THE PULVER REPORT: The August 9, 1999 Issue

Heard on the Net:

People on the Move :
The Month of August '99 has seen the shifting of some of the people who have played a role in the growth of the international VON Industry. Three of the VON pioneers who have changed jobs are:
-Joe Rinde has left MCI Worldcom and has joined AT&T Labs as an Internet Architecture Director.
- Scott Wharton has left VocalTec and has joined Broadsoft as their VP of Marketing.
- Larry Fromm has left Dialogic to join Cellit as VP, Business Development.

Each of these people have made their impact felt within our industry and we wish them continued success in their new positions.

In addition: Eric Zimmerer has left Level 3 and is reported to be joining ipVerse. Also, Ed Thomas is no longer President of RSL USA.

Companies on the Move:
- VIPCalling recently received $25M in additional funding and they have changed its corporate name to iBasis.
- Trillum Software recently received $10M in additional funding.
- Broadcom has recently acquired HotHaus.

pulver.com posts IP Telephony news daily at http://pulver.com/news. If you would like to subscribe to our weekly IP Telephony News newsletter, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/news/subscribe.html )

SIP hits the Sweet Spot
The month of August, 1999 has two interoperability events for SIP. The first was the "Second SIP Bake off" held on August 5th and 6th at pulver.com's new facility in Melville, NY and the second will be the International Softswitch Consortium ( http://www.softswitch.org ) Interoperability event on August 17th. The message here is that SIP is gaining more momentum and that PBX's, Ethernet phones and Virtual switches are for the first time using the same communication protocol. The real impact of this convergence could be the availability of the feature set envisioned with AIN twenty-plus years ago.

Mind you, I don't want to give the wrong impression, during the Bake-off one of my employees commented on "how cute it was that these companies get all excited when one of them makes the other's phone ring." But maybe this is the way it should have been when Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison, and Elisha Gray were fighting over who invented the telephone.

When (or if) SIP becomes a default protocol for both the enterprise and service providers, a new era could exist for calls and applications. Imagine a roaming personalized centrex for "friends & family" that can be manipulated in presentation and in media by appropriate elements on the network. Best yet, this has an easy-to-understand web model that allows end users to author and/or alter their calls.

What we learned other than the fact that 14 pizzas feed 36 techies and that my office can support another 90 devices on our existing electrical network is the following: (1) SIP is maturing with companies testing every aspect of SIP call completion and (2) Bake offs help.

The eleven companies (3Com, 8x8, Broadsoft, Cisco, Dynamicsoft, Ericsson, Lucent, MCI Worldcom, Mitel, Nortel Networks and Pingtel) and two universities (Columbia University and the University of Waterloo) all collaborated wonderfully. My personal take is that this was an enjoyable experience for all those involved. pulver.com is open and willing to help any effort to promote interoperability.

Instant Presence and Collaborative Messaging
The controversy over AOL blocking Microsoft and friends has left the end user and the future of the IMPP protocol in turmoil.

As a result, pulver.com is hosting a closed-door, invitation-only, "Camp David" style, Instant Messaging Summit on September 8th in New York. The goal of the meeting is to help find common ground within the Instant Messaging Industry and to contribute to finding a workable solution to the currently interoperability impasse.

Invitations have been sent to the companies in our August 3rd open letter, ( http://pulver.com/openletter ) and some of these companies have already confirmed their attendance. If you or someone at your company is involved in the Instant Messaging (IM) space and would like to send a representative to the meeting, please contact Donna Levy ( donna@pulver.com ) at pulver.com for an invitation.

For the VON industry, the use of Instant Messaging has been seen as a signaling method for the change in location (or device) of an end user. Systems in the wireless space have started to take advantage of Instant Messaging Protocol during this year. These systems will expand the possibilities of call-forwarding and follow-me services in the near future.

