When my little girl went from being a benign, unmoving lump of sleeping, drooling baby to a terroristic unplugging, biting, chewing, eating, swallowing, gagging, breaking, pulling, tugging beast of a toddler, my home decor changed. When we moved into our excessive 4 bed / 2.5 bath home in 2007, we had dreams. We had a guest room, and a Disney room, and my home office taking up about 25% of the under A/C space. When the beast began terrorizing our home, we retreated into a fallback position and isolated her to the safest room in the house, my former office. I was relegated to the Disney room. It’s purple. Very purple.

When moving between old office and new, as is my tradition in packing, I crammed everything into boxes with the knowledge that should I come to need an item, I would go searching through the boxes piled in the “supply closet” of my new “office”. In almost two years, I have not touched these boxes. Today was a day of reckoning when I was reminded of an important rule: Don’t use old Cat 5 and other copper cables.

There are people who will disagree with me, and I accept their disagreement with the knowledge they are wrong. Cat 5 (ie. network cable)  and copper coax cable (ie. cable tv cable) costs between $0.25 and $1 per foot. On a new VoIP phone, you need anywhere from 3 to 25 ft. of Cat 5 depending on the location of your phone / adapter in relation to your router and with the assumption that you are not using a wireless solution.

Many homes, like mine, have an accumulation of old cables, and when you get a new ATA (analog telephone adapter, aka. that veyeop thingy) that inexplicably comes without one, you go to the pile, untangle the least confined cable, and hook it up. Time and time again I have gone through ten and twenty minute troubleshooting sessions with people (and, in true ‘Dr. heal thyself’ fashion, spent hours myself) only to find that a strange or intermittent problem with connectivity, registration, or voice quality was remedied by putting on a fresh Cat 5 cable.

In fifteen years of working with networking setups, one in ten intermittent or quality issues end up being plain old bad cables (remember from previous posts, 50% are unplug or partially unplugged cables). Just in my five years of VoIP experience, I can’t count the number of times voice quality issues have been wiped out completely by getting fresh cables with good connectors. Considering the cost is < $15 for almost any project, save yourself the time and hassle. Throw away the old Cat 5 and coax cables, buy fresh ones for the new install, and you are eliminating a huge point of failure for years to come.

Dan York wrote a fantastic post today over at Disruptive Technology…

Humorous video – in how many movies is the “No Signal” theme over-used?

Its Friday, so here’s a bit of humor… I admit that I had not really paid attention to how incredibly over-used the “my cellphone has no signal” theme has been in recent movies until I saw this video. Keep watching, though, because after the “no signal” theme, it does go into other amusingly over-used themes like dropping mobile phones in water, ripping them apart, burning them, etc…

Kudos to someone named Rich Juzwiak for apparently editing together pieces of 66 movies!

Posted from: http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2009/09/humorous-video—in-how-many-movies-is-the-no-signal-theme-over-used.html

How's the view up there?

Cloud Computing, the buzz phrase that won’t go away, attracts new users daily. The most common “cloud” approach uses resources, accessible through the public internet, as a service. Although this computing approach provides (generally) much higher rates of reliability and lower rollout cost, an organization looking to the cloud may find some grey skies on the security forecast.

Besides unknown physical access concerns to your data (as well as not truly knowing who can access your “system”), the main security risk resides with the end user. Take for example Twitter. For the third time this year, someone accessed sensitive corporate documents via an employee email account. If a password can be guessed, cracked, or obtained, chances are your security just became a little foggy (ok, no more cloud puns).

Storing sensitive information in the cloud (including your web accessible email accounts) seems to be the 2009 equivalent of leaving your briefcase on the front seat of your car parked in a very open driveway. The AP recently posted an article on the Twitter reference, and it’s not a bad read.

Twitter hacked by old technique — again

July 15, 2009
JORDAN ROBERTSON

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Breaking into someone’s e-mail can be child’s play for a determined hacker, as Twitter Inc. employees have learned the hard way – again.

For the third time this year, the San Francisco-based company was the victim of a security breach stemming from a simple end-run around its defenses. In the latest case, a hacker guessed the password for an employee’s personal e-mail account and worked from there to steal confidential company documents.

The techniques used by the attackers highlight the dangers of a broader trend promoted by Google Inc. and others toward storing more data online, instead of on computers under your control.

