the PBX software), the bigger concerns are leechers (long distance is a huge cost for advertisers), scum (nice, anonymous, robo-dialers with prerecorded spam messages), and tapping (it might be worth it to set up a few PBXs just to listen in on others conversation!).
Test your net with Netalyzr
The idea is great for the US where you have flat rate local calls, however I see it will very diffictult to find somebody volunteering their phone lines in South America or any country where greedy phone companies like Spain's Telefonica run the show. In there you pay per minute for you local calls and I can see somebody's phone bill growing exponentially.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Seems like everyone and his uncle is coming up with a ****-ster type site.
Heh.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
UUCP anyone? Surely there are a few other's here who had bang-path addresses?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This is what FWD used to be back in 2000 or 2001. I don't think it ever made it past the beta stage. It wasn't P2P persay, but anyone using the network shared their phone line to make calls in their local calling area.
When you signed up, you put in the area codes/prefixes that were local, and when someone made a call, custom software on the Cisco ATA-182 device checked with the server to see if someone resided in that area and had an open line. If so, the call was routed over the net, the remote ATA-dialed the number, and you were patched through. If no one was in that area, your local ATA device dialed it out on your own phone line.
The project was damn cool. However, the ATA-182 had some serious hardware bugs, and probably was the greatest contributor to the demise of the project. The original plan was to get FWD branded ATA's into stores like Best Buy so anyone could pick one up and contribute. As far as making money, I think they were betting on profit from hardware sales, but I'm not sure.
FWD went away for awhile, and then re-emerged in its current incarnation. Hopefully this will address some of the security problems that were present in the beta, like the ability to dial a remote user's device by IP and be patched through to a dial tone. By doing this, you avoid the access policies and you could dial 911 or make LD calls on someone else's phone. Not good... at least for the victim.
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The funny thing is that once you have an asterisk box working you can hook up to some very cheap VOIP providers (much cheaper than the phone company or even the "retail" VOIP providers). Not that the appeal of free stuff ever completely goes away, but if you can call anywhere in the US for less than $0.02/minute anyway there isn't much motivation to do the extra fuss and let someone use your phone lines for totally free calls.
How long before someone cracks the app for free long distance calling or even more creative things? There are many security issues here. Besides, I wouldn't want to have to wait for my own phone line!
I remember a similar system that let you send faxes by email using the same concept. I seem to recall that it used the phone number backwards in DNS for the address or something like that. Or am I mixing two different systems.
Anyway, if anyone remembers what I'm talking about in more detail, please refresh my memory.
That must be the pr0n version.
(Then again, so was Napster...)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Every heard of party lines? No, not stuff you put up your nose. A phone line that was shared by more than one household? Common in 60s & 70s.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Off-topic will probably have to do.
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Nice idea, but I don't believe it will work.
1. Local calls are not free in most of the world. This limit the use for long-distance calls.
2. Most people into this kind of stuff will be dropping their land line and use pure VoIP (including IP->PSTN service) + cell phones.
I live in Denmark and switched to VoIP (musimi.dk).
IP-IP calls are 0 c/min. Including calls to FWD, SipPhone etc.
Local PSTN calls are 2.5 c/min (1.6 at night).
DK->CA PSTN calls are 2.9 c/min
DK->US PSTN calls are 3.2 c/min
Subscription is $1/month/phonenumber.
Of course I wouldn't mind using Bellster to make free calls to the US/Canada, but I cannot offer much in return.
Local calls are free if you are a residential user (business lines charge per minute), but traffic costs money. It costs ~US$10.50/GB of traffic.
.4cUS/minute.
:)
So, let's say we're using G.729 at 8kbps (GSM), this gives us ~23kbps (8kbps for the payload + overhead), with a resulting cost of:
195kbytes/minute (* 2 channels) =
If we use the less frugal G.711 codec(64kpbs), it costs us:
4788kbytes/minute (* 2 channels) = 10cUS/minute.
The G.711 cost doesn't sound like much until you start counting hours or days/month.
So, it ain't free, it's barely competitive with the existing calling cards!
Jason
This sounds very similar to an idea a little voice in my head was discussing about a year ago. The other voice in my head came up with lots of reasons this would be bad. Luckily, the two voices got together and the second voice convinced me not to try.
Greed always wins.
I am sure that there are various unscrupulous companies out there, jsut waiting for something like this to reach critical mass. When that happens, BAM. 3rd world telemarketers start to pester the everloving crap out of you.
