November 2000

It's More Than VoIP!

BY Tom Keating

Whenever I hear something like that I'm tempted to pick up my remote control and hurl it at the television while saying (in my best Ren voice from the Ren & Stimpy cartoon), "You idiot!" Okay, so maybe I need to lay off the caffeine a little.

Don't they know? Voice over IP isn't just about free long-distance anymore! Yes, it's true that Internet telephony is rooted in toll bypass (free long-distance), but the Internet telephony industry has many companies developing business software and hardware applications to take advantage of the other cost economies of VoIP. Service providers are also on the VoIP bandwagon since there is revenue to be made. A lot has happened in this market in recent months, and I thought I'd update you on some of the announcements.

THEY KNOW JACK
One of my favorite Internet telephony companies is Quicknet Technologies. They make several great products, including the Internet PhoneJACK-PCI (a desktop Internet telephone card that is a single-channel full-duplex PCI audio card designed to enhance voice over the Internet), Internet PhoneJACK-ISA (designed for personal use with a modem or office-to-office connectivity using a LAN), Internet LineJACK (a single line Internet telephony gateway card designed for the home office and small to medium-size business use with modem or a LAN), and Internet PhoneCARD (an Internet telephone PCMCIA card for mobile users providing hardware compression and enhanced VoIP quality).

All of these products use Quicknet's hardware-based audio acceleration and echo cancellation, which also utilizes an on-board DSP to offload the processing from the CPU. This in turn helps reduce audio latency and perform multiple audio processing functions in parallel without impacting CPU performance. The end result is dramatically improved voice clarity with little or no delays.

Quicknet recently announced the latest version of Internet SwitchBoard 4.0, an Internet telephone application providing voice and fax calling capabilities. I was intrigued by one of its newest features, which allows users access to multiple Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) using a single account that is managed through a brandable Web-based account center.

A SwitchBoard software user's calls can be routed to the Internet telephone carrier that provides the least expensive option or the customer's preferred carrier. Current carriers supported include both Net2Phone and deltathree. Also, I should stress that the software can "hide" the intricacies from the user by automatically routing a call over the least expensive ITSP.

One of the "knocks" against VoIP is the reliability of the Internet, or lack thereof. Well, SwitchBoard supports an auto connect feature. When a carrier becomes unavailable, the auto connect feature will re-route the call to the next available carrier, guaranteeing a higher call completion rate for PC-to-phone calls. As more ITSPs are added to Quicknet's supported list, the customer essentially has access to a "global distributed phone carrier" that becomes more reliable and redundant with each ITSP addition.

This is similar to the Napster or Gnutella model, under which a user can choose a file's download location (usually the one with the fastest connection) from a list of users. Likewise, Internet PhoneJACK can choose the best or cheapest ITSP to use. I believe this model has serious implications for incumbent phone carriers. This brings competition to a whole new level. Since Quicknet makes it easy for customers to switch phone carriers on a per call basis, the traditional carriers are going to have to change their traditional pricing models.

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL THING
Another company that's had a lot of news of late, both in the Internet telephony field as well as the communications arena is Artisoft, a software company that develops the TeleVantage PC-PBX. Artisoft recently announced two IP telephony offerings for TeleVantage. The first announcement was a marketing partnership between Artisoft and e-Tel, a leading provider of H.323-compliant VoIP telephones. By integrating Artisoft's TeleVantage software-PBX and e-Tel's FreeRide VoIP telephones, businesses can take advantage of VoIP capabilities at the desktop. Telecommuters can also use the e-Tel phones at home and connect to the Artisoft PC-PBX without requiring a third-party remove voice solution. Aren't standards, such as H.323, and the omnipotence of IP networks, a beautiful thing?

The second announcement was a marketing partnership with Quicknet Technologies to deliver a VoIP solution to small and medium businesses (SMBs). By integrating Artisoft's TeleVantage software-PBX with Quicknet's Internet SwitchBoard software and hardware, resellers are able to provide SMBs with a practical and full-featured VoIP solution that allows users to make high-quality, low-cost Internet-based calls over their existing network, using standard analog phones.

Another Artisoft-related announcement is worthy of mention (although it's not VoIP-related). Recently, MUSICTELE.COM announced its @Vantage hardware solution. It is a packaged kit for dealers with PCI or ISA boards, an installation wizard and documentation for dealers to operate the board with Artisoft's TeleVantage. It is targeted for use with SOHO and KSU applications. @Vantage supports configurations as small as two lines by six phones and up to 128 ports. This board is much less expensive than Dialogic hardware, giving dealers the ability to sell this system at a cost-competitive price point that would be more attractive to small and medium businesses.

FROM THE TRADESHOW FLOOR
At a recent communications trade show, Comgates demonstrated their multi-protocol, on-the-fly softswitches to me. With Comgates' CSSW 4000 Softswitch and Media Gateway, you can accept and send out any protocols. They had set up live, simulated networks that were running calls from a matrix of nine different combinations.

Some examples include SIP-to- PSTN calls, H.323v2-to-PSTN, PSTN-to-SIP and SIP-to-H.323v1. I was able to make a call from a PingTel SIP phone to an H.323 client, such as Microsoft NetMeeting. I thought this was very cool stuff. Using this product allows service providers to deploy these servers and not care what type of end points the customers have. Whether it's SIP or H.323, it doesn't matter. Keep your eye on these guys. Read the sidebar on ConvergeNet for the latest on IP telephony interoperability.

I also spent a lot of time with VoIP Group at a recent tradeshow. They demonstrated their next-generation family of IP telephony products, called VTS. These products allow the use of minimal bandwidth to place high quality voice telephone calls over the Internet using either a standard telephone, personal computer, or Web browser.

Many VoIP products provide billing, gateway, or gatekeeper functionality, but I've never seen all of these features in one product from one vendor. What makes VoIP Group's product unique and innovative? It is a complete and comprehensive Internet telephony solution providing all of these features and more. This eliminates the requirement to purchase additional third-party management or billing systems and simplifies technical and administrative support issues with a single contact point. The VTS product supports all Gatekeeper functions, including call routing, accounting, billing, network and subscriber management, and calling cards, in addition to numerous value-added features such as real-time call detail records.

All of the VoIP Group's products are H.323 industry standard-compatible and are interoperable with other Internet telephony software and hardware products. In the near future, the VoIP Group plans to release new products for special applications, including the IP PBX market. Also unique to their product is that they ping every gateway from every gateway, every five seconds, and monitor the performance. If any gateway drops below a predefined threshold, then that gateway can be taken "offline" by automatically routing calls to an alternate gateway.

Another company I can't neglect is 3Com, who recently debuted an Ethernet power solution that puts electricity for their NBX IP phones on the Ethernet line. 3Com Ethernet Power Source is a central device for adding power to the same premise cabling that is also carrying voice and data signals. Available in either 12 or 24 ports, the power source provides a central location to power a number of 3Com NBX telephones, rather than requiring a separate "power brick" for each individual LAN device. 3Com Ethernet Power Source moves the power away from the desktop and brings it to the network closet, where power protection is generally more available.

TOO MANY TO COUNT
There are dozens of Internet telephony companies I didn't mention in this column that are developing some interesting business applications with VoIP, such as VoIP integration into the call center for e-commerce/Web shopping portals, seamless VoIP call integration into existing ACD infrastructure, telecommuting VoIP "software" clients, and more. Unfortunately, even my usually long-winded self only has so much space to talk about these things, but I want to make sure you keep yourselves informed about these companies. I'm running short on space for this column, but there is plenty more information out there. 

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