IPCS Word(s) of the Day: NTSC
June 19, 2008 by Garrett Smith
NTSC = Television format for North America and Japan
Sangoma Set to Up the Ante with mtpBoost and Octasic Vocallo DSP
The Asterisk PCI Hardware War rages on with several vendors in the fray including Digium, Sangoma, Pika Technologies, Rhino and a host of Asia based OEM clones.
Canadian DSP manufacturer Octasic could be accused of Asterisk War Profiteering, having signed exclusive VoIP deals with many of these vendor combatants to provide DSP chip components for EC (Echo Cancellation) and VQE (Voice Quality Enhancement).
Octasic recently announced shipment of their new Vocallo multi-core DSP chip, with Sangoma signing on as their first announced customer in the Asterisk space.
“Octasic has always delivered superior quality products, with unmatched performance and power. Vocallo will allow us to expand our business into new markets,” saidDavid Mandelstam ( News – Alert), president and CEO of Sangoma Technologies, in a statement.
Having read the white paper that Octasic has put out for the Vocallo product, Vocallo promises a number of advantages over current DSP technologies that could help take Asterisk to the next level. Amongst these:
Increased Scalability
Reduced Costs
More Features and Capabilities
Decreased Time to Market
Octasic’s Vocallo product also promises improved RTCP support, quality enhancements for conferencing, GSM and Wireless support, a wide range or ITU/Codec support, further improved Echo Cancellation and VQE, low latency, Wideband Audio Support (G.722 and AMR-WB) and Video Support including H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4. Phew, that’s a lot….and Asterisk as well as other OSS communication platforms could certainly benefit from improvement in all of those areas.
Sangoma’s mtpBoost, an MTP2 application programmer interface and SS7 building block is now available as a software add-on, alternative to Sangoma’s full SS7 Media Gateway Solution. Digium has been working on their own SS7 integration, libss7. There is also an open source SS7 channel driver.
It will be very interesting to see how the development community takes advantage of these new capabilities.
How VoIP Can Combat Global Climate Change
June 18, 2008 by Garrett Smith
Two words, Gas prices. I won’t comment on those two words, in the interest of keeping this brief. Around here we’re paying roughly $4.25/gallon for the cheap stuff. I also won’t get into the Global Warming debate. A little CO2 never hurt anybody, but hopefully we can all agree that 411,000,000 Metric Tons of CO2 probably will hurt somebody.
My daily commute to the office, round trip, equates to 65.2 miles. I also have a vehicle that offers respectable gas mileage, around 35 MPG on average. Based upon my round trip commute, and assuming 260 working days in a year, that equals an annual commute of 16,952 miles in aggregate. Even with a vehicle that is well above the national average in terms of fuel economy…according to http://thehousingforum.com/ I’m still pumping out 4.25 Metric Tons of CO2 for the year….which sounds like a lot to me.
CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) guidelines call for an average MPG of 27.5 and US census data shows an average commute for a US worker is around 33 miles. I still see a lot of tanks on the road, and that 27.5 MPG is a generous estimate, but let’s go with it. Again, assuming you don’t take a vacation and you work 260 days per year, the average US worker contributes 2.74 Metric Tons of CO2 each year.
This story has already pushed the envelope of my mathematics skills, and I was having a difficult time extrapolating the latest US Census Data in order to determine the number of full-time employed workers in the US. A ballpark average seems to be around 150,000,000.
Acknowledging some potentially flawed math, that would place the annualized CO2 output for full-time US workers at 411,000,000 Metric Tons of CO2. I’m having a hard time visualizing that, but it’s impressive, and not in a good way.
Back to my original topic. There has been a lot of talk recently about increased interest in telecommuting due to upward spiraling fuel costs. The need for seamless telecommuting capabilities is one of the strongest arguments for adopting VoIP in the workplace. Greg Galitzine at TMC penned one of many articles I have seen recently estolling the environmental virtues of VoIP and telecommuting. I can tuck the IP phone from my office under my arm, take it home and plug it into my network and function pretty much the same way I do when I am in the office….actually I probably get more work done at home.
