a VPN that shows its location as being in one of the target cities?
I was curious about the same, so I tried it just now -- worked fine after I made myself appear to be coming from New York. Appears they are doing your run-of-the-mill geolocation based upon IP address.
To further put this into context, if your body takes in 2 calories more per day than is needed, you will be obese in a year.
That doesn't sound right to me. An extra 2 calories per day for one year is 730 calories. Even eating an extra 1000 calories in a year isn't going to qualify someone as obese unless they are practically right at that line anyway.
My understanding is that one pound is roughly 3500 calories. So a 730 calorie overage, over the course of a year, would theoretically only represent ~0.2lb.
Nothing can come good from offering an ultra thin laptop.
The thinner it is, the more suspectible it is to braking.
What do you consider ultra thin?
I have a Panasonic Toughbook W2, and weighing in at 2.84lb (with 12.1" display and a DVD player) is one of the smallest laptops around in the "actually useful" class. I've never had any troubles with it 'breaking'.
If someone ran over this laptop with a car, I'd buy another one (or rather, the new W4) in a minute. It's survived 2.5 years of the constant travel I do for business.
Didn't Coleco prove very well nearly two decades ago that consumers do not want a video game console that can be upgraded to a home computer?
It's likely worth considering that precedant set 20 years ago in the realm of the average consumer's acceptance of technology has probably changed significantly.
Actually all of the effected Cisco products are in fact services that run on Windows. I know that this fact was a big concern among quite a few engineers at Cisco that wanted to port CallManager to L/Unix so that OS vulnerabilities wouldn't affect the stability of a product that they were aiming at Enterprise customers. Of course management went and did the exact opposite by tying the multimedia capabilities of CCM to an Exchange backend =(
Well, it's obvious you've looked at the Cisco IP Telephony products, but don't use them day to day:
Cisco CallManager has nothing to do with Microsoft Exchange, directly
It has recently been stated by Cisco to their PArtners that CallManager 5.0 will be offered on a Linux-based "appliance" (this is quite a ways off, as CCM 4.0 will not be out of controlled release until the start of 2HCY2004)
Rumour has it that CallManager/Windows will eventually disappear in favor of a Linux-based "appliance"
CallManager relies on two other pieces: an LDAP server (CCM ships with DC-Directory from Data Connection and MS SQL 2000. Obviously, there are numerous Linux-based options for each (DC claims to have a Linux port of DC-Directory, and there are numerous database options for Linux) but at this time I am unsure which direction they are heading on this
When you reference MS Exchange, you are thinking of the Unified Messaging & Voicemail product Cisco Unity, which has traditionally used MS Exchange as it's message store for voice messages
There was no management decision to drive this product towards MS Exchange; it was developed by Active Voice from the ground up to be a Unified Messaging platform, and they chose the most popular platform to integrate with
Cisco now offers a Cisco Unity for Lotus Domino which I have two customers running. Unity has to have heavy knowledge of it's Partner Message Store so it's not trivial to add support for new backends. I've heard they are planning a Linux-based appliance for this as well, but don't know one way or the other.
Cisco IPCC Express product has already been ported to Linux, as Cisco Unity Express actually is not Unity at all, but a very customized IPCC Express script running on an embedded Linux platform (no, it is NOT IOS; you're thinking of CallManager Express, formerly known at ITS, which I have referenced on Slashdot previously
This leaves us with a few other products in the AVVID portfolio still on Windows. Coming to mind is Cisco Emergency Responder, Cisco Personal Assistant, IPCC Enterprise, and Cisco Conference Connection (OEM'd; and Cisco just bought a company which offers a similar product with 20x the features)/UL
So, yes, Cisco is very married to Windows right now. However, this is actively changing. And additionally, there was no Cisco conspiracy to develop these products for Windows: CallManager (which came from Selsius) was already running on Windows NT 4.0, and Unity (which as I said came from
Depends. How small do you propose this low-def TV clip is?
G729 is defined as generating 8Kb/sec. At 50 pps (what Cisco uses), 2 samples per packet, this comes out to 160 bits (20 bytes) per packet. IP/UDP/RTP overhead is 40 bytes.