At pulver.com we believe that the discussion of IMPP as "text chat"-only system does not take into account all of the possibilities for the future use of Instant Messaging within products and services. Our expectation is that many of our readers have plans for using Instant Messaging and Presence protocol to manage changes in call status.

pulver.com has recently established a mailing list for Instant Messaging. To subject, please email: majordomo@pulver.com, leave the subject blank and in the body write: subscribe im

While the traditional phone system has a ringing mechanism that is being carried on in the NextGen networks, the broadband connections that are being attached to our offices and houses lend themselves to a login model far more easily. What's more, with people's tendency to be in transit a significant amount of time, the end user would benefit from providing presence and routing information selectively as we evolve into an "always on" world.

Some of the existing IM services hint to even greater possibilities. One can find some implementations of IM which are built around TCP/IP based games. By taking advantage of IM, these games feature ways for people to partner and work collaboratively (and cheat if that is their intent).

From our perspective, we believe a possible solution to IM Interoperability exists within the existing IETF protocols. For example, IRC has enabled transfer of chat messaging for some time. By adding a proxy server between IMPP and an IRC Server model we believe a solution exists which can keep the customers base of an IM service provider private while at the same time providing a means for customers from different IM service providers to directly communicate.

We will present our proposed solution to the Instant Messaging industry on September 8th during the common ground meeting - and we expect this will be one of several proposals discussed to help find a solution to the current state of Instant Messaging madness.

Kids on the Net Part III - Have you been Pokemon'ed Yet?
During the past couple of years, it has been a lot of fun watching my five-year-old twin sons grow up on the net. In September they will be entering Kindergarten, and chances are they will be in a position to teach their teachers a thing or two about emerging Net technologies.

These days my kids' favorite websites include: http://www.etoys.com , http://www.ebworld.com , http://www.ebay.com , http://www.pokemon.com and http://ninetendo.com . This summer my kids have learned how to search eBay for Pokemon cards which they don't have and on a routine basis ask my wife to made bids on their behalf. What I find really amazing is that my kids also monitor the on-line bidding for a particular object, and it's now routine to hear things like "Mommy you have been outbid" coming from the kids.

So much has changed during the past two summers - both in my kids' ability to communicate between themselves and the outside world. Watching my kids surf the net is a real treat, and they are truly growing up in a "dot com" world - a world where they can add a .com to a noun they are interested in and more times then not are able to visit a related website.

International Softswitch Consortium Update ( http://www.softswitch.org )
The International Softswitch Consortium held its first annual meeting on July 21st in Santa Clara, CA. The first order of business was to elect the first board and Technical Advisory Committee [TAC] members. Up until this point, the Softswitch has been acting with an interim board and TAC. The new board consisted of representatives from eleven members: Alcatel, Cisco, Enron, Fujitsu, HP, IEX, Level3, Northpoint, pulver.com, Sonus and UT Starcom.

The TAC has eight members: Alcatel, Cisco, Fore, Level3, Nokia, Tekelec, Sonus and Vertical Networks. The TAC interacts with five workgroups working on: Architecture, MGCP, SIP, Applications and Carriers. The workgroup's email discussions are available to all consortium members. There will be an interoperability event on August 17th, and all interested parties should contact Carl@pulver.com.

More Lessons from the Wireless Industry
The need for echo cancellation and silence suppression has been the subject of a few corporate briefings here in Melville, New York.

The "last inch" may not sound very exciting, but the end user's perception of quality can be greatly affected by the efforts put into this. Some companies are advocates for the use of these devices in the network, and others would have them at the edge. Regardless, the benefit, is two-fold. The first is with the end user. Wireless has a dismal record of sounding "good" all the time, but the benefit of being anyplace makes for a forgiving "standard".

We have a joke internally about the imprecise VON QoS parameters: "High", "Low", "Best Effort" and worst of all "my cell phone". But when the echo is reduced the quality of the call seems dramatically better. The second benefit is that, using silence suppression, the reduction of packets can be dramatic.

pulver.com Open Test Network: Update
Back at Spring '99 VON we announced the pulver.com Open Test Network (POTN) together with list companies which stated their commitment to participate.

For those of you who missed the prior announcement, The pulver.com Open Test Network is a site on the Internet where vendors and service providers can utilize VON equipment freely. Many companies find it hard to utilize corporate or internal networks for testing because of security concerns. Security devices such as firewalls and proxy servers often have to be properly configured to enable VoIP testing. Planning, configuring and getting approval to implement the test can drag on for months and months.

