WombatNation

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has proven to be an effective standard for Voice over IP (VoIP) systems, as it’s use in open source and closed source products is now relatively quickly displacing the H.323-based systems that preceded it. H.323 and its accompanying protocols weren’t necessarily bad, but they come out of the videoconferencing space and brought along a lot of baggage not needed for audio calls. H.323 was also not designed (or at least not well designed) for extensibility to generalized session management, either.

Nearly two years ago Skype showed up on the scene with yet another approach to VoIP. Skype uses a proprietary P2P protocol for making VoIP calls. While the bandwidth usage of Skype is quite high (in some cases requiring even more bandwidth than a PSTN call), it makes up for that weakness by avoiding the most common issues with firewalls, routers, and Network Address Translation (NAT) that afflict most SIP and H.323 based solutions.

NAT is a technology that, among other things, uses private IP addresses in order to hide one or more PCs behind a router and a single routable IP address. Rather than having to forward ports through the firewall, which is a bit much to ask a typical home user to do, Skype tunnels voice packets over either port 80 or 443. Port 80 is generally used for http and port 443 for https. Since these ports are used by web browsers, they are generally left open on a router, at least for requests sent from behind the router and for responses to those requests.

For many SIP-based softphones, you have to “punch” holes in your firewall for a few ports. H.323-based solutions are often even worse. I was able to get Skype to work easily on Windows and Linux without making any changes to the configuration of my router. I did run into a few problems with sound on Linux (as did at least 10 other people who either commented on one of my posts or emailed me), but I recently installed Skype again and it appears to be working fine. I’m wombatnation on Skype, though I’m not often online.

Advanced IP Pipeline reports that the IETF is now considering P2P extensions to SIP. That could solve a lot of the problems that home users still have with SIP-based solutions. There are also rumors that Skype has started to use SIP in its platform. Hopefully they will drop their proprietary protocol entirely. Dealing with several different IM clients was painful enough until Gaim had come far enough along to handle all the different major IM service providers.

References: I found the article on P2P extensions to SIP via SIPThat.com blog. SIPThat is run by the President and co-founder of Xten, makers of the X-Lite SIP softphone of which I’m quite fond (despite the confusing behavior of the preferences dialogs). Another blog I read for info on SIP is Mr. Blog, which is run by a researcher at Earthlink.

Sandra and I attended the US vs. Costa Rica World Cup qualifier in Salt Lake City last weekend and watched the US easily beat Costa Rica 3-0. The US followed this win with another big win Wednesday night by putting together a simlarly convincing 3-0 victory against Panama in Panama. The US is now in a good position to easily qualify for World Cup 2006 in Germany, which we’re counting on since we’ve already purchased tickets for all the first round matches in which the US would play. Here’s the US celebrating after Donovan’s first goal.

We enjoyed a nice weekend in Salt Lake City, not only because of the US victory. Rumors about having to be a member of a private club to order a beer in a restaurant or bar fortunately turned out not to be true. The morning of the game we wandered through Temple Square and encountered many Mormons of the non-proselytizing variety. You can easily spend nearly an hour wandering around the buildings. We then hiked from a light rail stop near the stadium (the University of Utah stadium is very nice for a college stadium, especially compared to the ancient San Jose State stadium where the Earthquakes play) over to Red Butte Gardens before the game. While I wouldn’t say that Salt Lake City is rich with lots to do and see, there’s definitely enough to fill a weekend. There was even a great Chilean deli on Main Street in what appeared to be the ethnic district (at least 4 non-American oriented businesses within a single block).

Below is a photo of Sam’s Army raising their BAF in celebration of a US goal.

Most of the reaction in the mid 80’s to the AT&T divestiture was that it was a diastrous mistake, a conclusion no doubt encouraged and reinforced by AT&T marketing and the legions of AT&T employees coached by their management. However, when a monopolist has beaten down its potential competitors for years and years, it takes a while for them to recover and offer substantially compelling options. While AT&T and Bell Labs were incredibly innovative in an amazing number of ways, telephone service wasn’t one of them. Admittedly, the phone system AT&T built was and still is incredibly reliable, but it certainly wasn’t functionally very rich.

As enough time has passed and competion has flourished (at least for a while, there), I think that most people, but certainly not all, changed their opinion to be in favor of the AT&T break-up. It’s hard to imagine we would otherwise have the choices we have today with respect to VoIP and mobile service. The choices obviously aren’t as good as they could be, but I can imagine them being far more limited under AT&T.

My brother, who works as an attorney for The Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel, passed on an email concerning public meetings that the California Public Utility Commission is having to hear comments on the proposed SBC Communications and AT&T merger. Fellow Oaklanders and nearby residents can attend one of the public meetings at the Elihu Harris State Building at 1515 Clay Street in downtown Oakland. The meetings are on Tuesday, June 14 at 2 pm and 7 pm. Wednesday meetings at the same times will be at the Clarion Hotel Mansion Inn - Terrace Room, 700 16th Street in Sacramento. If you can’t attend one of these meetinngs, you can email comments to public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov or have a uniformed employee of the US government deliver your message to the CPUC Public Advisor’s Office at CPUC Public Advisor, 505 Van Ness Ave., Room 2103, San Francisco, CA. 94102.

If SBC pulls off this acquisition, the US telecom market will become overwhelmingly dominated by Verizon and SBC. Good, better, worse, I don’t really know. I’m highly skeptical of better, and I’m not so confident of good, either.