I don’t think we are going to see a 4 day workweek anytime soon, but 1 day per week of telecommuting is a step in the right direction. If US workers were to telecommute only 1 day per week, based on my crappy math, that’s an extra 82,200,000 Metric Tons of CO2 we save. Again…tough to visualize if you don’t know what CO2 looks like….but the average car weights around 1 Metric Ton. I’ll be working out of my home office tomorrow if you need me.
Polycom and Jabra Working Together to Bring You âElectronic Hookswitchâ Capabilities
With the introduction of Polycomâs 3.0.0 SIP firmware, users using cordless DECT or Bluetooth headsets now have the ability to answer and end calls from their Polycom phones with an easy press of a button on the headset itself. No need for a Handset Lifter or corded solution! This is a very nice and useful feature since in the pastâŠand I knowâŠ. handset lifters tend to take the handset completely off the Polycom phone, thus requiring a special part from both GN Netcom Jabra and Plantronics. Forget about all of that and make the shift âŠutilize the Electronic Hookswitch feature at its best.
There are a couple things you should know first before you go and experiment with your Polycom phones. The Electronic Hookswitch feature or EHS works through the Polycom IP Phones serial port connection located on the back-side of each of these models: IP-320/330, 430, 550, 560, and 650 and pictured below:
The connection then feeds into the AUX port of these two (compatible) headsets from GN Netcom Jabra (GN9350 and GN9120 with EHS adapter). Please refer to picture below:
There are a couple changes that need to be made to Polycom phone configuration as well. This is described in Polycomâs Technical Bulletin 35150, but in short, you must perform the following:
Edit the up.analogHeadsetOption to â1âin the sip.cfg file. This value is set to â0â by default and when set to â1â allows DHSG-compatible headsets to be attached to the Polycom phone.
From the Phone UI, access the Menu, Settings, Basic, Preferences, Headset, and Analog Headset and then select Jabra Mode
Ensure that the physical connection as noted in the above illustration is correct!!
I would also like to inform you a few other special requirements that may be needed under certain applications and variations of the Polycom and GN Netcom Jabra products.
When using a Polycom IP-320/330, you will need a GN Netcom Jabra 2.5mm to RJ-9 adapter cord since the Polycom IP-320/330 have a 2.5mm headset jack.
When using the GN9350 headset, the unit does NOT ship with the EHS connection cable described in the above illustration (From Polycom Phone serial port to AUX port on GN9350/9120).This is a required accessory product of the GN9350/9120.
You must be running Polycom 3.0.0 SIP Firmware or higher and bootrom 4.1.0.
IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Network Video Recorder (NVR)
Network Video Recorder (NVR) = Functionally similar to a DVR, a NVR also accepts IP camera inputs. NVRs can be software-based, making them suitable only for accepting IP camera streams over the Internet. An NVR typically consists of a PC or Server, with on-board CPU, RAM, Operating System (Typically Windows) and local Hard Drive storage on which video streams from surveillance cameras are archived. Some examples of NVR software packages include Milestone Systems, Axis Camera Station and Luxriot.
(Y) BootyDialer.com: Best Asterisk App EVER!
June 17, 2008 by Garrett Smith
So we had a contest last week….the gist of which was for our readers to submit their ideas concerning novel uses for Asterisk.
I was doing some research online today and I came across BootyDialer.com, which is certainly one of the most creative applications of Asterisk I have come across.
The application itself is hard to describe, so I grabbed the text below from the blog of one one the creative geniuses behind BootyDialer, Adam Simon. You can also click on the BootyDialer flowchart thumbnail below the quote, for a visual interpretation of the app.
For our Redial midterm, Corrine and Marc and I are creating Booty Dialer, an automated booty call system. The notion is that you sign up on the website, and enter the phone numbers of your potential booty calls. When youâre out and about and decide you want some booty, you call in, and it puts you on hold while it calls your contacts, whom it asks if they would like to talk to you. If they do, it connects the calls. If they donât, it goes on to the next one, saving you the embarrassment of being rejected by returning the same response for a ânoâ as a person who didnât answer.