Regulation, for good or ill, is there for a reason. The restrictions that are in place just as much protect the consumer as it is to restrict their choice. And while we are all too aware of the restrictions, we take the protection for granted. Take those regulations away, and the abuse will not only be rampant, it will be in our face. If you think spam is bad, imagine getting non stop phone calls from 3rd world telemarketers pushing cheap crap and the promise of millions of dollars in illict monies is war torn Nigeria.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Please elucidate. Which other VOIP providers are you referring to?
End the name in S T E R.
Based on the history of other P2P networks, I imagine it wouldn't be too useful... "Hello?" "Hi...may I speak to Madonna?" "Yes, this is she." "Uh..this is Madonna?" "Yes. How can I help you?" "Well...you don't sound like Madonna." "Oh? Whom do I sound like then?" "Well...is this Tom Waits's house?" either that or you just get the answering machine message looped ad infinitum. Either way, I'm not privy.
You can't tell me that Verizon (for instance) doesn't have Terms of Service that prevent residential customers from doing something like this--they have miles of fine print. Or, if they don't have it right now, that they wouldn't create such Terms in the future if this becomes REMOTELY widespread.
I can't see the advantage in this if it required me to upgrade to "business service".
and thought there are various levels of non-anonymity of Internet access, this adds another layer of insulation between the harrasser and victim. Regular long distance phone is cheap enough (and may well be free soon enough anyway) that I don't see much legitimate use of this thing, as opposed to other uses I can imagine and WOULD NOT WANT my land line used for, that may prompt police to ask "why are you making these phone calls?"
Tag lost or not installed.
- Biology. A small mass of protoplasm or cells from which a new organism or one of its parts may develop.
- The earliest form of an organism; a seed, bud, or spore.
- A microorganism, especially a pathogen.
- Something that may serve as the basis of further growth or development: the germ of a project.
referenceSee definition 1, 2, or 4
What stops me from setting up a box that says it'll handle calls for 1888WTFBANK and either listening in on the calls or diverting them to some malicious party.
If this gets widespread public adoption (unlikely) then i'm sure some users will try to place confidential calls using the service.
Secondly, what about places that use your phone number to authenticate you. Some pizza places seem to know your address the first time you call - could be useful for prank calling.
What about three-way calling. Ie Person A uses my phone line to call Person B. Then Person C tries to call me on my phone line, and person A dials the appropriate DTMF tones to conference them into the existing call?
Sure, 5 or 10 years ago unmetered calls were not possible. But now? What provider do you use? Get a better tariff.
BT Option 3 gives you unlimited local AND national calls for 25 quid/month, which is even cheaper than most plans in the USA (Verizon start around $50 or $60 / month depending on the state).
The reason your phonebill is so high is probably due to the cost of calling mobiles, which is still scandalously high.
I've seen the privacy objections on other posts, and they're right, but everyone's overlooking a very interesting possibility -- setting up a network of trusted friends/relatives/etc. If they're really trusted
I believe if this network is going to survive, it'll be by allowing the creation of such trusted communities.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
These things are GARBAGE. I have one on my desk and it's almost useless. Forget about enabling WEP because the processor in the phone can't handle it. Quality goes to hell when you turn it on. Calls of over 10 minutes are very uncomfortable because of the heat that this thing generates.
I have no idea what PSTN is, but I'll welcome it as my overlord anyway.
Just name your company e-[Random]-ster and you'll be fully backwards buzzword compliant.
I just set it up, and it works extremely well.
I just set a custom prefix to use on my phones to tell it to route out Bellster, next step is to make all calls default through Bellster, and then fallback to my Voicepulse account or my local phone line.
I called a buddy in NYC over it and he couldn't even tell it was VOIP. Not that I'm surprised, I've been doing VOIP for awhile now.
Now all someone needs to do is come out with a little arm based box that runs it for use in your home, or a modified Xbox distro with asterisk. You don't need a Zaptel card if you have Vonage/Voicepulse/packet8/etc.
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I thought the allure of VoIP was to replace your PSTN phone?
Do it have it wrong, but isn't a service like Net2phone VOIP? I use it reguarly to call from teh US to the UK, as it's only about 2 cents a minute - far cheaper than anything else I've found so far. I use message clients to talk to other computer users, but Net2phone when they don't have a computer or computer audio capability.
