IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings - Connected Home

Virtualization – Part 2 - The Abstraction of the Computer

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:16:06 +0000

Here's the second part of our Virtualization series and a continuation of Virtualization - Part 1 – The Abstraction of the Internet.

A computer consists of several key elements that along with software (and firmware) provide useful applications like the browser you are using to read this blog from our web servers.

Here are some of the items that are noteworthy:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) – aka Pentium for you wintel folks, is the heart of the computer and executes instructions (software or firmware) that are programmed by a software engineer.

Input/Output Devices – Provides a method to enter , display or share information from the computer, for example: Display, keyboard, mouse.

Random Access Memory (RAM) – Is memory that is accessed by the CPU which losses its contents when you remove power. RAM (Typically) is the fastest memory that a CPU and “read” or “write”.

Disk Drive – Is memory that is also accessed by the CPU which doesn’t lose its contents when you remove power. Disks are slower than RAM.

Flash Memory – Is like RAM but has the characteristics of a disk drive.

Data Bus – Depending on the CPU (8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit or 64 bits wide) is where the CPU can read or write data from or to the various memory devices, Input/Output devices. Each bit is a “1” or “0”.

Address Bus – Also dependent on the CPU , this is where the CPU (using bits) selects the location in memory to read or write data.

Firmware – aka BIOS for wintel folks, is software that is used to “boot” (restart from a known state) the computer that resides in Flash memory or a Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM).

Software – eg Office.

Operating System – eg Windows, is a layer of software that abstracts the hardware and controls the overall operation of the computer.

Networks – Are communication systems that allow computers to share information.

Programming Languages – A CPU can only understand binary (“1” or “0” s) for the instructions it executes. There are various instructions to read , write, add, multiply, subtract , divide and move data. However, Humans need to abstract the instructions into words to make it easier. These languages define the way words are used forming a grammer (just like English or Spanish) . The first form of languages are assembler languages which are specific to a CPU and not portable, the subsequent languages like C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal provided more functionality with Database languages like 3GL, 4GL etc..

A computer can be a main frame, a desktop or your laptop which were confined to a area (room, your desk or your lap).

Advances in networking have provided efficient methods of distributing the CPU from Disks, Input/Output devices.

Storage Area Networks are clusters of disk drives that are no longer directly connected to the computer using the various buss’s described above. This is a key level of abstraction which has allowed distributed computing to evolve into GRID computing where the software is one place, the CPUs in another and memory in yet another. Distributed computing provides more efficient use of computing at unparalleled level of disaster recovery.

Why is this important?

Computing has and will continue to be the mother of invention for advances not only in the hardware or software but also in the networks that connect everything together like the Internet or also an Enterprise VPN.

More later :

Virtualization – Part 3 - The Abstraction of Applications
Concepts of a Application Programmers Interface (API), examples and pitfalls for APIs and the abstraction of Web Services.

7 easy ways to use VoIP

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:23:32 +0000

7 easy ways to use VoIP

1) Setup a Skype account and get Skype-in/Skype-out.

2) Setup a Gizmo account at SIPphone.

3) Get a Google account

4) Setup yourself with a Grand Central Account(owned by Google)

5) Get a Dual-mode wireless phone.

6) Install Fring on the dual-mode phone.

7) Associate all numbers from Skype, Gizmo, Wireless phone, deskphone, etc to your Grand Central number, and publish your Grand Central Number.

This is what you get from all this:

INBOUND CALLING: When someone dials your Grand Central number, all the associated numbers in your Grand Central profile will ring simultaneously. You have your choice which phone to answer with. You also have the ability to "move" the call or "switch" the call from one device to another associated device. It's the coolest thing - all you do is press the '*' key and all the phones start ringing again. You just pick up another phone and hang up on the phone you are moving from. There are also loads of other features with Grand Central. It's just great!!!

