Home
>
VOIP
>
VoIP Phone Home?

VoIP Phone Home?

The movie Extra Terrestrial (ET) coined the phrase "phone home" and each year American's look for more cost effective ways to do just that. The past 10 years have seen the development and growing popularity of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to achieve cost savings over the traditional circuit-switched telephone networks. The two dominate technologies used for VoIP are: (1) the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and (2) Peer-2-Peer (P2P). For business and educational institutions SIP VoIP solutions have produced substantial savings. For home voice users, however, SIP VoIP is still value challenged.

A typical circuit-switched landline phone costs about $19.95 per month (plus tax). The good old American landline phone should be graphically depicted beside the word "reliable" in the dictionary. Not only does it keep working, even when all electrical power fails, but it can even provide you with a light to dial with. At $15 dollars per month SIP VoIP is still value challenged due to the lack of full support for E9-1-1 emergency services and of course the reliability issues inherent with using a real time application over a "best effort" network like today's Internet. Although few VoIP articles still reference Internet Request For Comments (RFC) 3714 "IAB Concerns Regarding Congestion Control," the technical challenges associated with VoIP are widely known. Further, even with the recent dubious edict by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that VoIP service providers will provision support for E9-1-1 within 90 days, this still leaves the reliability issues unresolved. The use of adaptive rate CODEC's to prevent congestion collapse is a swell idea if it applies to my neighbor's service but not my own. Using adaptive rate CODEC's to elicit voluntary user preemption has no appeal in the modern world. Technology is supposed to be getting better and it is clearly not better that users receive disconnects or degraded service quality in order to constrain network bandwidth consumption.

Quality of Service (QoS) has been the four letter word of the Internet for a very long time. Yet, we know that real time applications such as video and voice are a mismatch for "best effort" service models. Cost savings are important, but not if they require users to accept backward technology leaps. After 9/11 the United States should have begun standardization efforts to insure that VoIP QoS levels would be equivalent to circuit-switched networks, especially where emergency E9-1-1 calls are concerned. The recent FCC order only requires that E9-1-1 call center traffic be properly routed. It does nothing to insure QoS of the connection once the call is completed.

As for SIP VoIP in the home, there is too little incentive for savvy consumers to part with more of their hard earned communications dollars for an industry offering that simply does not meet the needs of the user. Until something concrete can be done to move SIP VoIP forward, service based on P2P such as Skype seems to be the only sensible choice on the kitchen table. Why should home users pay $15 or more per month for less reliable communications than they already have with their land line? Skype gives users the ability to experience "best effort" voice over the Internet for FREE. Could this be the reason why more than 125 million copies of Skype's P2P software has been downloaded? And for the occasions where interconnection with the existing circuit-switched telephone networks is required, Skype offers a very competitive 2 cents per minute interconnection rate. With Skype you can talk for 12 ? hours interconnected to the phone system for the same cost as a basic rate SIP VoIP service.

Until genuine changes are made to support SIP VoIP QoS there does not appear to be a convincing or compelling reason today for users to choose anything other than P2P VoIP services such as Skype to render Internet "best effort" home phone services.

You can read the complete article and view associated graphics online at: http://canon.org/VoIP_Phone_Home.html.

? 2005 Peach ePublishing, LLC

Jason Canon has authored numerous technical research papers including: photonic switching, gigabit networking, VoIP E9-1-1 and others. He is an expert author for EzineArticles.com. E-mail: Jason Canon at jmc@canon.org.

scheduled maid service Morton Grove ...

In The News:

Identity theft can hide in phone accounts, medical records and utility bills long before it shows on a credit report. Eight places to check now.

JR East's towering ZIZAI ZX-3 chainsaw robot tackles dangerous branch-cutting along Japan's Koumi Line while a trained operator controls it remotely.

A massive DHS data leak exposed records of over 41,000 employees, revealing links to undercover ICE operations, Palantir tools and AI platforms.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

UCLA's PhoneBot turns old Android phones into the brain of a two-legged humanoid robot that walks, follows people and stands up after falling.

A fake Amazon invoice charging $988.18 for an iPad lists the same customer support phone number three times to steer panicked victims into calling.

A handful of food delivery robots from Uber Eats and other platforms have gotten kicked and knocked over in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Data broker opt-out forms may not protect your family. People search sites can still expose your info through a spouse's or parent's profile.

Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 with a PROLED XDR OLED display, but the non-touch M6 model costs $900 less at $1,999.

Black Friday deals are already drawing scammers who use fake delivery notices and gift card payment requests to steal your personal financial information.

Apple's iPhone Duo reportedly outlasted the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 by over three hours in battery tests, but its weight and repair costs raise concerns.

Florida Polytechnic University's Jetson ONE eVTOL police vehicle named Astro still awaits FAA authorization before officers can fly operational patrols.

OpenAI's new locked chats feature lets you protect ChatGPT conversations with a PIN, Face ID or Touch ID, but there are key privacy limitations.

A phishing email disguised as an Evite fooled a man even after he emailed his friend to verify it, revealing how compromised Gmail accounts aid scams.

Microsoft's AI diagnostic system identified 83% of complex medical cases in a study, more than doubling the 36% accuracy of generalist doctors.

Account takeover threats go beyond stolen passwords as criminals exploit session cookies, SIM swaps and MFA fatigue to bypass your login security.

SpaceX is reportedly pursuing access to 80,000 cell sites to turn Starlink into a major wireless carrier rivaling Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Tech advocacy groups warn that foreign nationals at AI companies like OpenAI and Google pose a national security threat amid a lack of federal oversight.

Singapore researchers built the world's first touchscreen woven into clothing, surviving 50 machine washes while displaying images and responding to touch.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

A startup founder woke to $449 in unexpected OpenAI and Anthropic charges after stolen API keys were exploited during the "Black October" cyber wave.

Educational Testing Service hackers stole millions of California student records, but families who moved out of state years ago may also be affected.

Apple's iPhone Duo screens are cracking near the hinge just days after its $1,999 launch, and iFixit's CT scans may reveal what's going wrong.

Travel expert Katy Nastro says 50,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles vanished from her account after someone redeemed them without permission.

Google AI Overviews can't be permanently turned off, but adding -AI to your searches and using the built-in Web filter can help bypass AI summaries.

VoIP Phone Home?

VOIP