Category: Architecture
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Video and Slides Now Available For My AstriCon 2015 Keynote: Open Source and The Global Disruption of Telecom
Continue Reading: Video and Slides Now Available For My AstriCon 2015 Keynote: Open Source and The Global Disruption of TelecomIf you’re interested in what I said last month at AstriCon 2015 in my keynote on “Open Source And The Global Disruption of Telecom: What Choices Will We Make?“, the video and slides are both available.As I wrote about previously, the context for this discussion was to talk about the changes that are happening all around us in terms of the ways in which we communicate. Here was the abstract:
There is a battle raging for the global future of telecommunications and the Internet. Taking place in networks, board rooms and legislatures, the battle will determine how we all communicate and what opportunities will exist. Will telecom support innovation? Will it be accessible to all? Will it give us the level of security and privacy we need to have the open, trusted Internet? Or will it be restricted and limited by corporate or government gatekeepers?
The rise of voice-over-IP has fundamentally disrupted the massive global telecommunications industry, infrastructure and policies. Open source software such as Asterisk has been a huge driver of that disruption and innovation.. but now what? What role do platforms such as Asterisk play in this space? And what can be their role in a telecom…
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Firechat Enables Private Off-The-Internet (P2P) Messaging Using Mobile Phones
Continue Reading: Firechat Enables Private Off-The-Internet (P2P) Messaging Using Mobile PhonesThere was a fascinating article posted on Medium this week by the CTO of messaging app Firechat:
In the text he outlines how they do decentralized “off-the-grid” private messaging using an ad hoc mesh network established between users of the Firechat app. It sounds like the app instances join together into some kind of peer-to-peer (P2P) network and then do normal “store-and-forward” messaging.
Of note, the apps do NOT need an Internet connection, or even a cellular network connection – instead they can use the Bluetooth and WiFi radios in the mobile phones to create a private mesh network and connect to other users of the Firechat app.
Naturally, having spent some time exploring P2P networks back when I was playing around with P2P SIP and distributed hash tables (DHTs) and other technologies, I immediately jump into the techie questions:
- How are they routing messages from one user to another?
- How is the “directory” of users in P2P mesh maintained?
- What addresses are they using for the communication? Is this still happening over IP addresses? Or are they using some other kind of…
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Watch Live TODAY (Sept 19) – CITI State of Telecom 2014
Continue Reading: Watch Live TODAY (Sept 19) – CITI State of Telecom 2014What is the future of telecommunications and the Internet? As more entertainment moves to being over the Internet, what are the implications for the media and for the technology?Today, September 19, 2014, there is an interesting set of presentations happening at the Columbia Club in New York City, organized by the Columbia (University) Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) called the “CITI State of Telecom 2014”. Subtitled, “From the Internet of Science to The Internet of Next Generation Entertainment Implications for Content, Technology and Industry Consolidation“, the session description states:
The goal of the early Internet was to connect research institutions. Yet today 71% of all Internet traffic consists of video, games, and music, and that number is growing. This transition raises issues for media content, technology, industry consolidation, business strategy, and regulatory policy. Media companies, academics, policy makers, and technologists must think ahead.
You can watch it all live at:
http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/citisot14
The sessions are being recorded, too, and are available at that address.
The session agenda and list of all the speakers is available on the CITI event page. The quick summary is:
- 9:00am Welcome and Introduction of Topic
- 9:15am Session 1- Technology and business drivers of the transformation of…
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Hypervoice – The Fundamental Flaw In The Proposal
Continue Reading: Hypervoice – The Fundamental Flaw In The ProposalI am a huge fan of Martin Geddes, but he and I disagree fundamentally on one key part of what he is now calling “hypervoice”. NOTE: Today’s VUC call at 12noon US Eastern will be with Martin discussing his ideas. If you’d like to weigh in on the issue, please join the call. (Unfortunately, I’ll be waiting to board a plane home from Mumbai and can’t make it… hence this blog post.)To back up a bit, Martin has always been one of the “big thinkers” in realm of VoIP and telephony/telecom. Way back in mid-2000s when a number of us all started writing about VoIP, Martin’s Telepocalypse blog was brilliant. He was always thinking about the “big picture” and drawing connections where they were not already apparent. His work with “Telco 2.0” was excellent and it was no surprise when he went to work for BT looking at their strategy. Now that he is back out on his own as a consultant, I’m a subscriber to his “Future of Communications” email newsletter (subscribe on the sidebar to his site) and enjoy reading his frequent issues.