OUTBOUND CALLING: The selection device when placing a call to someone else is normally dictated by your location at the time you are making the call. If you are in a car, then wireless is really all you get due to availability. If you are in an area that has wifi service that works with your dual-mode phone (like an airport or coffee shop), then Fring is your friend because you can use numerous options. If you are in the office with your choice, then use the phone or network of your choice. If I know that I am about to leave the office, I might take the call on my cell. If I am about to settle in to a marathon of conference calls, then it's desk phone with speaker or head-phones on.

VoIP works and VoIP is mainstream nowadays.

Adam "voiploser" Uzelac

DISCLAIMER: The comments here are mine only. They don't necessarily reflect intelligence, refined thoughts, or anything that the reader should take too seriously. Should the reader expect a polished thought process in the content addressed here, then a strong dose of medication should be prescribed to address that misconception.

Another chapter in Rochester's Telecommunication History

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:58:30 +0000

Adding to Adam's recent blog on Rochester's contribution to communications.

Hiram Sibley is another famous Rochesterian who worked closely with Samuel F.B. Morse ( the inventor of the Telegraph) and co-founded Western Union along with Ezra Cornell ( co-founder of Cornell University).

In 1876 Western Union was the leading communications company at the time, and when an unknown inventor by the name of Alexander Graham Bell tried to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000.

The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy.

Two years later, the president of Western Union told his colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then the Bell no longer wanted to sell the patent.

By the 3rd year, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union.

In this industry one needs to keep an open mind to innovation!

Google 2.0 is here - Introducing free Google 411 for Voice

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:32:12 +0000

Wow, things really do happen fast and a great example of “internet time”.

Here’s the result of my prediction on March 19th.

Watch out Voice based directory services have just been disrupted and expect Google to be leader in this space.

Google Phone + TellMe Services = Google 2.0

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:19:30 +0000

Just posted a comment on a fellow blogger's post on the Google mobile phone.

In that Google's announcement is not a position against the iphone, but more importantly against Microsoft with their latest announcement of their acquisition of Tell Me.

Do you know what Tell Me does?

Well, Tell Me provides a highly scalable Speech Recognition Interactive Voice Response platform for the Fortune 100. For example, if you call United Airlines you'll experience Tell Me and can tell (no pun intended) that it's Tell me when you hear the gears between you speaking and that platform deciding what you may have said and the next menu prompt that may be associated with your input.

Back to google, Google is google not only to their brilliant search engine , but more importantly how it makes money. Google has created a totally automated advertising market between marketers and their markets

Totally automated in the sense that a marketer selects words that are important to their offer and bid against click thoroughs (not purchases). Have a hot word in a hot market, pay a lot

They limit their bad collections by requiring marketers to pay upfront where google can deduct the click thorough in real-time. Don't have enough money in your account, that's ok, google will offer the next higher bidder to the search request.

Brilliant technology working in a brilliant business model. No people , no bad collections and all to the highest bidder.

Back to Google 2.0, if you take the Google cell phone that is to be mass marketed and to a market that doesn't use a PC and add the best of google and tell me and you have their next market disrupter.

Google 2.0 = Google Cell Phone + Tell Me like services + Google Adwords will result in game changing play as to how traditional telephone directory services (yellow pages and directory assistance) make their money.

I expect to blog more of this reality in 18 months

Om Malik is reporting that "Web Giants Team Up for Wireless Spectrum Auctions".

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:00:45 +0000

Take note as Om Malik is reporting that "Web Giants Team Up for Wireless Spectrum Auctions".

The item to take note is where in the Radio Spectrum the web giants are watching. 700Mhz could be a the space where higher bit rate , non-line-of-sight solutions may develop.

As a general rule of thumb, the available bit-rate increases as you move higher in the Radio Specturm. The 2.4Ghz range provides less available bit rate than say 5.3Ghz. However achieving higher bit rates at 5.3Ghz requires line-of-sight and is more suspectible to packet loss with sources of mositure (rain, snow, leaves, etc...).

