June 9, 2014 archive
Jun 09
FIR #759 – 6/9/14 – For Immediate Release
Jun 09
Speaking At SIPNOC 2014 On June 10 About TLS For SIP/VoIP/UC
What advantages does Transport Layer Security (TLS, what we used to call “SSL”) bring to voice-over-IP (VoIP) that uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)? What is the state of TLS usage within SIP and VoIP? Why isn’t it being used more?
Tomorrow, June 10, 2014, I’ll be speaking at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) 2014 event down in Herndon, Virginia, on the topic of “Is It Time For TLS For SIP?“. I’ll be discussing why we need more TLS usage in SIP-based communication, including what we think of as “VoIP” and also “Unified Communications (UC)”. The abstract for my talk is:
With concerns about large-scale pervasive monitoring on the Internet, many groups are encouraging the increased use of Transport Layer Security (TLS, what we used to call “SSL”). While SIP has had TLS support for quite some time, it is often not used. This session will look at concerns of using TLS with SIP and discuss opportunities for providing higher security for SIP-based communication. The session will also outline some newer innovations such as the DANE protocol that when coupled with DNSSEC can provide a higher level of trust for TLS encryption.
As you can tell, my focus will be around the “TLS for Applications” topic area we have here on Deploy360, as well as some discussion around DANE and what it can bring in terms of increased security.
I’ve spoken at SIPNOC events for the past two years (and before that) but my topic has always included IPv6. This time I won’t be doing that… but to my delight one of the talks before mine tomorrow will be Carl Klatsky from Comcast providing a case study of their work their voice services to IPv6. Here is his abstract:
Comcast Voice IPv6 Deployment Lessons Learned. Presented by Carl Klatsky, Comcast.
This presentation will review the successes, challenges, and lessons learned in deploying IPv6 support into Comcast’s IMS based SIP voice network, in support of an upcoming IPv6 technical trial. The presentation will review the overall target architecture covering both access and network side elements, and share the lessons learned with the SIP community.
I’m very much looking forward to hearing what Carl has to say!
There are many other great sessions on the SIPNOC 2014 agenda. Unfortunately I can only be at the event tomorrow and will be missing out on the great content on Wednesday and Thursday. You can, of course, expect to find me in any of the security-related sessions on Tuesday!
If any of you reading this are at SIPNOC 2014 tomorrow please do feel free to say hello!
P.S. And before anyone asks in the comments, no, there is not a live stream (or recordings) of the SIPNOC sessions. They try to keep it an informal atmosphere where information can be shared with the conference sessions without that information being immediately public.
Jun 09
What Major Change Is SoundCloud About To Make To Their Mobile Apps?
We noticed you've used our app to record and upload tracks to SoundCloud. With an upcoming version of the app, we'll be making changes to the way tracks are stored on your phone. If you have tracks that you've recorded but haven't uploaded, please follow the instructions below to save them. You can upload the tracks to your SoundCloud profile, or you can download them to your computer. Please do this as soon as possible to ensure that you don't lose anything you've recorded.
I cringed when I saw this... because I do use the SoundCloud app on my iPhone to record tracks for my "The Dan York Report" podcast and I do keep a number of different unpublished tracks sitting in the SoundCloud app. Often I may record a sound somewhere with the intent of later folding that into a recording (and which, admittedly, I often wind up never getting around to doing).
The key message of the email from SoundCloud is this:
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR TRACKS THAT YOU HAVE NOT UPLOADED UNLESS YOU TAKE ACTION BEFORE THE UPGRADE!
The email points out that all you need to do is upload the tracks to your SoundCloud account - and you can do so and make them "Private" so that they are only visible to you. They also note that you can download your sounds to your computer if you would prefer to do that. I chose to upload my tracks to SoundCloud as private recordings.
IMPORTANT: Note that when you upload your tracks to SoundCloud, the original date information will NOT be saved! That track you recorded in December 2012 that has the title "Sounds from Tuesday evening" will be uploaded to SoundCloud with a timestamp of when you upload the track. So if the date of the original recording is important to you, you may want to incorporate that date into the title of the track BEFORE you upload the track.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, the email from SoundCloud helpfully provided this image showing tracks that have not been uploaded:
I cringed when I read the email from SoundCloud for a larger reason. This upload of local tracks was no big deal. I was done in maybe 5 minutes. My larger concern though is... what is SoundCloud going to do to the recording experience?
Right now I mostly used the SoundCloud iOS app to record my TDYR podcasts (as I explained in an episode) as my TDYR podcast is all about trying to see how minimally and easily a podcast can be recorded.
However, the SoundCloud app seems to continue to move to being more about music consumption rather than creation. This started a while back when they moved "Record" from the home screen to being under the "..." menu choice. And then we haven't really seen any improvements or changes to the recording capability.
Will they improve the recording experience? Or further de-emphasize it?
We'll see... but in the meantime if you have any local recordings in the app you need to do something if you want to retain any of those recordings.
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