Recently he gave a closing keynote presentation at the Metaswitch Forum titled “A presentation…
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What is an Over-The-Top (OTT) Application or Service? – A Brief Explanation
Continue Reading: What is an Over-The-Top (OTT) Application or Service? – A Brief ExplanationWhat is an "over-the-top" or "OTT" application or service? How does an OTT telecommunications or media app/service differ from a "regular" application?
The answer depends upon your perspective.
For a regular user of the Internet, an "OTT app or service" is something like:
- YouTube, Hulu, Netflix or Apple TV for streaming video
- Skype or Facetime for voice/video calls
- WhatsApp or iMessage for messages on a mobile device
- Xbox 360 or World of Warcraft for gaming
Basically, any service you are receiving over the Internet that is NOT provided directly by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Of course, for an ISP / telecommunication provider, the critical point about an OTT app/service is the part I emphasized – it is NOT a service you are paying them for.
And they are not happy about this.
It's not clear to me when precisely we in the industry started talking about "over-the-top" applications and services, but I first saw OTT mentioned back in 2008 or 2009 when the term was primarily applied to video services such as those coming from Netflix or Hulu. At the time, major US service providers such as Comcast and AT&T were rolling out their video-on-demand services and were being…
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Asterisk SCF: Scalability, Extensibility, Performance
Continue Reading: Asterisk SCF: Scalability, Extensibility, PerformanceThe big news coming out of Astricon last week in DC was the “Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework“, a.k.a. “Asterisk SCF“. The main goals of the project are to bring to the Asterisk platform:
- Scalability (and high availability)
- Extensibility
- Performance
As a long-time fan of Asterisk (and user/administrator at various points of time), I can agree that all of these are areas where the base Asterisk IP-PBX can use some help.
Asterisk SCF is NOT a replacement for Asterisk. Instead it is essentially a framework for extending Asterisk and adding new functionality. As the executive summary outlines:
Asterisk SCF is designed as a distributed system of components that can be deployed in clusters on a single system or on many systems, transparently. Implementing Asterisk SCF as a cluster of small components allows it to naturally take advantage of the ever-wider multi-core CPUs being produced today as well as the movement to off-site or cloud-based computing. In addition, all operational data elements required by Asterisk SCF’s components are themselves managed by their own Asterisk SCF components, allowing for active/passive failover models with no disruption of service. The design also ensures active/active failover and load-sharing models can be supported. These design elements…
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Another Hotel Fails To Support Skype – Here’s Why Skype’s P2P Connection Model Breaks Their System
Continue Reading: Another Hotel Fails To Support Skype – Here’s Why Skype’s P2P Connection Model Breaks Their SystemUPDATE: When I stayed at this same hotel in August 2010, I no longer had the issue with Skype being blocked. Presumably they got a smarter network monitoring system. While this specific hotel now works with Skype, the same issue will undoubtedly be out there for many other hotels and locations.
Summary: Hotels restricting the number of simultaneous network connections per user may wind up blocking legitimate usage of Skype. Skype’s peer-to-peer network model uses a high number of network connections to synchronize multi-party group chats.
Read on for the full story, network diagrams, etc….
Two weeks ago on a visit to Voxeo’s corporate headquarters in Orlando, FL, I stayed at the Grand Bohemian Hotel, conveniently located only a block or so away. Arriving in the early evening, I checked in, got to my room and immediately plugged my laptop into the Ethernet port to catch up on what had happened while I’d been offline traveling. As is the case in many hotels, I was asked to login and pay through a system from “Nomadix”. I did so… and very quickly started to see Skype coming online, my other IM client (Adium) coming online, email starting to flow in and…