The Open Test Network is unrestricted and thus enables companies to test outside their internal networks. The site can be used for demonstrations and as a reference point for company and inter-company testing. Companies which have joined the Open Test Network include: 3Com, 8x8, ACT Networks, Analogical Systems, Andrea Electronics, Bell Atlantic, Brooktrout, Cisco, CNM Network, Delta Three, Dialogic, ECI Telecom, ECtel, Ericsson, EHPT, Fujitsu Business Communication Systems, GRIC, iBasis (formally VIPCalling), Innomedia, Internet Telecom, Knowledge by Design, Level 3, Lucent, MCI Worldcom, Mediagate, Mediatrix, MIND CTI, Motorola, Netspeak, Nuera, OzEmail Interline, Quicknet Technologies, QWES.COM, RADCOM, Sun Microsystems, TEK DigiTel, Telenor Nextel, VegaStream, Vocaltec and Xybridge.

The homepage for POTN is http://pulver.com/potn and this is where one can get more information regarding our current activities and see the updated list of participants. We will be also updating the list of equipment which has been either contributed or loaned to the POTN.

Since the launch of the POTN back in April, we have moved into our new office space in Melville, NY, and we have started to receive the promised equipment for the Open Test Network. As of August 9th, technology from Andrea Electronics, Cisco, Columbia University, Nortel and Mediatrix are up and running on the pulver.com Open Test Network.

At Fall '99 VON I have allocated an 1800 square feet area in our sold-out exhibit hall to demonstrate the pulver.com Open Test Network. For the companies which would like to participate with us on the show floor, we require that they have their equipment in place in Melville by September 14th.

So this is our status: We have just installed two 8 x 8 rack systems, a T1 with access to the Internet, and two PRI's to the PSTN. We are about to receive a PBX so we can share the PRI's more easily and also monitor / block egress on to the PSTN. (We are not trying to run Free World Dialup here ;<)).

In Helsinki, we were able to demonstrate SIP services with Mediatrix and Columbia University's SIP Server. We also had a thin client demo with Andrea Electronics. Now is the time to place your equipment so you can invite others to test interoperability with you. At Fall VON, which begins on September 27, we plan to issue another press release.

Carl Ford ( carl@pulver.com ) is ready and willing to set up conference calls and get the Open Test Network in place for the conference. If you are interested in participating, please email him directly.

Internet Telephony Trouble in Bermuda
Tempers overflowed on to the pages of Bermuda's only daily newspaper as captured in the headline of the top business story: "What at total mochery!"

(See Cheap calls with computers underline unfairness in industry - Logic chief http://www.accessbda.bm/01/01010301.htm#10019S )

In this community of 60,000 people served by a Cable&Wireless monopoly, the Ministry of Telecommunications has debated the relative merits of Internet Telephony for over a year without coming to any conclusions. With a typical call off the island running around a US$ 1.00 per minute, Peter Durhager, President of Logic Communications Limited could not hold back any further and started offering an Internet telephony alternative on July 27th.

The new service survived 10 days until a letter from the Ministry of Telecommunications threaten to put Mr. Durhager in jail for his renegade action. During the same week, TelecomComputers.com placed ads in the Royal Gazette promoting the TC100, an Internet Telephony-enabled PC as regulations do not prevent Bermudians from buying PC's and downloading software. As Mr Durhager sarcastically noted, "If someone from outside Bermuda can come along and just because their product doesn't look like a traditional telephone they get away with it, even if it does exactly the same job, then what is the problem here?

I asked Daniel Berninger, the CEO of TelecomComputers.com to give his side of the story. Dan writes: "the distinction between service and product exists in many places, but, more importantly, the Bermudians should ask themselves how they remain in situation where telephone calls get priced on par with third world countries. Bermuda sits just 681 miles from New York, but I can call New York from New Zealand at one third the price it costs me from Bermuda. It is perplexing why it should take a year to consider the value of opening telecommunications to competition. In the last five years, no one has ever concluded keeping a monopoly serves the best interests of end users." Stay Tuned...