The shift toward doing more over the Web – a practice known as “cloud computing” – means that mistakes employees make in their private lives can do serious damage to their employers, because a single e-mail account can tie the two worlds together.

Stealing the password for  someone’s Gmail account, for example, not only gives the hacker access to that person’s personal e-mail, but also to any other Google applications they might use for work, like those used to create spreadsheets or presentations.

That’s apparently what happened to Twitter, which shares confidential data within the company through the Google Apps package that incorporates e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, calendar and other Google services for $50 per user per year.

Co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog posting Wednesday that the personal e-mail of an unnamed Twitter administrative employee was hacked about a month ago, and through that the attacker got access to the employee’s Google Apps account.

Separately, the wife of co-founder Evan Williams also had her personal e-mail hacked around the same time, Stone wrote. Through that, the attacker got access to Williams’ personal Amazon and PayPal accounts.

Stone said the attacks are “about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets.”

Some of the material the hacker posted online from the Google Apps documents was more embarrassing than damaging, like floor plans for new office space and a pitch for a TV show about the increasingly popular online messaging service.

Twitter says only one user account was potentially compromised because a screenshot of the account was included among the stolen documents. The value in hijacking a user’s account is limited, as those attacks are mainly used to post fake messages and try to trick the victim’s friends into clicking on links that will infect their computers.

Sensitive Twitter documents were filched, though.

The hacker claims to have employee salaries and credit card numbers, resumes from job applicants, internal meeting reports and growth projections.

TechCrunch, a widely read technology blog, says it was e-mailed the documents, and subsequently published some of them, including financial projections that Twitter drew up in February. The forecast envisioned Twitter generating its first revenue in the current quarter, with sales of about $400,000 and about 60 employees. By the end of next year, Twitter expected to employ about 345 people with annual revenue of about $140 million, according to the documents published by TechCrunch.

Stone said in an e-mail that most of the documents TechCrunch has access to are “speculative exercises.”

In his blog post, Stone said the stolen documents “are not polished or ready for prime time and they’re certainly not revealing some big, secret plan for taking over the world,” but said they are sensitive enough that their public release could jeopardize relationships with Twitter’s partners.

Stone said the company is talking to lawyers about “what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents.”

What the attacks on Twitter show is that Web sites don’t need to get compromised in the traditional sense to put its users and employees at risk.

Hackers don’t need to find a vulnerability in the site itself, or plant a virus on an employee’s computer, to sneak inside.

Residential VoIP - No Operators

Some say the media sensationalizes our economic woes for their personal gain. Others say the media accurately portrays the extreme financial burdens we find ourselves facing. And some people say, “Hey. I don’t care about anything, I always have and always will try to save money.” With today’s world becoming increasingly digital, VoIP (digital telephone) seems like a naturally good idea.

Clearly, we at VoIP Tech Chat advocate VoIP. We love it. We love it so much, we made a website called VoIP Tech Chat. And we actually now and then have chats and write articles on VoIP (ok, that last part was a little sarcastically since both Patrick and Fred seem to have been too busy to actually talk or write lately… but anyway…).

Residential Telephone Service and VoIP

If you can read this, you probably live somewhere. Or you’re a robot… which would be AWESOME since we are desperately trying to increase our robotic readership, but seriously, most people in our “audience” live somewhere and have residential phone service. Well, we should say most people used to have residential phone service.

Ten years ago, Mobile Phones were a novelty. Today, they are viewed as a necessity. In the United States, more people have wireless phone service than have traditional landline (POTS) telephone service. And, even with higher drop rates, lower voice quality, and service availability issues, 1/3rd of the current US population live in “wireless only” households (interestingly a very small percentage live in a landline only household, with the group represented mostly by persons “well over” retirement age).

There are some disadvantages to the Wireless Only approach, including emergency calling (aka 911), coverage, name listing in directories, and cost. If you are a “heavy” talker, your wireless phone bill can be very costly depending on your usage. The advantages include calling features (such as caller id and voicemail), having your phone with you at all times, and (interestingly enough) the ability to make emergency calls away from the house.

But wait… isn’t this VoIP Tech Chat? Yes Virgina… let’s continue. VoIP generally provides advanced (and included) calling features, “unlimited” local/long distance calling, inexpensive international rates, and all at a price less than your traditional POTS landline service. The negatives with VoIP? VoIP 911 service does not compare to landline usage. Although most VoIP providers implement an e911 service, the reliability of VoIP for emergency calls does not compare to a landline. A landline simply provides better 911 service, period. (we actually wrote a pretty decent article about VoIP and 911 back in the day… )

Landline POTS telephone service remains the most reliable telephone service available. The consistently maintain five-nine (99.999%) availability and provide the best access to emergency service (911). POTS service also comes with a limited feature set (by default) and hefty price tag.

