VOIP

VOIP is changing the world:

------------------------------------- Wow this VOIP is growing so big. Just check the prices on this site

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How is asking for service comparable in reliability to POTS "living in the past?" Explain to me how that could possibly be wrong?

I've always believed that just because we CAN do something with technology does not always mean that we should. I've also believed that the best possible technology advancements come from a blending of past and future, rather than completely abandoning what we've supposedly learned in the past.

This is another way of saying "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

I'm not going to ignore VOIP, but it's going to have to meet MY standards AND it'll have to support all my current POTS-based equipment (as in provide a line pair with -48V, dial tone, 100V/20Hz ringing, etc.) before I will consider using it.

See, I have a problem with that. If I want to move a phone around in my home, I don't need the telco asking me why said phone got moved.

As mentioned above: Give me a standard copper pair with dial tone, etc. If it comes from a VOIP adapter, and is just as reliable as POTS was, AND connects to the local 911 center if needed, fine. I'll work with it.

I should have been clearer with that. "Extended" duration would have been a better way to say it. AND I don't want the local VOIP terminal to be dependent on local power. I want to see it powered by the central office, just as it currently is with POTS.

When that day comes, I will do what's necessary to maintain communications. Until then, VOIP is something to be watched with considerable suspicion as far as I'm concerned.

Be careful friend. With attitudes like yours you may be locking yourself down and wind up living in the past. VOIP is more than just an emerging technology; it's here. To ignore it is foolish.

Several VOIP system vendors, MITEL for one, has already addressed some of your concerns. For example, MITEL has addressed the 9-1-1 issue most elegantly, even causing pbx system alarms to be raised if a user arbitrarily takes it upon himself to move his own phone.

As for your power outage scenario, even copper-based pots will eventually fail during a power outage of indefinite duration. It's all about how long the batteries last or how much fuel there is for the generator.

Evesdropping over VOIP is already more difficult to achieve than evesdropping over POTS, tho neither is perfect.

It's a bit too soon to conduct studies about long-term 5-9's reliability, but I have 3 Mitel 3300 systems that are well on their way, having each been in service now approaching the 1-year mark with so far -NO- unplanned or unexpected service-affecting interruptions.

What I would caution you to plan for is the day when legacy phone system manufacturers are no longer doing R&D for their copper-based systems. Once R&D ceases, an announcement of "manufacture-discontinuance" won't be far behind.

Today VOIP is not the 'holy grail' some have professed to be, but it's gaining momentum steadily while the legacy TDM systems are all coasting with the clutch in.

Don't be caught resting on your laurels.

The Mitel SX2000 (Lightware 31 and later) the SX200 (Lightware 19) the Mitel 3300 (rls 5.x) and the SX-200 ICP (rls 2.x) all do 9-1-1 with the capability of directly connecting to the PSAP (via Intrado) and are already capable of sending a fully compliant data stream. The decision whether or not to alert the attendant is today your option (prolly a good idea tho).

Oh, definitely understood.

I would like nothing better than to be able to replace my TDM landline (residence) service from SBC, and one day when the competing technologies are a bit more mature, I no doubt will.

So far we've tried the Cisco Call Manager w/Unity VM (expensive disappointment) Call Manager Express (yawn) and the Mitel 3300 (shows definite promise). Starting in January we'll be trying the SX-200_ICP (MX) in some smaller offices. Today my primary interest is in VOIP intermachine trunking so I can leverage that under-utilized WAN pipe and get rid of several expensive dedicated T1s.

I've been impressed with the MITEL 3300 doing IP trunking across some Sprint frame relay circuits. Certainly no forklift replacements looming on the horizon, but for any new, from the ground-up deployments, VOIP will be the platform of choice and unless they stub their toe, I will most likely go with something from Mitel (or as a 2nd alternative, Avaya). I doubt we'd ever go with Cisco. Higher cost notwithstanding, the Cisco seems to require more high level programming and admin time.

Mitel SX analog systems did 911 alterting years ago. It still required an attendant.

And the incumbent local phone company has the biggest batteries and best backup generator.

Given time and an incentive and VOIP will be fair game. Cellular phones were supposed to be secure.

Yep, the original poster addressed his concerns and said he was not interested yet. It didn't appear as resting, just not (b)leading. I'm trying it, but it won't replace all my communications anytime soon, the same as cellular didn't replace my home service.

Carl "soon to be going Packet8" Navarro

If you're direct copper to the telco CO, sure. But what's the battery lifetime on that SL(i)C in the basement next door?

depends who's doing the eavesdropping. Thanks to CALEA, most voice systems (soon to include VOIP, probably) are easy game to law enforcement. And far too many of those access points probably have back doors as well.

right... and you still use corded phones exclusively, right?

Beware that VOIP is a technology, not a product. POTS is closer to being a product; because it is pretty boxed in by technology.

If we wanted to design a new phone network from scratch today we wouldn't design it as POTS. I'll explain why.

Well, this requires a number of EXPENSIVE failover mechanisms.

Switches fail regularly; a single switch has a reliability in the three nines area. You duplicate it (well, the manufacturer does) to get to five-six nines.