So a typical G729 call is going to burn up 60 bytes per packet * 50 pps == 3000 bytes/sec == 24000 bits/sec
That's AFTER IP overhead, as you can see in my math.
Ignoring IP overhead for a moment, I'm unsure how you propose a low-def TV clip is going to be any smaller than 8Kb/sec. The audio alone would probably be encoded higher than this.
Frankly, VoIP is a pretty small burden on IP networks, at least as far as bandwidth needs go. It's need -- and where you typically have issues over enterprise networks -- is consistancy. Jitter is the enemy of VoIP, and right now, most serivce providers offer no SLAs for this particular metric. This will change over time, and people will begin to demand differentiated services for their different types of traffic.
Look in to Cisco's V3PN (Voice and Video-enabled VPN) program for information about how they propose to build and deliver end-to-end QoS to their SP customers: http://www.cisco.com/go/v3pn/
- VoIP companies are asked to share the cost of maintaining IP infrastructure, in return for the burden they impose on it
In the grand scheme of things, a G729 call across an IP backbone (which with IP overhead clocks in at 24Kb/sec) is not even large enough to write home about. I would not call it a burden by any means. You can burn more bandwidth with moderate web browsing.
But I have seen some of our telecom guys walking around with a phone from Cisco that is an IPPhone when in range of a WAP for our network, and a regular cell-phone otherwise. Pretty sweet.
No you didn't.
The Cisco 7920 Wireless IP Phone does not at this time do anything but 2.4GHz 802.11b. It has no cell phone functionality, although this has been discussed as a possible next-generation product direction (as well as some possible OEM agreements with PDA makers).
This phone is a pretty solid product, albeit a little light on battery life. This comment is ironic, as the original delays on the product (to the tune of about 10 months) while Cisco worked on the battery life.
There are two main competitors in the Wireless IP Space:
frickin' Ymodem-G with no error tolerance whatsoever.
Wasn't the idea behind YModem-G to rely on v.42 to provide the lower-level error detection & correction? Thus, if you didn't have that, you would end up with corrupt transfers all the time?
This is like 16 years ago now; it's starting to blur.
I don't know if your setup requires having new VOIP phones or not, but when I got my new VOIP phone, I needed to also get a new corded headset since my old one doesn't work with the Cisco phone.
There are two types of headset pinouts: headset and handset. Sounds like you had a handset pinout. You can easily chop the end off, repin it out and recrimp it.
Got my Panny W2 on August 3rd, this is the best laptop I've ever had. It's the right mixture of horsepower, display, connectivity, and battery life. I do truly get 5 hours out of it, it's got a nice keyboard (with only a few quirks; particularly the arrow keys and tilde) and since the addition of the PCS Vision 1xRTT card.. totally connected.
Don't be confused by the Toughbook name; it's got a shockmounted HDD, motherboard, and display, but it's goal is mobility, not toughness.
I bought mine from Kevin Fawl at Bizco (www.toughonline.com) -- I'd buy another one if I needed another laptop tomorrow.
I'm sorry, but being head of the Newton group is not necessarially a mark in your favor.
As the proud former owner of an Apple Newton MP110, I can tell you never played with one. They were revolutionary before their time, trying things that only now are catching on (Write in your own handwriting->Text; oh wait, that's Tablet PC)
A little on the large side, but this was 1995 -- yes, 8 years ago.
The sound quality is excellent. No lag or other artifacts. They have two bandwidth settings, 80 and 32K. I use the lower one because my DSL is only 128K on uploads. I would rate the low bandwith codec quality as better then a cell call but not quite as good as a Verizon one. When I lived in Tucson, I had 256K upstream bandwith and used the 80K setting. It was better than a wired phone! It's my understanding that they are soon implimenting a 60K setting that I'll likely change to.
Any more information about this? The Cisco ATA-186/188 is capable of doing G711, G729, and G723.
I'm presuming the "80K setting" is G711 (64Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number adds up). I'm presuming the "32K setting" is G729 (8Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number doesn't quite add up). G723 is 6.3Kb/5.3Kb, and probably is not being used with Vonage.
So, the question is, if they're going to support something in-between, what's it going to be with? I'm guessing it's not going to be using the ATA (at least, not with the current codebase; and I'm not aware of future plans to support other codecs, Cisco really doesn't support much else on their IP Telephony products). Do you know if Vonage is planning to do this on someone else's gear? Whose?
