April 2001

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

BY Tom Keating

It is easy to see why the telecom companies were hesitant to embrace VoIP, as its implications would render their multi-billion dollar networks practically obsolete, introduce many new competitors with little startup costs, and cut into their high margins on price-per-minute rates due to the better cost economies of VoIP. Indeed, asking telecom companies to embrace VoIP would be akin to Linus Torvalds asking Bill Gates if he thought developing an open source code operating system was a good idea before Torvalds started his LINUX project.

Unphased by the critics, Rich doggedly pursued his idea, trying to garner as many expert opinions as he could before deciding. When he asked for my thoughts, I said "Now is the time to launch a magazine on VoIP before someone else does." I remember telling him that VoIP gateways are only the beginning. "Soon we will see cable companies, ISPs, and startup carriers offering voice services across an IP connection," I said. "Imagine accessing your home answering machine from your browser at work."

Of course, this was only a simple example of an enhanced service that a next-generation carrier or service provider could offer, but I knew that data and voice convergence would have a much greater impact than the telecom companies imagined. Rich still wasn't sure. He said, "Everyone is telling me it's a bad idea. This will be a significant investment for TMC and I have to convince the CEO, Nadji Tehrani, if it's a good idea."

THE BIRTH OF A MAGAZINE
After further discussions, which included brainstorming possible magazine names, such as IP Telephony, VoIP, and my favorite choice -- Internet Telephony, Rich decided to give it a go. Less than five minutes later he was in the CEO's office discussing the idea. While I can't take credit for convincing Rich to launch our sister publication, Internet Telephony, my opinion was a factor. Since both Rich and I have computer engineering backgrounds, we saw the potential for IP to transform the telecom world. But more importantly, we both saw the imminent convergence revolution before "convergence" became the buzzword that it is today.

Why the history lesson? I thought it was worth putting the Internet telephony industry into perspective. Besides, I think it's fun to watch the stodgy telecom companies perform a complete about-face when it comes to VoIP. They discouraged TMC from launching a magazine focused on VoIP, but have now started to embrace VoIP technology to allow themselves to offer enhanced services and, just as importantly, retain customers in an industry where customers change phone carriers more often than the oil in their cars.

MORE THAN TOLL BYPASS
A perfect example of this is WorldCom, which unveiled a suite of comprehensive global IP networking services at Internet Telephony Expo in Miami. WorldCom IP VPN and WorldCom Private IP provide the data infrastructure to allow corporations to operate as global e-businesses.

"WorldCom has integrated its IP networking capabilities into a single unified global product line that is unmatched in the industry," said Brian Brewer, senior vice president of business marketing. "Our global facilities-based network footprint sets us apart from new and established competitors by delivering a complete line of integrated public and private IP network solutions with an advanced feature set backed by industry-leading service level guarantees and years of IP expertise."

WorldCom Private IP unlocks new e-applications for traditional data users through the company's IP-enabled global networks using MPLS technology. WorldCom claims that all its IP solutions are easily integrated with other WorldCom e-business-enabling solutions, including Web hosting, advanced security solutions, and other value-added services. In addition, WorldCom's IP service suite delivers a platform for a variety of multimedia desktop applications including VoIP.

In a recent column, I discussed AT&T's purchases of a few major cable companies. AT&T's ultimate goal is to offer local loop services. They can do this by having a data pipe into your home. Once AT&T has the data pipe, they will be able to offer enhanced services such as unified messaging, interactive TV, multimedia content, and of course, VoIP.

THE HOLY GRAIL OF COMMUNICATIONS
I keep mentioning the words "enhanced services" as though they were the Holy Grail of the communications industry. While I am all for enhanced services, I am not without skepticism. For example, I have cable broadband service at my house, which has not been without it's problems, including heavy packet loss during peak Internet usage periods. My cable provider is offering voice services across this broadband connection as well. But will I cut my traditional PSTN land-line in favor of voice over cable? Trust the cable guy for voice services? Forget about it!

Growing up in Seymour, Conn., I experienced cable providers' reliability first hand. In the 20 years I lived there, the cable would go out at least four to five times a year. My phone service on the other hand failed just once in those 20 years, and that was due to a hurricane. I should point out that Seymour is a small town with an antiquated cable system that still has two coax wires instead of a single coax wire drawn to each house with an A/B switch to switch between local and New York stations. Now that I live in Norwalk, a much larger town, I've yet to experience a cable outage, although I am plagued with a new problem: power outages that occur just about every month.

Problems aside, including my own prejudice against cable operators, I am more convinced than ever that enhanced services utilizing VoIP are going to become a prevalent technology. My trips to trade shows such as Internet Telephony Expo, N+I, PC Expo, and others have revealed a plethora of VoIP products, including some that are bundled with enhanced services. I met with one such company: CentreCom.