The definition of line-of-sight is that the premise radio attenna must have a clear shot at the radio tower, any obstruction in-line will decrease the available bit rate and any trees that are in-line (depending on where you sit in the Radio Specturm) may cause packet loss due to the mositure they carry.

Lower rates of the Radio Specturm offer bit rates that don't require line-of-sight however don't have the bit rates available at higher frequencies.

Let's watch this play out as I'm sure there will be innovation that utilizes past technologies like 'spread sprectrum" that will harness the bit rate at lower frequencies taking full advantage of non-line-of-sight.

Mobile Phone Industry Marketing Wins and Losses

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:42:22 +0000

Here is a Win

Sometime ago, I blogged on the topic that mobile phones are no longer limited to Voice and have become multi-media marketing machines.

The concept of text messaging, ring tones, photos , music and video represent a very large revenue opportunity. Clearly targeting youths and their disposable income.

I was talking to a good friend today about his experience in purchasing a new mobile phone at the Verizon store down the street, within 1 square mile there 4 Verizon stores each targeting different segments: 1). Circuit City, 2) Verizon, 3) BJ Warehouse and 4) Mall Kiosk.

Here’s a Loser (at least for now)

My new AudioVox 6700 ultimate converged windows mobile phone with: 1) One number follow me services (Fixed Mobile Convergence), 2) email , 3) WiFi, 4) GPRS and 5). Bluetooth. What a disappointment.

I am participating in Global Crossing’s internal FMC trial lead by my peer Gary Miller. The software doesn’t play well together within Windows and CDMA devices, problems that require me to reset the device a few times a day I can’t get thru an 8 hour workday while traveling due to poor battery consumption in CDMA mode, the phone client trying to attach to WiFi access points decreasing battery life to less than 2 hours.

What was I thinking? It’s a windows device and in less than 3 weeks I’ve already seen the blue screen of death on a couple of occasions.

I’m sure that both the hardware and software vendors will get things straightened out , but it will take time to become as solid as my Motorola RAZR V3.

Here’s the thing about new technology and marketing, the marketing folks will tell you that it can do 10 things, reality is can only do 6, 3 things are somewhat working and there’s one thing that doesn’t work at all.

In our trial we are still trying to get the 6 things working reliably.

Cisco versus Apple - Round 2

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:45:39 +0000

It's interesting to watch this dance between 2 technology savvy companies.

I'm not a lawyer, but have experience in both patent and trademark areas while working at Harris Corporation and Acterna.

From my perspective, Apple did in good faith attempted to negotiate a license for sometime, but walked away from the table the evening before the now famous announcement at MacWorld 2007.

Apple is playing a game , in which they feel they can show Cisco didn't protect the mark (which trademark owners must) and their use of iphone won't confuse the market.

It is said, it wasn't for money but for interoperability. For the iphone ? or another apple announcement that could be more disruptive to Cisco?

I think it's the later , I think it's all about Apple TV.

The announcement of Apple TV and Apple Inc place Apple right in the middle of your living room, and right next to Cisco's largest acquisition ever, Scientific Atlanta.

Add more fuel to the topic and note that Microsoft has entered your living room with their latest Xbox 360 offering IPTV.

The folks at Apple are smart and they are playing an awesome game.

Bill Gates says, “Internet to revolutionize TV in 5 years”, Are you Ready?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:31:36 +0000

Video over any network is big news, content is available over the internet, over Xbox live, and over your mobile phone.

The entertainment market is moving to a model where users want to be entertained , right now, over the media they select and with the content they like (TiVo , Apple TV, etc.. )

But are you ready to be exposed to targeted marketing at a unprecedented level?

Please take this poll and let us know your thoughts.

Is ADSL2+ Bad for VoIP?

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:45:21 +0000

Ran across an interesting blog at Om Malik’s GigaOM site. Good discussion in trying to understand how upstream bandwidth can be dynamically altered within ISP’s ADSL2+ infrastructure.

Although ADSL2+ offers greater bandwidth between the Central Office and the subscribers home, as well as greater resiliency when confronted with changing (noisy) line conditions , it also provides for either a IP or ATM upstream connection.