Let’s compare VoIP, Traditional Telephone, and Wireless

Verizon Unlimited Local service starts at $24.95 per month. If you wanted Caller ID, Voicemail, and Call Waiting (with Caller ID) your bill jumps up to $51.90 — which is absolutely ridiculous, considering this price is the pre-tax rate.

Vonage offers an “unlimited” Local and Long Distance service for $24.95 monthly which includes more than 25 features (such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, and Voicemail). VoIP.com offers the same package for $19.95 (or more than $30 less a month than Verizon). Now, the “unlimited” voice on VoIP providers tends to be around 5,000 minutes a month or so. If you go over it, expect a notice.

Cellular Service ranges anywhere from $30 – $130 monthly per phone depending on the options you choose. By the time you reach the high end, you’re generally getting unlimited minutes and data (mobile web, email, etc.).

For a typical household, VoIP remains a very cost-effective telephone solution; although you must remember that without good (and we mean good), high-speed Internet, your VoIP will be unusable. Many local phone companies offer a “dial tone only” line for less than $15.00 monthly. With the use of VoIP and a dial-tone only landline, you can still save more than $150.00 yearly while providing your family a reliable method of calling during emergencies and power outages.

As Billy Joel would say, it comes down to reality, and that’s fine with me. If you need to tighten the belt, VoIP can help. However if you can get by without having high speed Internet and don’t mind using the mobile phone all the time, you may be fine with becoming a “wireless only” household. Or you may not care about money whatsoever and decide to have all three maxed out.

Either way, when you do realize the benefit of VoIP and embrace the force, we’re here to help.

Digium’s John Todd announced an amazing little contest — The Asterisk S-Prize. Asterisk, the open source VoIP telephony software from Digium, finds itself in small / medium businesses routinely. But more and more, large businesses and enterprises are switching to Asterisk to fulfill their telecommunication needs. With this in mind, Digium announces the S-Prize — geared at designing a single system capable of processing 10,000 call legs.

Here’s the information, directly from the source:

Asterisk is becoming more and more a choice for larger installations, both in Enterprise as well as Carrier environments.  While SMB (small/medium business) continues to be the heart of the user base, it seems that many of the questions on the minds of the user and developer community have to do with scale, redundancy, and configuration issues which are relevant to larger installations.

To encourage the improvement and testing of larger-scale Asterisk systems, I’d like to repeat here what I mentioned today on the asterisk-dev mailing list:  I’m putting out a semi-official challenge in place.  The first person to get an Asterisk system moving 10,000 G.711 call legs through a single instance on a single machine will get a first-class steak dinner at Astricon.  And a great bottle of wine, if that is your preference.

This isn’t an X-prize, but the concept is the same – think of it as an S-prize.  ”S” means “Steak”.  Or maybe “Salad” if you’re a vegetarian. 

There are some serious hurdles here, for both software and hardware.  Ten thousand channels sounds like a lot, and it is.  But it can be done, and is already done with custom hardware from closed-source vendors.  Open Source Asterisk has not been (to my knowledge) tested at anywhere near that capacity, though attempts have been made in the thousands of channel level ranges with good successes.  However, there are significant “walls” to climb between ~2500 channels and 10000 channels, and this is not merely a linear application of processing power.  Just the throughput for this 10k challenge is pretty impressive: 500k packets per second per direction at 20ms, and 820mbps per direction.  Ethernet trunking/bonding may be required to overcome IRQ issues, or certainly very close administration of a gigabit interface.  Operating system tuning will be required in conjunction with Asterisk tuning (and probably patching.)  Documentation on how you achieve this will help everyone, and this is an “open” challenge.

I know that the Asterisk community is already headed in the direction of making these kinds of advances.  This is merely an incentive to speed up the process, and hopefully get some discussion going as to how people might solve the problems both in the Asterisk implementation as well as on the systems which are required to handle that kind of throughput.  Everyone benefits from the effort, and I think it can be done with some concentration and clever design.

