Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 14 March 2006 meeting, "VoIP: Can You
Hear It Now?"

About 50 people attended tonight's meeting. Josh Zapin
facilitated and Jeremy Kohler recorded the minutes.

--------------------

MEETING SPONSORS

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments,
Copy Diva (www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual
equipment, NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the
facility, and ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these
minutes.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

RMIUG meetings occur on the 2nd Tuesdays of
odd-numbered months. Email Josh Zapin with topic and
speaker ideas.
May 9: Google, the New Big Brother.
July 11: SIG-CHI (computer-human interactions)
September 12: TBD
November 14: The Cluetrain Manifesto Revisited

ANNOUNCEMENTS

- SandCherry (www.sandcherry.com) in Boulder is hiring
various positions.

- Labor available:
Charles La Motta, Oracle Developer,
charles_lamotta@...
Babu Bangaru, Software/Test Engineer,
baburbangaru@...

INTRODUCTION (Josh Zapin)

Voice Over IP, a method of transmitting your voice
calls over the same Internet lines that carry your
email, is exploding. In a speech given by former
Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell in
2004, he rattled off the following statistics:?
- 2 percent of US firms use some form of IP telephony,
and this number is expected to grow to 19 percent by
2007?
- 73 percent of wire line service providers and 31
percent of wireless operators either have implemented,
or are testing packet telephony in their networks?
- 50 percent of Internet households are interested in
Internet Voice as a way of reducing monthly
long-distance charges

And that was almost 2 years ago!

Why is there so much change? Because if you already
have a broadband Internet connection (and
Neilsen/NetRatings says that over 60% of us do), then
you can save lots of money on your phone bills.
Consumer Reports, a leading independent consumer
publication, found that nearly 80% of the people who
made the switch to VoIP saved at least $20 per month,
with 34% saving $40 or more!

Not to mention that you could also give your local
Bell the boot! (That is if you don't have broadband
through them - in that case, it would be just part of
a boot.)

In addition to using our exiting broadband pipe to cut
our bills, people are switching to gain mobility,
features, and cheap international calling.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Eric Laughlin (eric@...) is the founder of
Voipreview.org, a website that helps people chose VoIP
plans. Eric is a serial Internet entrepreneur and has
appeared on Tom Martino's Troubleshooter and has been
quoted by The News Observer in Raleigh, NC in "Voice
Over Internet Has People Talking," by the New York
Daily News in "Dialing Up Phone Calls on Internet,"
and in the Boulder County Business Report.

June Hu (junehu@...) joined IBM Network Service
Division in 1998 as an IT Specialist, after earning a
master's degree from CU Boulder in 1997. For almost
eight years she has been one of the key persons in the
maintenance of IBM Boulder's internal network. June is
now responsible for the VoIP project at the IBM
Boulder site, getting one of the largest information
companies in the world VoIP-enabled.

Speaker slide presentations are available at
http://www.6cp.com/rmiug.org/RMIUG_03_2006_Meeting.ppt.

--------------------

ERIC LAUGHLIN

VoIP FOR THE HOME AND SMALL OFFICE

VoipReview.org was the first Voice Over Internet
Protocol search engine, detailing lots of calling
plans and providing side-by-side plan comparisons.

VoIP is simple and easy to use, routing your phone
calls through your existing high-speed connection. It
even works on dialup connections.

VoIP has totally changed the paradigm for wireline
services: you now have a thousand companies to choose
from, as you can literally pick any phone company in
the world. You can even have a phone number in Korea
and have it ring here, with no long distance charges.

Analysts predict 18 million subscribers by 2010, with
$4 billion in revenue. Currently there are only 4.5
million subscribers, which is about five percent of
the market. VoIP provider Vonage was the biggest
advertiser on the internet in 2005.

VoIP FLAVORS
- Phone Line Replacement (independents/telcos(like
Qwest) & cable companies (not mobile).
- IM-Based (like Skype)
- Hybrid (cell phone+WiFi VoIP)--still a few years
away

VoIP ADVANTAGES
- Price: VoIP provides huge savings, charging pennies
instead of dollars for local, long distance, and
international calling.
- Free calling features: You get standard features
plus others like click-to-call, voicemail-to-email,
real-time billing, conferencing, etc.
- Convenience: Features like click-to-call are good
for small business.
- Mobility: Your VoIP device works with any internet
connection.

VoIP DISADVANTAGES
- Power outages will shut you down, unlike standard
phone service.
- 911 calls won't automatically broadcast your
location.
- High load on your internet connection can affect
performance, causing call failure.
- IM-based VoIP (Skype) doesn't allow number
portability, 911, or use of a regular phone.

Overall, the disadvantages are pretty minor.

HOW TO PICK A VoIP SERVICE
Think about how you make and receive calls, how much
time you spend on the phone, where you call, what
features you need, and what uptime reliability you
need. Generally, reliability is quite good (although
not nearly up to the very high standards of
traditional wire lines).

