ipoque, a European deep packet inspection hardware provider has published an Internet study for 2008/2009 providing an overview of the Internet's current state based on analyzing 1.3 petabytes of Internet traffic -- "the amount of data equal to 300,000 DVDs" -- in eight regions of the world (Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southwestern Europe, Germany). The study includes the use of about 100 of the most popular Internet protocols including P2P, VoIP, media streaming, instant messaging. more
I recently had the opportunity to interview, Richard Whitt, Google's Washington Telecom and Media Counsel, who will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Emerging Communications Conference (eComm 2009) being held on March 3-5 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. The following is the transcript of our phone conversation and the audio recording of the interview. more
Here are my VoIP and Voice security predictions for 2009, limited to just a few, key predictions... The poor economy will slow the adoption rate for VoIP and Unified Communications (UC). This will continue to limit the size of the enterprise VoIP deployments for potential hackers to exploit. VoIP/UC will continue to be mostly an internal/campus application where the threat level for attack is low, so deployments will be largely secured along the same lines as other data network applications. more
I don't usually write sequels to my articles, but this time, it's warranted. My last column, "VoIP in 2008 -- I'm Not Dead," served as a year-end review and, for me, there were a lot of interesting things in 2008 related to VoIP that formed the basis of that article. I did not intend to rattle cages, but it did, and set off a lot of subsequent conversation, primarily in the blogosphere. more
Ok, ok - it's pretty hard to ignore the bombshell news that's on front pages everywhere today in Canada. It looks like Nortel is going to seek bankruptcy protection, perhaps as early as today. This may be a minor story in the U.S. business press, but it's a big story in tech/telecom, and a HUGE story here in Canada. You don't need me to tell you what Nortel means to Canada in terms of pride and joy, although that's more of a distant memory these days... more
Admittedly, I'm a not Johnny-come-lately with regards to surveillance, intelligence, telecommunications, network security, law enforcement, and a cross-pollination of all-of-the-above. I actually have a very colorful background of working within all of the aforementioned disciplines - at one time or another - either through the U.S. Military, U.S Government contractors, private industry, etc. ... And unfortunately, I am not generally "shocked" very often by much of the abuses being perpetrated on unwitting Internet users, both by supposedly "trusted" entities (e.g. Democratic Governments, ISPs, etc.) more
On New Year's Eve 2008 I felt compelled to respond to the stories being written about the Death of VoIP which lead to my recent blog post: VoIP is NOT Dead!. Since then, I've enjoyed many of the conversations that have continued to take place in the comment sections of a number of blogs, including this one. My belief is the future is unwritten and if the conditions are right people will return to the space. But we need to embrace innovation and change and encourage people to be disruptive. What follows is a continuation of the conversation. more
Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2008... Best wishes for 2009 and Happy New Year from all of us here at CircleID. more
VoIP remains a hot topic in the IP communications world, but it's definitely evolving. The following is my most recent article for a column that I write for TMCnet, and it's a year-end review on VoIP as well as my outlook for how it's changing for 2009. Colleague Alec Saunders posted his response to my article yesterday, and it's a good read. If you're interested in where VoIP is headed, then my article should help keep that dialog moving along within the CircleID community. Here we go... more
Last week American Airlines launched their Aircell wireless Internet access on a limited number of flights. It didn't take long before a few folks tried to make voice and video calls (in violation of Aircell's terms-of-service according to their PR folks), and it didn't take long before someone figured a way around their voice/video blocking efforts. more
Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT) is viewed by many as a daunting threat. SPIT is much more fatal than email spam, for the annoyance and disturbance factor is much higher. Various academic groups and the industry have made some efforts to find ways to mitigate SPIT. Most ideas in that field are leaning on classical IT security concepts such as intrusion detection systems, black-/white-/greylists, Turing tests/computational puzzles, reputation systems, gatekeeper solutions, etc... We identified the lack of a benchmark testbed for SPIT as a serious gap in the current research on the matter, and this motivated us at the to start working on a first tool for that. more
The SIP Center asked for an article which I finally wrote the weekend before last. My article was actually rather negative, but they published it anyway. Now I'm feeling a little guilty as there is an optimistic note I could have used as my conclusion. So let me try again... First let me summarize my problem. When SIP emerged in 1996, it's support for direct connections from one user to another was extremely compelling. This was the VoIP protocol which would lead to a complete revolution in communications... more
The Wall Street Journal today reported that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to reject a Petition for Declaratory Ruling filed by Skype that would establish a wireless Carterfone policy, i.e., that wireless carriers must allow subscribers to use any compatible handset to access any application, content or software. Chairman Martin has confidence that the marketplace solutions obviate any necessary FCC intervention. Such optimism must derive in part from the apparently newfound willingness of one major wireless carrier, Verizon, to support aspects of open access. Perhaps Chairman Martin has confidence in the marketplace based on the magnanimous offer of most wireless carriers to pro-rate their early termination penalties by $5 a month. But here's the rub... more
Network Neutrality is a hot topic in the US. The FCC held hearings in my neighborhood recently (while I was in Asia). Now I see Professor Susan Crawford will be testifying next Tuesday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Net Neutrality and the First Amendment." I look forward to her remarks, but I worry that the whole discussion will be focused on "IP Pipes," that is connectivity at network layer 3. This distracts us from the fundamental problem... more
IPTV is on the horizon. Maybe I watch too much basketball, but the first thing I pictured was turning my flat screen into a big PC-like monitor with multiple windows showing several games, and perhaps even checking email and trying to do a bit work in another (admittedly much smaller) window. You could drag and drop, expand or shrink the games to whatever size you wanted just like you do on a PC with applications. Since the source video could come from different geographical regions in the country, you could catch the NCAA game they are showing in your local region while also watching another game from another region... For some, IPTV is a reality. But for the most part deployments are limited. more
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