July 25, 2013 archive

Jul 25

IETF Journal – WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser

Webrtc 2Seeking to understand the basics of WebRTC and why there is so much interest in it? There is a new July 2013 issue of the IETF Journal out this week that includes an article I wrote titled "WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser" that looks at WebRTC from a high-level user perspective.

My aim with this IETF Journal article links was to summarize some of the links on my my WebRTC/RTCWEB page and is admittedly similar in style to my 2012 post, "How WebRTC Will Fundamentally Disrupt Telecom (And Change The Internet)", although this newer article focuses on the work happening within the IETF and provides links to get more involved.

On that note, the RTCWEB working group within the IETF will be meeting next week in Berlin (twice, actually) and has an agenda for IETF87 focused primarily on security questions and looking at the "data channel" aspect of WebRTC/RTCWEB. It should, as always, be an interesting session to listen in to.

If you can't get to Berlin, there are audio streams you can listen to remotely and a Jabber chat room where you can raise questions. Links to both can be found on the top of the agenda page. Do keep in mind that the times listed are local to Berlin, Germany.

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Jul 25

“Rough Guide To IETF 87″ Now Available – IPv6, DNSSEC, Routing and much, much more…

IETF LogoNext week is the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), taking place this time in Berlin, Germany, and it will be an incredibly busy week as something like 1,200-1,500 engineers gather in a hotel meeting space to debate and discuss various topics and create the open standards that power the Internet.  There are many different working groups meeting during the week and the IETF 87 agenda can seem a bit overwhelming.  To help with that, as we’ve done in the past, the Internet Society has published our “Rough Guide to IETF 87″ available at:

http://www.internetsociety.org/rough-guide-ietf87

This document reflects our (Internet Society) interests and what we see as the important topics related to the technology priorities we have an an organization.  The working groups and events listed are ones where we have Internet Society staff participating or where the topic being covered is one of our priorities.

For instance, within our team here at Deploy360, we’ll be there in Berlin at the working groups related to:

  • IPv6
  • DNSSEC
  • Routing resiliency and security

Most of which, but not all, are captured in the Rough Guide.  As we noted in an earlier post about DNSSEC activities, there are two groups focused on DNSSEC and DANE that are of great interest to us.  There are a wide number of IPv6-related groups in which we’ll be participating and several groups related to routing resiliency and security.

If you are reading this page here on our Deploy360 site, hopefully the Rough Guide will help you understand where we will be spending our time.

There are, of course, a great many other working groups meeting next week at IETF 87 that are doing outstanding work in Internet infrastructure, applications, routing, security, real-time communications, network operations and so much more.  The full agenda for IETF 87 is an amazing list of all the great open standards work happening across the IETF!

NOTE: If you unable to attend IETF 87 in Berlin in person, there are numerous methods of remote participation that you will allow you to listen to what is going on and to provide comments.

Jul 25

Apple Celebrates 1 Billion Podcast Subscriptions Via iTunes!

By way of a Facebook update from Donna Papacosta, I learned that Apple announced that there have been over 1 billion podcast subscriptions through iTunes. Yes, one billion subscriptions! And indeed opening up iTunes, going to the iTunes Store and clicking on "Podcasts" gets you this banner:

Itunes 1 billion podcasts banner 2

Clicking on the banner gets you to a page in iTunes celebrating this milestone and highlighting some of the popular podcasts:

Itunes 1 billion podcasts

Now, granted, this doesn't say how many of those subscriptions are actually listened to - I know that I have subscribed to a number of shows that I just don't get a chance to play. Nor does it say whether this is a historical or current number, i.e. are there 1 billion podcast subscriptions right now or is this going back to when it all started in 2005? (In other words, does it count subscriptions which were then later ended?)

Regardless, it's a huge number and definitely something to celebrate for those of us who enjoy the medium of podcasting and listening to (or contributing to) podcasts!

Many thanks to Donna for passing along the word of this milestone!

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