ADSL , ADSL2+ , xDSL are electrical transmission specifications between the devices at the Central Office and customer premise.

Within a ATM backbone, both ADSL2+ and ADSL services are managed on a per connection (subscriber ) basis, with each connection having a Committed Information Rate (CIR). These connections (subscribers) are aggregated over a physical port between the DSLAM and the ATM switch. Each of subscribers are allowed to burst to the stated policy and have a guarantee of the CIR as a minimum.

Residential services (non-business class) typically have a very low CIR and come no where to the advertised rates. If all subscribers on a given ATM port are active and bursting. The ATM switch will begin to police each subscriber down to their CIR. In this case the ATM port between the DSLAM and ATM switch are over subscribed.

Within a IP backbone the same argument exists, Tier 2/3 ISPs oversubscribe their backbones and at times of congestion each subscriber will not experience the advertised rates.

Business class services are more expensive as providers provide more capacity, preferred routing an higher CIRs in a ATM world.

So ADSL2+ is not bad for VoIP – low CIRs and oversubscription is bad for VoIP.

Om Malik's Hybrid Satellite Terrestrial IPTV/Broadband Idea

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:37:59 +0000

Om Malik has provided some possible insight as to how Satellite content providers may evolve into something completely different, I quote:
" The Akimbo investment by AT&T also hints at a hybrid-TV-IP future …
Forget that, for a minute. These hybrid boxes are intriguing beasts, and can be quite helpful for telecom operators who are still struggling to roll out their IPTV networks, and losing ground to cable."

In June 2006, my colleague Dave Siegel ran the numbers in understanding the scalability of bandwidth usage against comments from Bell South’s CTO Brian Smith, followed in July by a quote from an interview Ronald Gruia conducted with Brian Smith:
"We have had our eyes open on IPTV, and none of the problems you mentioned were a surprise to us. Our primary concern was scalability, and we are working with them."

From a capacity perspective:
- a terrestrial content/broadband provider deploying an ITU-T G.983 fiber to the home system (also know as APON or BPON or marketed by Verizon as FiOS) has capacity of 622Mbit/s downstream. Assuming High Definition TV (HDTV) compressed to MPEG-4, requires 13Mbit/s per channel (at 720p resolution) or 47 HDTV channels per connected household.
- While a satellite content/broadband provider utilizing both C-band and Ku-band transponders will have capacity for over 1,000 local HDTV channels and 150 national HDTV channels per system..

Looks like a satellite operator has more downstream capacity to support HDTV but have a weakness in addressing scalable capacity for OnDemand, while terrestrial operators have less downstream capacity but a strength in being able to push content closer to households for a scable OnDemand offer.

If you add the broadband internet access problem to this equation, I think you'll find that Om may be onto something!!

The affects of the FCC ruling regarding USF on broadband

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:32:51 +0000

As Gomer Pyle once said, “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise”.

As you may all know, the FCC recently took a position that broadband internet access is an information service and therefore should be exempt from paying into the Universal Service Fund (USF).

USF was created during the dawn of the telecommunications boom era in 1996 to insure that rural America had access to the same services that were being deployed in urban areas. Without USF, rural America could have been left in the dark ages.

Today, Verizon announced their plans regarding USF and their broadband offers.

Well, Verizon will be following suit by removing the USF charge, but will also add a surcharge that basically amounts to what their users pay in USF.

Their rationale is that Verizon needs to recover their investment.

What?

So far Verizon has done very well with their lobbying efforts in government. Remember they have also been successful in excluding their fiber to the home build-outs from the CLEC unbundling rule – same argument , need to recover their investment.

Here’s a fact, DSL is a tariffed service, meaning the price is set by justification of costs for each market served by a state’s Public Service Commission.

The prices they charge are justified by their investment to insure fairness in local competition. So, how can they argue that a surcharge is needed to justify investment return outside of this process?