Onwards & Upwards!
I remember there being a similar system for sending faxes circa 1999/2000, can't remember its name or URL. Basically people voluntereed to be nodes for certain cities and you entered your fax message on a webpage and it would get sent out via a node in that area if one exists. Although the one time I tried it, it took 2 days for the fax to get sent!
So I have little interest in sharing my phone line, and even less interest in paying $0.02/minute via cheap VOIP providers.
Now, if they decided to extend the idea to, say, set up a couple Verizon Freedom lines in every state (actually, "in every state" is not necessary; just set up a couple hundred lines anywhere), and then use those to call out from, then it might make more sense.
I still wouldn't offer my phone line, though, because: what's in it for me? (Other than headaches, extra charges, and possible fines/jail time for someone else using my property to commit crimes, which is totally fucking ridiculous: the person committing the crime should be the guilty party, and that he used my property in the commission of it should mean that I am a victim as well, not a co-conspirator!)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Yes, there are privacy and security concerns that stem from Bellster -- what happens when a bomb threat is called in using a Bellster route? -- but these are questions that must be answered as voice and data truly converge. Bellster is a disruptive technology, and Jeff Pulver is all about that.
e d.it/asterisk/p ://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/products/li vecd/asterisklive
However, you set the barrier to entry way too high: Asterisk doesn't require a shiny new "PBX-ready" PC. You can choose any of the following bootable CDs to turn any old PC into an Asterisk box with just a Control-Alt-Delete. Not a PC fan? Asterisk now runs on Mac OSX, too. Now the only real barrier is the hardware, an FXO interface to connect to your POTS line. Just such an interface is reasonably priced at Digium.com, the makers of Asterisk.
Bootable Asterisk CDs:
http://knopsterisk.com/
http://www.automat
http://www.xorcom.com/rapid/
htt
Don't want to spend all that just to join the free love revolution that Bellster hopes to be? Well, Asterisk has tons of other uses, like being a PBX for your home or office, too. Set up mailboxes for each member of the office or household. Email an incoming voice message automatically. Zap the telemarketers that don't pay attention to the do-not-call list. The list goes on as far as your imagination: Asterisk makes computer telephony accessible to everyone with a computer. Even if Bellster isn't the future of telephony, Asterisk is.
All I have to do is get some corrupted nodes in the network and I can get all the credits I want, eg by placing "calls" from my friends. It's amazing what one can probably do to game this system.
Test your net with Netalyzr
No seriously, P2M is growing very popular these days on the warez scene...
For $55/month I'd get 45.83 hours of long distance talk time anywhere in the US which is WAY more sociable than I usually am :-) so the flat rate plan would be grossly more expensive than necessary for my actual use. Heck, even under an old fashioned calling plan $55 for a month would have been a VERY chatty month for me. However my wife also calls friends/family in Europe where my VOIP provider saves me even more over what an ordinary long distance provider is going to charge.
But we do seem to agree that with long distance rates under either a flat rate plan or a cheap pay per minute VOIP provider there seems little incentive to open up your lines to strangers to save some money.
Personally I use nufone.net, but here's a more complete list. http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+Service+Provide rs+Residential
Funny the other poster talking about his Verizon $55/month unlimited service to US and Canada. With at least one of the flat providers on the above list you can get unlimited to 21 countries including the US and Canada for $19.95/month, 35 countries for $24.95/month.
Sounds like you'd have a virtual monopoly on your area. Are you sure you'd never even get one call to there, considering that every call routed through your box is ten calls for you?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Check www.hotfoon.com/node.html. They have been commercializing this for over four years now.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
Don't know about the US, but in the UK I'm pretty sure it's illegal to provide transit/termination for third party calls unless you have a telecommunications operator licence.
Most people want a phone that will reliably connect them to any number they dial - similar reasons explain why http://www.tpc.int/ is never going to be the average person's choice of fax service.
IIRC, BroadVoice is about $25/month, and includes unlimited calling to the US, Canada, and a few other countries.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So I use this to call someone using Bellster, which forwards over VoIP to somwhere in Tanzania who has thier phone connected to Skype, which does a "skype out" to someone in Russia, who calls my friend with Vonage in Canada, reconnects with Bellster, which gets me back locally and calls my cell phone (2000+ free minutes!), which I answer. Did I leave anyone out? I wonder what the end-to-end delay would be?!?!