Will there be some other platform that makes it there first, or has someone already reached that number?  Maybe!  I think any work done towards improving VoIP RTP throughput on Linux systems at these high packet-per-second rates will benefit everyone, especially if it’s an Open-Source solution that reaches the goal first.

Small print: one winner, even if a group effort – choose amongst yourselves. Group members may get secondary prizes.  Prize dinner will be at the following Astricon, in whatever city that is holds Astricon that year. Equipment must be “off-the-shelf” gear.  Software must be Asterisk from SVN, or patched with code that has been submitted to the bugtracker with a valid submission agreement for inclusion into Asterisk.  MOS of audio channels must be at least 3.2 or better (subjective.)  Calls must be standard G.711 with 20ms or 10ms sample intervals.  All RTP (RX,TX) for all channels must be routed through a single instance of Asterisk.  Methods must be documented and reproducible by other community members or Digium with the same equipment.  Winner will be publicly cheered.  Dinner to be at Mortons, Ruth’s Chris, or comparable venue.  10,000 call legs is equivalent to 5,000 “hairpin” calls, though 10,000 calls to “Echo()” would be acceptable.  Substitutions are possible.  SIP, IAX2, or H.323 are acceptable protocols.

And there you have it. Are you game? A steak dinner at Astricon will certainly not compare to a million dollars, but it does deliver some pretty amazing bragging rights.

What? Where?

On Sunday December 29th, Level3 Communications, one of the largest IP transit networks in North America and Europe, suffered an outage affecting sites such as ESPN, Amazon, and CNN. Noticeable missing from Level3? Any official acknowledgment or discussion of the incident; and an outage that disrupts ESPN on a Sunday will definitely be noticed.

When one of the largest internet backbones shows trouble, there are two ways to handle the situation (after fixing the issue of course). The first would be what we here call the “Duck and Cover” method (sometimes referred to as the Vinnie Barbarino approach). In this method, the company either makes no mention of the incident or does a classic Vinnie impersonation… such as:

Concerned User: I think there’s an outage.
Level3: What? Where?
Concerned User: I think there’s a problem with the network.
Level3: I’m So Confused. 
(mugs to the camera and audience goes crazy)

The other approach would be to acknowledge the incident, explain what is known, and explain what will be done in the future to prevent similar issues. This approach is, to paraphrase Billy Joel, is hardly ever heard but mostly what we need. We’re not sure why so few companies use the “acknowledge” approach — maybe it’s an old school, big business ideal that’s ingrained into company culture, but who knows? Open source companies, such as Digium, tend to disclose issues and discuss them, well, openly.

Open discussion tends not to turn folks away. Problems happen. How companies handle issues can either increase customer loyalty or send customers searching for alternatives. In our tech circles, most people seem to embrace the companies they can trust — and those companies tend to avoid the duck and cover approach.

So, where does that leave us with Level3?

Well, sadly, Level3 reminds us that your VoIP powered telephone system depends on Internet. Choosing several providers can certainly increase uptime, and choosing a company you can rely on will certainly help you sleep better at night. As for the 12/29 incident, we here (much like others) can only speculate. Current theories suggest a weather storm in Michigan may have been ground zero.

Other readings:

• Level3 Press Releases (notice no mention) 
• TechCrunch reports “The Tubes are Clogged”
• Broadband Reports “Outages Plague AT&T and Level3”
• SANS “Level3 Outage Confirmed”
• Slashdot “Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest”

About Level3:

Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT) is an international communications company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The company operates one of the largest communications and Internet backbones in the world.

VoicePulse used Twitter to Update their Network Outage

VoicePulse, a New Jersey based VoIP Provider for residential and business consumers, experienced outages early starting Monday morning. Although the VoicePulse website is down, the company reported via their Twitter account at 10:30am EST:

VoicePulse is currently experiencing a partial service outage due to a generator explosion at one of our NYC datacenters.

At 10:49 they updated:

Engineers are on-site, but police & fire activity is currently preventing access to the building. SIP termination via SJC is working.

As of this post, VoicePulse incoming calls are still unable to connect, however outbound SIP calls can be terminated through their west coast gateways. Although having a single point of failure is very bad, we have to give VoicePulse credit for using Twitter to notify users of the situation.

Update:

At 11:24 am they advised:

VoicePulse Connect users that have old configs can view the correct sip.conf (with west coast peers) at http://www.pastebin.ca/1291545

and at 11:25 am:

Inbound carriers generally send calls via IP. Carriers are being contacted to make emergency changes to route inbound calls via SJC IPs.

