[May 02, 2007] How can P2P VoIP make our communications systems better? Tweet How can P2P VoIP make our communications systems better? By Medhavi Bhatia Peer to Peer is one of the most hotly debated technologies today. Born out of a file and music sharing, it has now come to rattle the chains of the communications industry. Enterprises as well as Service Providers are trying to grapple with the notion that intelligence may all be located outside their network - inside common equipment like user PCs, handsets, cell phones, watches and numerous other embedded devices. As expected, it raises eyebrows and important questions start surfacing - What are the benefits of this technology? What kind of networks and applications it can support? How much time and money do I need to build these networks? How do I ensure security and control over my network? In this article we try to address some of these questions. Steroids for the Internet: In his book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat), Thomas Friedman refers to technologies such as VoIP as a flattener. He refers to these technologies as “the steroids” since they augment and improve the effects of other flatteners. We believe that when P2P is applied to VoIP, it has the same effects. This is because P2P VoIP allows a business or service provider to stop worrying about managing the network. The network essentially becomes “free” to the user and “free” to the carrier. This creates a chain reaction. The total cost of running services and applications on top of such networks becomes much lower compared to traditional settings and can provide the basis of competitive advantage. Services and Applications also create new opportunities to monetize the network. Some examples of applications deployed over P2P VoIP networks today are: international and domestic call plans, voicemail/IVR, video calls, streaming audio, IPTV, call centers, PBX (News - Alert) and PBX integration, web conferencing and even services like language translation, IT consulting etc. Examples of companies developing some of these applications are: Jyve (http://www.jyve.com/), Skype (News - Alert) (http://www.skype.com/), Damaka (http://www.damaka.com/), Avaya (http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/products/offers/one-x_quick_edition.h tm) and 3CLogic (http://www.3clogic.com/). Common benefits: P2P VoIP also provides significantly lower costs of owning and maintaining a network. For example, there is less equipment to manage than a traditional network providing the same services to the same number of users. Besides, the network can now scale much better and has no correlation with costs to build and maintain. Staff requirements are low and users can be added much faster. In addition, the availability of the network is much higher. Self Organizing Ad-Hoc Networks: Ad-Hoc Networks have great opportunities for P2P VoIP based applications. Ad-Hoc networks are used to build disaster proof emergency communications systems, military systems and industry/home automation systems. These networks sometimes also use Ad-Hoc routing protocols to self organize and route data from one point to another. P2P VoIP can be used in cases where there are multiple users on such networks trying to communicate with each other, for example a college campus could utilize such a system to reach students quickly and reliably in case of an emergency. SaaS (News - Alert): P2P VoIP also proves to be a very good fit for the new Software as hosted services model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service). Traditionally hosted communications based services and applications (PBX, IVRs etc) are not known to scale well. P2P VoIP essentially removes this barrier and allows these applications to reach their full potential. Social Networks: Another area where P2P VoIP has tremendous potential is communications in social and gaming networks. These networks (like Second Life, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life) are growing at a rapid pace and not only provide individuals with social interaction but also businesses with new ways to collaborate and promote/test products. Ongoing Work: The internet standards body IETF has taken upon itself to standardize protocols for P2P VoIP. A new IETF working group called P2PSIP was recently created to develop protocols which allow SIP (the dominant VoIP technology) to work in a true P2P fashion. This creates an open environment for device and application vendors to come together and build interoperable systems. Researchers at Columbia University, Cornell, College of William and Mary are actively engaged with the industry (companies like SIPeerior, http://www.sipeerior.com/ and Avaya (News - Alert)) in this initiative. While the P2P technology is itself fairly mature, it requires modifications when applied to communications networks of today. Most of these stem from the need for the system to work with a wide variety of enterprise and consumer NATs and the stringent security and privacy requirements associated with communications applications. Medhavi Bhatia is the CTO and co-founder of 3CLogic (www.3clogic.com), a Rockville, MD based startup which provides real-time P2P enabled applications for enterprises and large networks. Voice over IP (VoIP) X A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) X IPTV delivers a digital television service to subscribers via the Internet Protocol over a broadband connection....more Private Branch Exchange (PBX) X Originally, telephone features were provided by telephone central office switching systems, often called CENTREX. PBX systems emerged as customers wanted to have more calling features and control over...more Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) X SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging. SIP...more Routing X There are many often too many explanation of routing. Here’s one: Hop-by-Hop Routing - IP Routing - Distributes routing to routers - Networks look/act like trees - Data can traverse many routers ...more [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]