As this article states, the bandwidth required for VoIP can be huge. I would seriously hope to see some more advanced algorithms or better yet, more bandwidth installed, before these systems become more heavily adopted.
Ah, but with packet telephony, we are only "burning up" bandwidth for active calls:
Take a traditional circuit-switch T1 carrying 24 DS0, sitting idle making no calls, and you still have a T1 that can be used for nothing else.
Take the same scenario in a packet-switched world, and you have a T1 100% usable for other data until such time as the circuit is needed. QoS (LLQ, or PQ/CBWFQ in Cisco-speak) ensures that when there IS a voice call it gets priority treatment.
Last note, on IP overhead: Enterprises with smaller links can leverage compressed RTP headers (cRTP) to reduce the 40 byte IP/UDP/RTP penalty down to 2 bytes across point-to-point links (Frame Relay PVC, leased lines, BRIs, etc). This concept doesn't really apply to a carrier because of the CPU impact header compression costs, but considering all carrier networks are currently severly underutilized I do not think this should be a reason to shy away from packet telephony.
Yeah, but it doesn't (yet) support SIP, so the $$$'s required for the proprietary Cisco signalling protocol would be well outside the range of the average Slashdotter for their home kit.:-)
Sounds like the average Slashdotter needs a raise.
Regardless, you can control SCCP phones with IOS Telephony Services (ITS), recently renamed CallManager Express. This software is on everything from the Cisco 1751 on up, in the IP/Plus or IP/Voice featureset or better.
This includes the CP-7920, as well as the more traditional CP-7960/CP-7940s, etc. My CP-7920 ships August 22nd.
You mention you had Cisco CVPN 5000 Series; did you not get your free CVPN 3000 Series? Cisco recognized that they axed the 5000s a little too quickly after they bought Compatible Systems and was giving customers free CVPN 3000s as replacements.
The CVPN 3000 Series are nice; there are clients for just about every OS under the sun (Windows XP, 2000, Me/98, OS X, OS 8/9, Linux, Solaris) and it's a nice, centrally-managed solution where the client slaves everything from the head-end VPN Concentrator. Supports Split Tunneling, has a built in stateful firewall, and other goodies.
Even sexier 802.11b IP Phone from Cisco, although the original poster said he wanted AIM/Yahoo Chat supported, too, which neither Symbol, Cisco, or Spectralink do at this time.
Some codecs don't play nicely with high latencies,
It's my belief this is a myth.
VoIP itself cares little about one-way delay, but cares a whole lot about jitter. If I can provide you with a one-way link that has extremely high one-way delay, but I have routers on each end of the link to ensure voice gets queued and transmitted before any other data in the queue, the service will be acceptable. The only piece that may be unreasonable to users is the delay itself; the ITU standard is 150ms of one-way delay (300ms, as you mention, would be a correct "round trip" time assuming delay in each direction was the same).
High delay can lead to users talking over one another; we're not use to this when we call granny down the street. But for remote locations or international calls, they are use to extremely high delays and so taking their call across an extremely high-delay path (such as satellite, as you mention) results in no net difference for the end-user. Yes, VoIP endpoints will add some of their own delays, but these will be fairly insignificant if you're talking about a 500ms one-way delay budget.
I have a collegue with a customer who has 100+ sites about Alaska, in VERY rural areas. All their voice calls go across an satellite-transported IP network. Sure, _you_ might have a little trouble getting use to it at first, but the regular users are use to high delays on their calls (much like your cell phone, as you pointed out). In the grand scheme of things, I would argue that as long as the packets arrive jitter-free (meaning there are not huge inter-frame gaps, which would mean there is nothing for the far end codec to decode and play out) the quality of the call itself will be acceptable.
In the end, though, I think we both agree -- I just don't know that I've ever run in to an environment where delay was the cause of "poor voice quality". Loss and jitter will typically be the root cause for why codec isn't producing the quality you'd expect. Delay is just, well, delay.
One of my switches runs IOS on a PowerPC 403GA, running at either 25 or 33 MHz.
The linksys AP has a MIPS processor, which is probably running at 125 MHz.
It could run IOS without breaking a sweat.