--------------------

JUNE HU

VoIP IMPLEMENATATION TECHNOLOGY (AT IBM)

VoIP is important in the corporate, big business
environment.

Components include an IP Network (talk on your
computer using data traffic) and a traditional
PSTN/POTS (talk on your regular phone using voice
traffic).

PSTN: Public Switched Telephone Network, aka POTS:
Plain Old Telephone Service

When voice is enabled on IP network, a codec converts
voice into IP data.

CALL FLOW
Pick up a handset, dial a number, number received at
Cisco Call Control Manager (CCM) cluster, server
converts phone number to IP address of recipient, and
rings the recipient's phone.

To call a regular phone, the CCM server will forward
information to the Voice Gateway that transfers the
phone number to the regular PSTN phone network.

The three things you need to set up VoIP in a business
are an IP Phone, a CCM cluster, and a Voice Gateway.

IP PHONE
Converts voice to IP data. The phone generally has
enough built-in standard ports so you can connect it
to your network without installing any other ports or
switches.

CCM
A software-based call-processing component, including
publishers, subscribers, and TFTP servers.

VOICE GATEWAY
Converts analog voice signals to and from IP telephony
packets. It has T1 and Ethernet ports to make its
connections. There are many scalable solutions out
there from Cisco, Avaya, and Semion.

TOLL BYPASS
VoIP allows Toll Bypass (aka least cost routing): This
is using IP Intranets to route your call instead of
traditional PSTN. It's good if you have lots of office
branches. The Voice Gateway talks to proxy servers to
notify the remote Voice Gateway, and this saves you
lots of money because you've cut out the regular phone
network entirely. Sometimes you can use some of your
existing PSTN infrastructure to support Toll Bypass.

BENEFITS OF A VoIP NETWORK
- Cost savings (+ using combined infrastructures)
- Flexibility: mobility, conferencing
- High Performance: including video conferencing

ENEMIES OF PACKETIZED VoIP SYSTEMS
Delay: Latency delays can be nasty with voice.
Jitter: Arrival times can cause noise.
Lost Packets: VoIP uses the UDP transportation
protocol that doesn't retransmit lost packets (if you
retransmit, it confuses the voice flow)

Quality of Service (QOS) we implement to deal with the
enemies:
We classify traffic into different categories. Voice
data goes in the time-sensitive category. Each
category has a value to identify importance. Then we
create a policy map to help the system respond to
category values and route traffic appropriately. The
policy criteria also depends on the source address
(user making the call), the protocol type of the
packet, the packet's application port, and the
destination address (user receiving the call).

CODECS
We use G-series codecs to convert analog waveforms
into digital signals.
G.711 (PCM) is best: 8000 samples per second, a 64kbps
signal.
G.726 (ADPCM) uses a 4-bit code to make a 32kbps
signal.
G.729 (CS-ACELP) only needs 8 kbps, so it doesn't
provide as good voice quality.

A LAN with G.711 gives you the best voice quality. A
WAN with G.729 can be useful for bandwidth savings.

GATEWAY CONTROL PROTOCOLS
H.323: Widely supported and strictly defined, used in
converged networks.
SIP: Less strictly defined, but easier to support.
Gaining in popularity.
MGCP: A plain-text protocol to control gateways.

RTP
A real time protocol for voice transfer. Packet
includes MAC header, IP Header, UTP header, and RTP
message.

VoIP is strong and reliable, although there are
typically some T1 problems and code bugs to work out
as you are setting things up.

--------------------

Q & A

NOTE: David James (davjames@...), a VoIP
Architect with IBM, joined June and Eric for the panel
discussion.

Q: For home users with Comcast cable, for example,
there is no QOS from Comcast so performance simply
depends on traffic. Since Comcast is in the phone
business, couldn't they do reverse QOS on VoIP users
to stifle competition?

Eric: Your performance will vary depending on traffic,
and yes, theoretically a company could do reverse QOS
if they wanted.
David: You can do some QOS at your end to prioritize
your data packets. Often the basic VoIP devices can do
this for you. But after that you are at the mercy of
the ISP once your information leaves your network.

Q: How mass-market friendly is VoIP? VoIP seems to
move complex call management from the phone company
into your home. Will it only take off with technically
savvy people?

Eric: I think everything will eventually be VoIP.
Management is becoming faster and easier.
David: Cell phones used to be awful, but now we all
have them because customer demand drives the business.
I think big companies will be dropping their regular
land lines. There are ways to overcome the technical
challenges and make it easy for people.

Q: How is VoIP architected at IBM?

David: we are a Cisco shop, with some Avaya and Semion
in some locations. We have a bypass network, a WAN
provider for a lot of bandwidth used primarily for
Toll Bypass. It's MPLS based (more intelligent than
older protocols and better for handling QOS markings).
We've been doing it since 2003, using Toll Bypass and
implementing voice gateways.

Audience Comment: You can do it with an IP network,
but then you don't have QOS capabilities.