At 12:11 pm:

Registrations restored to JFK/SJC. Waiting on larger carriers to move traffic to SJC IPs. Calls via smaller carriers moved already.

Last Updates:

VoicePulse posted these updates at 2:30 pm:

Website is up. VoicePulse Connect customers using JFK/SJC should be up and running for inbound/outbound.

If you didn’t move your SIP traffic off connect01, 02, 03 when we introduced SJC & JFK, you can access the sample configs and module now.

Thomas Hughes, CIO of the Social Security Administration (SSA), gave a nice interview to Nick Walkerman of Washington Technology. The interview provided some insight into the VoIP deployment of the SSA.

For more on the deployment, check out our VoIP Tech Chat article.

About a month ago, Fierce VoIP reported on VoIP quality testing conducted by Keynote Systems. The results proved quite interesting.

Keynote determined (based on testing providers such as Packet8, Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, Lingo, etc.) that most VoIP users can expect “merely tolerable” telephone service when compared to an at&t POTS line.

One of the VoIP providers tested failed to achieve any calls with an MOS score of 4.0 or better (ouch).

Why did Voip Tech Chat wait more than a month to post this news? Patrick and Fred were too busy talking about Lifelock and Ben Affleck movies. 

Oh, and Asterisk Voip News posted that a cool new IP Phone with a huge video screen is coming soon.

Investing 300 million dollars over 10 years, the Social Security Administration now leads the US Government in telephony technology – simply switching to Voice over Internet (VoIP). The contract was awarded to Nortel. At first, the figure 300 million boggled us. Then, using the complex mathematical equation of 300 million dollars divided by 10 years, we determined an average cost of 30 million dollars a year.

Before you flip out and say to yourself, “My goodness (we’re keeping it G-Rated), 30 million dollars a year on phones??? What is our government thinking?”

Shocking as it may seem, we at Voip Tech Chat applaud the Social Security Administration’s decision. Sure, as huge (again easy with the fat jokes please) fans of Benjamin Franklin, Patrick and Fred often are publicly vocal and critical of decisions made by the US Government. Yet, when a good decision is made, we try to be equally supportive.

Let’s look at this more closely… 

The SSA will replace phones in more than 1,600 offices. The physical cost alone for installing VoIP servers, phones, and systems in a project like this astounds us. This simply is a huge undertaking.

The SSA currently uses a standard PBX (private branch exchange – typically corporate phone systems) “nearing the end of it’s life cycle.” This translates to a replacement cost even if VoIP is not implemented. Here’s where VoIP starts to make sense.

A PBX system generally utilizes separate wiring from your data network and provides minimal (if any) portability. For example, John Q Public uses an office on the 2nd floor and because of a leaky window needs to move to a new office. With a PBX system, a physical update is generally needed to give John a phone. Wether this is re-wiring, updating the physical PBX system, or in most cases doing both, there are often many people needed to simply allow John to get calls. And when John moves back to the 2nd Floor, the process starts all over again. You’re most likely looking at 4 hours labor per move and the use of 2 – 3 employees. Compare this with a VoIP system – step one, John moves phone to new location. That’s it. No more steps. It’s done.

Since the SSA uses a private network across their locations, John could even move to a new location and still use the same phone with little or most-like no interaction with tech personnel.

When creating new SSA offices, there will be no reason to run analog phone lines (except to the main phone switch as the SSA will be using local POTS lines for 911 service). Supports calls will be handled remotely and the phone system will be managed primarily from a centralized location.

In the long run, savings generated from the initial investment will benefit all of us who pay taxes. Although the initial investment’s price tag seems high, realizing the future savings as well as the minimal difference between a new VoIP system compared to a new PBX system. Not only can the SSA benefit from new features, dynamic call routing, and lower cost of service, additional costs will also be lower due to the very nature of VoIP (speaking of nature, we will plan a Nature episode of Voip Tech Chat where Fred and Patrick hunt VoIP devices in the wild). VoIP upgrades are generally software related, allowing hardware to be reused with new systems or newer versions of existing platforms; eliminating the need for such extensive upgrades in the future. 

We applaud the decision to upgrade to VoIP and look forward to more federal agencies making the switch.

Related Links:

• FedTech Magazine, “Voip Lessons Learned From SSA” (Great Article)
• Nortel’s SSA Blog Post
• Nortel’s Press Release