Apples and oranges. On your switch, IOS just manages the system; the heavy lifting (frame forwarding) is actually done by ASICs for that very purpose.
On another note though, I'm not sure why the original posted is calling IOS "bloated" -- perhaps today there are a number of features that are not necessary for the core purpose of the box, but they don't typically add "overhead" to the box itself.
Most Cisco boxes are "underpowered" in terms of CPU, but they still manage to do the job.
The new(er) Cisco Aironet access points migrated away from the old VxWorks-based OS to IOS (see: Aironet 1100 are shipped as such, Aironet 1200 have a conversion kit)
Slashdot Mirror
a VPN that shows its location as being in one of the target cities?
I was curious about the same, so I tried it just now -- worked fine after I made myself appear to be coming from New York. Appears they are doing your run-of-the-mill geolocation based upon IP address.
To further put this into context, if your body takes in 2 calories more per day than is needed, you will be obese in a year.
That doesn't sound right to me. An extra 2 calories per day for one year is 730 calories. Even eating an extra 1000 calories in a year isn't going to qualify someone as obese unless they are practically right at that line anyway.
My understanding is that one pound is roughly 3500 calories. So a 730 calorie overage, over the course of a year, would theoretically only represent ~0.2lb.
-jd
Nothing can come good from offering an ultra thin laptop.
The thinner it is, the more suspectible it is to braking.
What do you consider ultra thin?
I have a Panasonic Toughbook W2, and weighing in at 2.84lb (with 12.1" display and a DVD player) is one of the smallest laptops around in the "actually useful" class. I've never had any troubles with it 'breaking'.
If someone ran over this laptop with a car, I'd buy another one (or rather, the new W4) in a minute. It's survived 2.5 years of the constant travel I do for business.
Long live the Panny W2.
-jd
Didn't Coleco prove very well nearly two decades ago that consumers do not want a video game console that can be upgraded to a home computer?
It's likely worth considering that precedant set 20 years ago in the realm of the average consumer's acceptance of technology has probably changed significantly.
-jd
You must have worked @ Crosspoint Towers in Lowell...
No, but I own a company whose primary focus is the successful deployment of Cisco IP Telephony solutions.
Not sure what Crosspoint Towers is, nor Lowell.
Well, it's obvious you've looked at the Cisco IP Telephony products, but don't use them day to day:
So, yes, Cisco is very married to Windows right now. However, this is actively changing. And additionally, there was no Cisco conspiracy to develop these products for Windows: CallManager (which came from Selsius) was already running on Windows NT 4.0, and Unity (which as I said came from
There are others, these are the two I am familiar with.
Depends. How small do you propose this low-def TV clip is?
G729 is defined as generating 8Kb/sec. At 50 pps (what Cisco uses), 2 samples per packet, this comes out to 160 bits (20 bytes) per packet. IP/UDP/RTP overhead is 40 bytes.
So a typical G729 call is going to burn up 60 bytes per packet * 50 pps == 3000 bytes/sec == 24000 bits/sec
That's AFTER IP overhead, as you can see in my math.
Ignoring IP overhead for a moment, I'm unsure how you propose a low-def TV clip is going to be any smaller than 8Kb/sec. The audio alone would probably be encoded higher than this.
Frankly, VoIP is a pretty small burden on IP networks, at least as far as bandwidth needs go. It's need -- and where you typically have issues over enterprise networks -- is consistancy. Jitter is the enemy of VoIP, and right now, most serivce providers offer no SLAs for this particular metric. This will change over time, and people will begin to demand differentiated services for their different types of traffic.
Look in to Cisco's V3PN (Voice and Video-enabled VPN) program for information about how they propose to build and deliver end-to-end QoS to their SP customers:
http://www.cisco.com/go/v3pn/
- VoIP companies are asked to share the cost of maintaining IP infrastructure, in return for the burden they impose on it
In the grand scheme of things, a G729 call across an IP backbone (which with IP overhead clocks in at 24Kb/sec) is not even large enough to write home about. I would not call it a burden by any means. You can burn more bandwidth with moderate web browsing.
No you didn't.
The Cisco 7920 Wireless IP Phone does not at this time do anything but 2.4GHz 802.11b. It has no cell phone functionality, although this has been discussed as a possible next-generation product direction (as well as some possible OEM agreements with PDA makers).