Weâve got a loooong list of features weâd like to implement (including booty blocking, booty networking, proximity integration for finding nearby booty, and booty recommendations), but for this weekâs midterm weâre just aiming to have basic contact list management and call bridging working properlyâŠwhich means more adventures in AGI!
Adam is apparently an alumnus of NYU’s “Interactive Telecommunications Program”. Where was this program when I shrugged apathetically in the office of my high school guidance counselor when he suggested I pursue a major in “Communications” at a regional college? Oh well, it turned out okay….
My BootyDialing days are behind me….but that may not be the case for many of our readers. BootyDialer.com is free of charge, and appears to still be up and running.
Police Departments Strengthening By Using IP Cameras
Increasingly police departments, such as this one in Buffalo, N.Y., are installing IP Cameras at intersections to catch those who speed through red lights. While an annoyance to some, this could help stop thousands of accidents a year. Think twice the next time you try to beat that light!
New Senate Legislation Seeks to Level the 911 Playing Field
Critics of VoIP often point to safety concerns surrounding the availability of reliable 911 services for consumers of VoIP services. The FUD surrounding the 911 issue, which certainly has some merit, has been a rallying cry for those who would seek to slow the adoption of IP telephony.
It’s been hard to miss the widespread, mostly negative media coverage concerning VoIP and 911.
Back in 2005, the FTC passed legislation mandating that all VoIP providers offer enhanced (E911) services.
This new legislation is a mild victory for independent VoIP service providers, and a minor defeat for traditional telco operators such as Verizon and AT&T.
For some, the original FTC mandate created a business opportunity, and a host of E911 providers sprang up to help VoIP service providers meet the new compliance regulations. Amongst these are Dash 911, RedSky and e911ToGo.com.
Now that traditional telecom operators cannot impose measures to block VoIP service providers from accessing 911 networks, the business model created by the original e911 compliance mandate may no longer be viable.
Women in VoIP: Running the Speakeasy
Our next VoIP maven is Ginny Hutchinson of Speakeasy (A Best Buy Company). Hutchinson is Chief Marketing Officer and has been working in the VoIP world for five years now. Now, we are not talking about a saloon or Prohibition here, headquartered in Seattle, Wash., Speakeasy provides broadband and voice service nationwide.
What is it like working as a woman in the VoIP world?
The telecommunications industry is more female-friendly than many other tech areas. I encourage and support women who are interested in making the move to the telecom industry. VoIP is an exciting, fast-paced, growing market with a lot of opportunity for talented employees.
How did you become interested/introduced to VoIP?
I spent over 10 years in the wireless industry. My wireless experience laid the foundation for my move into broadband voice services. It was a natural fit with my background, and Iâm proud to be able to offer a product where the features and functionality truly make it a next-generation phone system.
What are some of your networking/marketing methods?
I serve on a number of boards, both business-related and non-profit. This allows me to stay connected professionally and with my community. I also keep on top of industry trends through trade publications both on and off-line.
How is it working with men in VoIP?
I feel that, in telecommunications as with any other industry, the talent and work ethic of my colleagues is most important factor, and gender is not an issue. I enjoy working with a wide variety of folks. At Speakeasy, we hold as one of our core values: ârespecting individuals and individuality.â Iâm fortunate at Speakeasy to work with a dedicated and talented group of people who inspire me every day.
What do you see for the future of women in VoIP?
I think that more women are claiming their rightful places in technology than ever before. There are many rewarding experiences and opportunities for women in telecommunications both domestically and internationally. Telecommunications is a great place to be!
IPCS Word(s) of the Day: NAS
NAS = Network attached storage device. When using an NVR, it is often not necessary to archive recorded video directly on the local hard drive(s) of the PC or server running the NVR software, you can map a storage path to a NAS unit and archive your video footage there. NAS units come in a variety of sizes, ranging from 80GB to several terabytes in size.
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