Q: Where is the voice gateway in a system like Vonage?
David: There are thousands of ways to do it. They
would likely need an endpoint agreement with phone
companies in other countries.

Q: What phones do you use at IBM?
David: We use both analog and POE phones. POE phones
need more power.

Q: What about security and multimedia?

David: It's an Intranet so it's not accessible to the
outside anyway. We are already within our own network.
But if I had access, I could sniff out your RTP
packets and play it back if it's not encoded. There
are some encoding solutions out there. We are
currently piloting multimedia. Voice traffic itself is
actually very small, requires very little bandwidth.
So the most important concerns with voice are dealing
with latency, lost packets, and jitter. Video is
actually a big jump.

Q: Are there E-911 issues? [Enhanced 911 lets your
phone provide automatic location information to the
911 call center]

Eric: E-911 is now required. The main thing is that if
you move you have to update your address.

Audience Comment: The E-911 system isn't really built
yet, as it has only recently been mandated. There is a
problem with mobility. Right now if you call from a
cafe, they will send the police to your house. And yet
small local ISPs cannot offer VoIP due to E911
requirements.

Eric: Local ISPs generally resell services from the
bigger ones.
David: the E-911 standards are in flux.
Audience Comment: What's the big deal? E911 doesn't
really work on cell phones anyway.
David: Cisco has a tool that helps identify the
location of your IP address to, perhaps, within a
building. Again, a lot of this technology is still
being built.

Q: Skype is used a lot with smaller companies, and it
seems a lot like other free services like Yahoo and
Gmail. It seems to work very well, although you
occasionally get a bad connection and have to redial.

David: Skype is like IM with a phone.
Eric: Skype is not the same as VoIP.

Q: What about hosted PBX?

Eric: Lots of ISPs do it, and it comes in a variety of
flavors. You have to be careful about phone number
portability with Skype.

Q: What I need to get started?

Eric: Get a broadband connection, go to my website,
order service, and they will ship you a box. If you
want to use your home phone wiring, dump your phone
company first so you can keep using the same phone
number.

Q: What if you have DSL?

Audience Comment: Port your number and then order
naked DSL.

Q: What if you want to keep your existing DSL.

Eric: Just plug your VoIP box into your DSL and use
that. It's no problem. Or you can use Skype.

Q: Are there situations where you could not turn off
PSTN because you need it for faxing?

David: You can gain analog connectivity with the
network--fax over IP works on our Cisco devices. But
sometimes cost considerations make you want to keep
PSTN. We use centralized call management with PSTNs at
each site. Cisco can even deal with outages that let
you call without the central manager. Data networks
are of course not at the uptime level of POTS phone
networks (99.9999...%), so that is a challenge. We are
no where near POTS reliability yet.

Q: Can I connect my fax machine to VoIP?

Eric: Yes, you can use your fax machine, but it's not
reliable yet. Pages will get dropped.

Q: Is faxing an issue for home offices then?

Eric & David: Some methods and codecs are better than
others for faxing, but it's still a real problem right
now.

Q: Can you record VoIP calls?

Eric: There's nothing on the consumer end that I know
of.

Audience Comment: There's a Skype add-on.

Q: What tools can you use to analyze service quality?

David: Standard IP sniffing at both ends to make sure
your values are being marked properly. We use Spirent
SmartBits to put load on the device and see what
happens. You can also use ClearSight.

Q: Any problems at IBM?

David: Yes, you can have no audio or one-way audio.
But we only get 5-10 trouble tickets per month for
thousands of users. It took time to work out the bugs.
Most users don't even notice when they get switched
over to VoIP. We are redeveloping a lot of codecs to
get better quality with lower bandwidth.

Q: Are there QOS challenges with multiple vendors of
switches?

David: We use all Cisco, so that helps. Routing
protocols are important. You have to put DNS and DHCP
at lower priority.

Q: What's your Return On Investment on doing this
conversion, considering that phone rates and long
distance rates are dropping?

David: Up-front costs can be expensive. A Cisco phone
is $400-500 apiece. But the Toll Bypass gives an
almost immediate ROI. We're not paying for conference
calls any more. The Voice Gateway is also an expense
($2-15k). IBM does millions of minutes per month, so
savings are quick. I would say a typical ROI is 2-4
years, but that's just a guess.

Q: Is IBM now competing with the phone companies by
selling VoIP services?

David: Yes, once we figure out stuff in-house, we can
sell it as a service to our customers. So to a certain
extent I guess we are competing with the phone
company.

Q: Don't I still have to use Qwest from home?

Eric: Is there something people don't like about
Qwest? Yes, to use VoIP you still need an internet
connection, either through Qwest, Comcast cable, or
some other ISP.

Q: So for us, either Qwest DSL or Comcast cable is
required for VoIP--we still have to pay for the line?

David: Yes.

Q: Any advantage to setting up VoIP overseas?

Eric: You can set it up anywhere, but due to
infrastructure I think it's better to get it here, and
then connect to it overseas.

Audience Comment: Skype might be your best choice for
setting up overseas.