This phone is a pretty solid product, albeit a little light on battery life. This comment is ironic, as the original delays on the product (to the tune of about 10 months) while Cisco worked on the battery life.
There are two main competitors in the Wireless IP Space:
frickin' Ymodem-G with no error tolerance whatsoever.
Wasn't the idea behind YModem-G to rely on v.42 to provide the lower-level error detection & correction? Thus, if you didn't have that, you would end up with corrupt transfers all the time?
This is like 16 years ago now; it's starting to blur.
I don't know if your setup requires having new VOIP phones or not, but when I got my new VOIP phone, I needed to also get a new corded headset since my old one doesn't work with the Cisco phone.
d set/index_e.html
There are two types of headset pinouts: headset and handset. Sounds like you had a handset pinout. You can easily chop the end off, repin it out and recrimp it.
Here's a URL to help:
http://www.rvs.uni-hannover.de/people/einhorn/hea
No need for an amplifier since the Cisco 7960/7940 will do that for you.
Good luck.
Got my Panny W2 on August 3rd, this is the best laptop I've ever had. It's the right mixture of horsepower, display, connectivity, and battery life. I do truly get 5 hours out of it, it's got a nice keyboard (with only a few quirks; particularly the arrow keys and tilde) and since the addition of the PCS Vision 1xRTT card .. totally connected.
Don't be confused by the Toughbook name; it's got a shockmounted HDD, motherboard, and display, but it's goal is mobility, not toughness.
I bought mine from Kevin Fawl at Bizco (www.toughonline.com) -- I'd buy another one if I needed another laptop tomorrow.
I'm sorry, but being head of the Newton group is not necessarially a mark in your favor.
As the proud former owner of an Apple Newton MP110, I can tell you never played with one. They were revolutionary before their time, trying things that only now are catching on (Write in your own handwriting->Text; oh wait, that's Tablet PC)
A little on the large side, but this was 1995 -- yes, 8 years ago.
The sound quality is excellent. No lag or other artifacts. They have two bandwidth settings, 80 and 32K. I use the lower one because my DSL is only 128K on uploads. I would rate the low bandwith codec quality as better then a cell call but not quite as good as a Verizon one. When I lived in Tucson, I had 256K upstream bandwith and used the 80K setting. It was better than a wired phone! It's my understanding that they are soon implimenting a 60K setting that I'll likely change to.
Any more information about this? The Cisco ATA-186/188 is capable of doing G711, G729, and G723.
I'm presuming the "80K setting" is G711 (64Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number adds up). I'm presuming the "32K setting" is G729 (8Kb codec+16Kb IP/UDP/RTP overhead -- this number doesn't quite add up). G723 is 6.3Kb/5.3Kb, and probably is not being used with Vonage.
So, the question is, if they're going to support something in-between, what's it going to be with? I'm guessing it's not going to be using the ATA (at least, not with the current codebase; and I'm not aware of future plans to support other codecs, Cisco really doesn't support much else on their IP Telephony products). Do you know if Vonage is planning to do this on someone else's gear? Whose?
As this article states, the bandwidth required for VoIP can be huge. I would seriously hope to see some more advanced algorithms or better yet, more bandwidth installed, before these systems become more heavily adopted.
Ah, but with packet telephony, we are only "burning up" bandwidth for active calls:
Take a traditional circuit-switch T1 carrying 24 DS0, sitting idle making no calls, and you still have a T1 that can be used for nothing else.
Take the same scenario in a packet-switched world, and you have a T1 100% usable for other data until such time as the circuit is needed. QoS (LLQ, or PQ/CBWFQ in Cisco-speak) ensures that when there IS a voice call it gets priority treatment.
Last note, on IP overhead: Enterprises with smaller links can leverage compressed RTP headers (cRTP) to reduce the 40 byte IP/UDP/RTP penalty down to 2 bytes across point-to-point links (Frame Relay PVC, leased lines, BRIs, etc). This concept doesn't really apply to a carrier because of the CPU impact header compression costs, but considering all carrier networks are currently severly underutilized I do not think this should be a reason to shy away from packet telephony.