A SUITE OF SERVICES
CentreCom offers a suite of enhanced services utilizing IP telephony. CentreCom links your phone, fax, data, e-mail, and paging applications to a single phone number to allow one-number unified communications. With its enhanced "follow me" functionality, you can receive PC-to-phone, phone-to-PC, or PC-to-PC calls. In addition, their product can provide Class 5 telephony services such as call waiting, conference calling, call screening, call forwarding, speed dialing, auto-attendant, and voice messaging across the Internet. I should point out that this company is a communications ASP provider, thus all of the hardware and infrastructure is hosted by CentreCom and includes all circuit provisioning, billing, and network management.

I checked out their market literature, and at first glance they appear to only support Microsoft NetMeeting as the client VoIP application. Since I've tested NetMeeting in the labs, I'm acutely aware of NetMeeting's limitations in getting through firewalls or proxy servers utilizing NAT. In fact, one of the biggest limitations that I see in Microsoft NetMeeting is that it cannot traverse most corporate firewalls without first having the network manager open up several ports. This is something most network managers are not inclined to do. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft redesigns NetMeeting to support both H.323 and SIP, since SIP does not suffer from the same firewall issues that plague H.323. In fact, TMC Labs has tested several VoIP software clients, including those from DialPad, HearMe, Lipstream, and Net2Phone, and most worked with no firewall reconfiguration.

I went to CentreCom's Web site (www.centrecom.com) to see if they might support some other third party VoIP client software. As soon as I went to their Web page, a browser window popped up with the words "Click to Call." I clicked on it to see if NetMeeting would launch, but in fact a download of HearMe's VoIP application was initiated. Strangely enough, I searched their entire Web site (including checking CentreCom's partner page) and couldn't find any mention of HearMe. So whether they support HearMe's VoIP client is still a mystery.

AN INTERNATIONAL TWIST
A company offering a similar product is VirtualCom (www.virtual-com.net). The company is focusing on the Latin American market to deliver seamlessly integrated communications solutions with VirtualComSuite, a Web-based unified communications service. VirtualComSuite combines the power of the Internet with telecommunications to offer enterprises a unified communications service that will increase productivity by making technology easier to use, while at the same time providing significant cost savings. VirtualComSuite's feature-set includes something called Uni-Number, which allows you to control call receiving with one-number access to home, work, mobile, fax, and pager. Unified messaging is supported to integrate voice mail, fax, and e-mail into one box with Web or telephone access. They also offer text-to-speech technology for reading e-mail. Two other features include:

• Unified Calling: enables conference hosting, consolidates conference calling, calling card, and business long-distance.
• Unified Enterprise: features shortened dialing plans, auto-attendant, ACD, and directory services in an ASP environment.

TESTING, 1, 2, 3...
One of the best litmus tests for determining the viability and growth of any industry is to see if there are testing tools within that market niche. If the Internet telephony industry truly has come of age, then surely there should be several advanced testing tools used by developers and service providers to ensure reliability and quality of the VoIP -- surely a mission-critical application. Sure enough, there are several such testing tools on the market. Just two examples include Agilent Technologies' Telegra VQT and Empirix's (formerly Hammer Technologies) recently announced PacketSphere product.

Building on Empirix's reputation for making great testing tools, they demonstrated their latest product, PacketSphere, to TMC editors (myself included), and I found it to be very impressive. PacketSphere is a network processor-based testing platform designed for high speed network processing, up to Gigabit/s wire speed applications or at lower 10/100 Mbps speeds. The product's architecture allows for multiple software applications to be installed onto the 19" rack-mountable chassis and supports up to two network processors for scalability and performance.

One of the first applications developed for this platform is a network emulator, which allows you to select variable latency (fixed, uniform distribution, normal distribution), loss (every nth, n per second, every t ms, burst loss, percent loss), duplication (every nth, n per second, every t ms, percent loss), reordering (every nth, n per second, every t ms, percent loss), and rerouting of packets (reroute after x ms for y ms). Future applications that can be developed on the PacketSphere platform include VoIP stream analysis, applications emulation (RTP streams), protocol conformance, and more. Empirix's plans include integration of PacketSphere with the Hammer VoIP Test System and perhaps some of Empirix's other products. With the continuing convergence of enhanced services on a single network, including data, Internet, voice, fax, video, and unified messaging, PacketSphere is the perfect tool for performing testing, load balancing, monitoring, and pre-deployment lab environment testing -- all from a single unified testing platform.

Internet telephony has come a long way from the days of being sneered at by the telcos as a hobbyists' toy or just a means of simple toll bypass for cost savings. In the near future, enhanced services will not only drive revenue, but they will help attract new customers and ensure customer loyalty. Now that Internet Telephony has proven to be a successful TMC venture, I just need to convince Rich that we should start a sports car or video gaming magazine. I know I would have some serious fun with those product reviews!

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