VOIP has a huge technology edge here; because 1) failover mechanisms are inherent in IP from the start, but after-the-fact fixes on POTS.

2) VOIP uses stock IT hardware for components; and has a huge price edge. It is therefore a lot easier to simply use more hardware to duplicate yourself out of failure situations.

Actually, VOIP should have the technological edge, because it uses standard CPU's and inherently uses a lot less power than a POTS phone setup. The problem is just that there needs to be some local power available as well, and there is a standards issue in terms of cabling such power to the end user.

This would have been in place from the start were it not for what authorities demand. It is easy to design using open source software if you want to roll your own.

911/112 may be local, but E911 surely isn't. VOIP already handles plain 911/112 better than a normal PBX, but there is a standards issue on E911.

Current VOIP E911 initiatives actually target a lot better E911 performance than anything else currently in use.

All the while, you lose out on all the new features in VOIP.

-- mrr

Many of those neighborhood 'copper-based POTS' lines are going down the street to a pair gain system like a Lightspan, then on fiber to the local CO. Those systems often don't have 24/7 reliable power especially in major emergencies. They have 8 hours of battery backup (if the batteries are maintained properly), then the telco has to tow a generator out to the site and leave it there to power the system. And there are a lot less generators than there are sites that need them. Especially in an emergency such as a hurricane or earthquake, etc.

Of course this is the same problem that the VOIP systems have, just that a pair gain or Lightspan can affect thousands of users.

emerging

eventually

BZZZT! Not necessarily! See

[snip]

Why would you need cordless when you have a cell phone? Duh.

performance

[snip]

From what I read above, I'd say you don't know what you're talking about.

Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover" wrote: ....

What an excellent site, full of well annotated photos and other information, including pointers to other sites, such as

- RM

VOIP is hyped high now; and lots of shoddy implementations are pushed. But don't debunk the technology on the cheapest available consumer-based product.

I have just entered the telco world from a few decades of IP experience; and my general comments are that the faith in the Phone Company is way overrated.

Phone companies build star networks, and put all eggs in one basket; then put almost impossible tender-terms to the operations of this basket; and get a somewhat failsafe system. The last 6 months have been a never-ending set of horrors discovering such systems in my new job.

Would you send information that lives depended on as a single UDP packet without retransmission? The phone company does (not UDP, but a similar protocol.) Then they set requirements that the wire is reliable. The cost? Large.

The Internet is designed from the top down to not be dependent on any single component for continued operations. For the cost of a phone switch the IP people can literally put in 50 IP-based systems. Of course we won't do that. We put in 4, lower the price by 50%, and pocket the difference.

A properly designed IP network is a mesh. Except the ones made using phone company thinking. But to compensate for their omissions is not very hard.

The power consumption of IP devices is also a lot smaller. It is actually realistic to put in small windmill or solar powered radio networks to keep service up even with a permament loss of utility power. If you put your money where your mouth is it is a lot easier to build a really redundant system with stock IP components.

A power system for such a base station costs around $1500. Way off for a single consumer, but cheap for a small community.

You will be amazed how simple it is to put in a tap on a phone line. It is protected by a strong law, so only the government and criminals will put in such taps.

VOIP runs on IP, and can use whatever IP as for security.

A lowly VIA C3-based Mini-ITX with OpenBSD (cost $800 for a fully redundant system) can run EAS encryption at wire speed on a 100mbit ethernet with a latency significantly less than 10 milliseconds. All with off-the-shelf hardware.

That is more than 500 calls worth of traffic. But the phone company and the cops cannot allow independents to offer this end to end. Every phone call traverses the net perfectly in the clear; and encrypting them would lead the operator into trouble the day the cops want a wiretap.

There is nothing stopping you from setting up such a link yourself though.

Again, after actually managing implementations of such a system, don't put the faith in the phone company too high. Or to your local PABX vendor. Properly made VOIP systems are as good or better in this respect, and current standards work aim to leave the old stuff in the dust.

And, until then, put your faith in the Phone Company. Like the Government, they are there to help folks like you.

-- mrr

especially

milliseconds.

I don't buy what you've said, I'm with 'Dr. Squeegee', and we're a Cisco shop. Supposedly the best you can buy - and that 'best' ain't good enough.

Well, we too are a Cisco shop, a fairly big one at that (Fortune-100,

25,000+ employees). We too are extremely pleased with, literally exuberant about our "all-Cisco" network infrastructure. Succinctly put, there's nothing better. However, from a voice standpoint Cisco doesn't yet seem to measure up.

As an example, look at computer retailer CompUSA with 230 stores from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Read the 17-page March 2004 report from SeaBoard Group

about CompUSA's head-to-head VOIP system tests between Alcatel, Cisco and Mitel. The Mitel 3300 blew the competition away and is now in all CompUSA stores across the land.

We too chose to 'standardize' on the Mitel 3300 and based on results with the handful of units deployed so far, it appears to have been a good decision. As an aside, we've also begun deploying some of the smaller Mitel SX-200 ICP (VOIP) systems in regional offices and have networked them to the 3300. All I can say is it appears to me that Mitel got it right.