Yeah, but it doesn't (yet) support SIP, so the $$$'s required for the proprietary Cisco signalling protocol would be well outside the range of the average Slashdotter for their home kit. :-)
Sounds like the average Slashdotter needs a raise.
Regardless, you can control SCCP phones with IOS Telephony Services (ITS), recently renamed CallManager Express. This software is on everything from the Cisco 1751 on up, in the IP/Plus or IP/Voice featureset or better.
This includes the CP-7920, as well as the more traditional CP-7960/CP-7940s, etc. My CP-7920 ships August 22nd.
You mention you had Cisco CVPN 5000 Series; did you not get your free CVPN 3000 Series? Cisco recognized that they axed the 5000s a little too quickly after they bought Compatible Systems and was giving customers free CVPN 3000s as replacements.
The CVPN 3000 Series are nice; there are clients for just about every OS under the sun (Windows XP, 2000, Me/98, OS X, OS 8/9, Linux, Solaris) and it's a nice, centrally-managed solution where the client slaves everything from the head-end VPN Concentrator. Supports Split Tunneling, has a built in stateful firewall, and other goodies.
Anyway: Linux had nine? Bollocks. I'm sure various packages associated with Open Source had vulnerabilities, but the kernel? No. Prove me wrong.
http://www.securityfocusonline.com/bid/7112/info/
Even sexier 802.11b IP Phone from Cisco, although the original poster said he wanted AIM/Yahoo Chat supported, too, which neither Symbol, Cisco, or Spectralink do at this time.
Some codecs don't play nicely with high latencies,
It's my belief this is a myth.
VoIP itself cares little about one-way delay, but cares a whole lot about jitter. If I can provide you with a one-way link that has extremely high one-way delay, but I have routers on each end of the link to ensure voice gets queued and transmitted before any other data in the queue, the service will be acceptable. The only piece that may be unreasonable to users is the delay itself; the ITU standard is 150ms of one-way delay (300ms, as you mention, would be a correct "round trip" time assuming delay in each direction was the same).
High delay can lead to users talking over one another; we're not use to this when we call granny down the street. But for remote locations or international calls, they are use to extremely high delays and so taking their call across an extremely high-delay path (such as satellite, as you mention) results in no net difference for the end-user. Yes, VoIP endpoints will add some of their own delays, but these will be fairly insignificant if you're talking about a 500ms one-way delay budget.
I have a collegue with a customer who has 100+ sites about Alaska, in VERY rural areas. All their voice calls go across an satellite-transported IP network. Sure, _you_ might have a little trouble getting use to it at first, but the regular users are use to high delays on their calls (much like your cell phone, as you pointed out). In the grand scheme of things, I would argue that as long as the packets arrive jitter-free (meaning there are not huge inter-frame gaps, which would mean there is nothing for the far end codec to decode and play out) the quality of the call itself will be acceptable.
In the end, though, I think we both agree -- I just don't know that I've ever run in to an environment where delay was the cause of "poor voice quality". Loss and jitter will typically be the root cause for why codec isn't producing the quality you'd expect. Delay is just, well, delay.
Anybody know when the iTrip FM Transmitter for the iPod is coming out?
They are in Apple Stores now. I was in Chicago this past week, and saw them with my own eyes.
Anyone else gone through hell today trying to get the patch from Cisco?
ftp://user:pass@ftp.cisco.com/cisco/ios/
One of my switches runs IOS on a PowerPC 403GA, running at either 25 or 33 MHz.
The linksys AP has a MIPS processor, which is probably running at 125 MHz.
It could run IOS without breaking a sweat.
Apples and oranges. On your switch, IOS just manages the system; the heavy lifting (frame forwarding) is actually done by ASICs for that very purpose.
On another note though, I'm not sure why the original posted is calling IOS "bloated" -- perhaps today there are a number of features that are not necessary for the core purpose of the box, but they don't typically add "overhead" to the box itself.
Most Cisco boxes are "underpowered" in terms of CPU, but they still manage to do the job.
The new(er) Cisco Aironet access points migrated away from the old VxWorks-based OS to IOS (see: Aironet 1100 are shipped as such, Aironet 1200 have a conversion kit)
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ is what I use when I'm trying to gauge a movie's box office performance. It breaks things down by day.