Are Videophones About to Blow Up?

gxv3000

Are you ready for the coming videophone service revolution? You've no doubt heard the business world is all in a tizzy about the contracting economy, but perhaps you didn't know that some of the more savvy titans of industry have been saving costs by convening through video teleconference for a while now. And the trend may be spilling over into the consumer market, as people find it harder to travel to see far-off relatives for birthdays, anniversaries and whatnot. If you're a videophone … [Read more...]

Are Skype’s Problems Architectural?

Skype has had its share of bad news lately, with a malware attack following close on the heels of a massive outage. Current events raise questions about Skype's technology that won't — and shouldn't — go away. One is the perennial architecture question: proprietary (Skype) vs. open (SIP). Recently I asked SIP application company Counterpath's CTO Jason Fischl to talk about it. Fischl was also the architect of TelTel's SIP-based VoIP system. "When you're trying to design a system … [Read more...]

Skype Gets Lessons from Murphy

The most entertaining explanation I've heard about last week's Skype outage is this posting from Rostislav Siryk in his blog: "Skype’s outage is ...[a] natural consequence of quantum physics. Because users [are] like atoms." In other words, it's within the realm of possibility that all the world's PCs will download a Microsoft update and reboot at the identical moment. On the other hand, when was the last time you saw an object move by itself as a result of all its atoms just … [Read more...]

Blackberry, Avaya, and Argonne votes against VoIP

By year end Blackberry users will have a new WiFi-enabled dual-mode device. Here. This week Avaya debuts a new SIP-based PBX system for distributed businesses featuring low-cost VoIP phones. Here. Network World has a cautionary tale today about how Argonne Labs ended up replacing its green field VoIP implementation with a TDM system because of problems with the Cisco handsets. Author Paul Desmond offers a detailed case study. Here. … [Read more...]