Category: telecommunications

Webinar on May 22: IPv6 and Telecom – What’s Next?

US Telecom logoWant to understand the impact of IPv6 on telecommunications and Voice-over-IP (VoIP)? Interested to learn more about what telecom systems support IPv6? Would you like to know what efforts are underway within organizations like the IETF and the SIP Forum to ensure that telecommunications can work over IPv6?

If so, you can join in a free webinar offered by US Telecom on Thursday, May 22, 2014 at 1:00pm US Eastern time. (17:00 UTC). The title of the session is “IPv6 and Telecom: IPv4 Is Finally Running Out. Now What?” and part of the abstract is:

As we approach the second anniversary of World IPv6 Launch on June 6, the word from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is that they are entering into their final stages of providing IPv4 addresses to service providers.  While this has been talked about for many years, the reality is finally here.  There will soon be no more new IPv4 addresses available for new networks and services.  What can be done? What are some of the mitigation strategies and what are their challenges? What is involved with moving to using telecommunications over IPv6? Viewers of this event will hear answers to these questions and more!

I’m very much looking forward to this session that combines two of my personal passions: IPv6 and IP telephony/communications.  This webinar is part of US Telecom’s ongoing education events.  Registration is free and open to all interested.  I understand the presentation will be recorded if you are unable to view it live.

You Can Now Call Into Google+ From Regular Phones – Google Connects Google Voice To Hangouts

Want to hear the sound of Google further disrupting the world of telecom? If you have a Google Voice number and also use Google+ (as I do) with the Hangouts feature enabled, you'll soon be hearing this new sound if you haven't already.

UPDATE: I have written a follow-up post responding to several comments and expanding on several points.

An Unexpected Ringing

Yesterday a random PR person called the phone number in the sidebar of this blog to pitch me on why I should write about her client. This phone number is through Google Voice and I knew by the fact that my cell phone and Skype both started ringing simultaneously that someone was calling that number.

But as I was deciding whether or not to actually answer the call, I realized that there was another "ringing" sound coming from my computer that I had not heard before. Flipping quickly through my browser windows I found my Google+ window where this box appeared at the top of the "Hangouts" sidebar on the right:

Googleplus incoming call

Now, of course, I HAD to answer the call, even though I knew from experience that most calls to that number are PR pitches. I clicked the "Answer" button and in a moment a regular "Hangout" window appeared, complete with my own video, and with an audio connection to the phone call.

Hangouts phonecall

The PR person and I then had a pleasant conversation where I rather predictably determined quickly that she'd probably never actually readthis blog or she would have known that I've never written about her client's type of software. Be that as it may, the audio quality of the call was great and the call went on without any issues.

A subsequent test showed me that I also had access to the dialpad had I needed to send any button presses (for instance, in interacting with an IVR or robocall):

Hangout keypad

The only real "issue" with the phone call was that when I pressed the "Hang up" button I wound up still being in the Hangouts window with this message displayed:

Google+ Hangouts

The irony of course is that that phone number was never in the "video call"... at least via video. Regardless, I was now alone in the video call with my camera still running. I needed to press the "Exit" button in the upper right corner of the Hangouts window. Outside of that, the user experience for the phone call was fine.

The Future Of Google Voice?

Like many people interested in what Google is doing with Google+, I had read the announcement from Google of the new streams and Hangouts features last week and had gone ahead and installed the iOS Hangouts app onto my iPhone to try it out (marking Google's entrance into the OTT VoIP space). But nowhere in there had I seen that this connection was going to happen between Google Voice and Hangouts. I'd seen speculation in various media sites, but nothing direct.

So it was a bit of a surprise when it happened... particularly because I'd done nothing to enable it. Google had simply connected my Google Voice number to my Google+ account.

I admit that it is a pleasant surprise... although I do wish for the sake of my laptop's CPU that I could somehow configure it to NOT launch myvideo when I get an audio-only call. Yes, I can just go stop my video, but that's an annoying extra step.

It seems, though, that another feature removed from Hangouts, at least temporarily, was the ability to make outbound phone calls. Given that all signs of Google Voice were removed from Google's interface and replaced by "Hangouts", this has predictably upset people who used the service, particularly those who paid for credits to make outgoing calls. There does seem to be a way to restore the old Chat interfacefor those who want to make outgoing calls so that is at least a temporary workaround.

Google's Nikhyl Singhal posted to Google+ about the new Hangouts featuresstating these two points:

1) Today's version of Hangouts doesn't yet support outbound calls on the web and in the Chrome extension, but we do support inbound calls to your Google Voice number. We're working hard on supporting both, and outbound/inbound calls will soon be available. In the meantime, you can continue using Google Talk in Gmail.

2) Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.

I'm sure that won't satisfy those who are troubled by the change, but it will be interesting to see where they go with Hangouts and voice communication.

(Note: the comment thread on Nikhyl Singhal's Google+ post makes for very interesting reading as people are sounding off there about what they'd like to see in a Hangouts / Google Voice merger.)

Will Hangouts Do SIP?

Of course, my big question will be... will Hangouts let us truly move beyond the traditional telephony of the PSTN and into the world of IP-based communications where can connect directly over the Internet? Google Voice once briefly let us receive VoIP calls using the SIP protocol - can Hangouts finally deliver on this capability? (And let us make outbound SIP calls as well?)

What do you think? Do you like this new linkage of Google Voice PSTN numbers to your Google+ account?


UPDATE #1 - I have written a follow-up post about XMPP support in Hangouts and confusion over what level of XMPP/Jabber support is still in Google+ Hangouts.


Audio commentary related to this post can be found in TDYR episode #009 on SoundCloud:


If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:


Can DNSSEC and DANE Help Make Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) More Secure?

Can DNSSEC help make voice and video communications over IP more secure?  Could DNSSEC combined with DANE provide a means to more easily distribute the TLS/SSL certificates needed for VoIP phones and systems?  Can DNSSEC help ensure that you are talking with the correct VoIP system or application server?  Can DNSSEC improve the security of the many WebRTC-based clients being developed? How can a DNS-based public key infrastructure (PKI) help improved the security of IP-based communications?  (whether you call it “VoIP”, “unified communications”, “real-time communications” or just simply “telecommunications”)

These were among the questions that I set out to address in a presentation at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) 2013 last week in Reston, Virginia. Speaking to network operators ranging from large carriers and telcos to smaller “over-the-top (OTT)” startups, I used this set of slides to frame the discussion:

I also spoke about how two VoIP software products have already incorporated DNSSEC – the Jitsi softphone and the Kamailio server – and mentioned the new “DNSSEC and IP-based Communications” resource page I’m starting to build (and for which I would appreciate any suggestions).

I don’t necessarily have the “answers” to these questions (although I have opinions :-) )… I was more starting to raise the questions. The DNS community has been building this mechanism (DNSSEC) that provides a “trust layer” and can increase the security of DNS, as well as, via DANE, the entire TLS/SSL certificate infrastructure that we have come to rely upon.  How can we use these improvements to increase the security of IP communications?

For some further context, you may be interested in this recording I made on the topic:

I think there could be some good potential benefit here – and I’m looking forward to further discussions on this topic in the weeks and months ahead.  I’d love to hear your thoughts… either as comments to this post on our site or in social networks … or via direct email to me.

How could we use DNSSEC to increase the overall security of our communications infrastructure?

 

P.S.  I’ll also be appearing on the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) podcast on this coming Friday, May 3, 2013, to discuss these ideas within that community (to which anyone is welcome to join in). More details soon…