Michael Robertson Talks VoIP With Voxilla 107
Vick writes "Two 'Bad Boys' of internet audio, MP3.com's Michael Robertson and Kazaa's Niklas Zenstrom, are done taking on the recording industry. Now their big fight is with the telephone companies and, apparently, one another. In one corner is Zenstrom's Skype, a software-only VoIP product that uses its own protocol and is banking on the huge popularity of Kazaa for its success. In the other corner is Robertson's SIPPhone.com, trying to simplify VoIP, and using the standard SIP protocol, to try to bring internet telephony to the masses. In this Voxilla.com interview, Robertson talks about the future of VoIP and minces no words in explaining why Zenstrom and the Kazaa boys have got it all wrong." (Last month, we posted about Skype.)
Re: Michael Robertson is with Lindows now (Score:1)
It's sort of like saying "Paul McCartney of the Beatles."
Re: Michael Robertson is with Lindows now (Score:1)
Open standard? (Score:2)
Would someone care to enlighten me on VoIP/P2P solutions using open standards?
Re:Open standard? (Score:1, Interesting)
It gets fuzzy around the REGISTER/location servers -- until every ISP has a SIP REGISTER/location server per domain name and/or hostname, SIP users are going to need some place to go where they can look up and find each others' network in
Re:Open standard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Try this one:
Proprietary does not mean bad or unsuccessful.
Re:Open standard? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
Re:Open standard? (Score:2)
In the context of communications it is bad.
What about the damage Microsoft Word has done to information interchange? How about those early proprietary TCP/IP alternatives? Pretty much any example of a proprietary data exchange protocol is an example of how proprietary is bad.
This is one area where Sun Micro actually gets it with J2EE and their Sun ONE stuff. They aren't interested in information lock-in as a way to keep customers.
Re:Open standard? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
You mean IP (i.e. the protocol)? Yeah, it's a great P2P technology.
I haven't read the article, or even more than skimmed the summary, but seeing "P2P" and "Kazaa" remotely near "VoIP" had the "wrong!" buttons going off in my head: Is someone shoehorning onto a technology to get proximity credibility ("ooh, that Kazaa is great, so that VoIP solution must be awesome!"). Peer-to-Peer file transfer solutions seem to have perilously little in common with voice-over-IP,
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
Also, as Skype is from the guy originally responsible for Kazaa, "P2P", "Kazaa" and "VoIP" all apply to Skype.
See, I see "I haven't read the article" and bells start going off in my head, saying that this person probably has no clue what they're talking about. You know what? This time
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
Read and parroting the ad copy [skype.com] are we? Here's the thing, though
a) P2P "optimization" techniques are inappropriate to attempt to apply to VoIP (except for perhaps conference calls) - No one else can fill in parts of your source stream, so any "advanced" routing is trying to rebuild IP. I see a lot of nonsense intended for the uninformed on their page (reads like a miracle cure), but it just doesn't sound right. So to conclude, VoIP has a non-s
Re:Open standard? (Score:2)
Skype uses a P2P network (in the popular sense of the word, not in the technical sense in which case all end to end VoIP is P2P) to achieve two things:
1) The directory service.
By keeping the directory service in a P2P network, they don't need a centralized directory server and can save money (consider if ICQ had done this - Mirabilis wouldn't have had to sell out to AOL). Technically, this is interesting exactly how they are pulling this off, since searching in such a directory is harder than P2P (Kazaa s
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
You are correct about Skype being a proprietary solution, but the interviewee in the article (RTFA, btw) is Michael Robertson who is currently pushing SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and his SIPPhone.
SIP appears to be an open standard and enjoys wide support. Upon brief googling, I found:
H.323, SIP, Telcos, PBXs, Open Standards (Score:5, Informative)
There's a LOT of open standards VOIP work - see openh323.org [openh323.org] and other usual suspects. It turns out that many of the VOIP hardware makers are really happy to fund open standards development so there's something for their equipment to talk to, whether they make voice cards for PCs (either single-user or small PBX cards), or IP PBXs that want more features to make them interesting to users, or boxes that provide some glue function, or whatever, and even Cisco is funding some of them, and some of the little software companies are happy to do open standards work as part of consulting to the hardware people.
New PBXs are pretty much all migrating to IP-based; it's much easier to reuse low-cost PC hardware platforms and build good tools that way. The big PBX makers are generally taking their old PBXs and adding IP features on the side (as opposed to the big router makers adding VOIP boards to connect to old PBXs and telcos), and the real question for most of their customers is when to rip out the old stuff and replace it (for new buildings that need PBXs, it's obvious that IP PBXs are the way to go), because you really start to get operational benefits when you can interconnect multiple locations that way. The PBX industry could have gone to quasi-open standards with ISDN in the late 80s, to take advantage of the reduced development costs and simplicity, but it mostly didn't happen.
The real complexities are the interactions with existing public switched phone companies. There's a huge amount of economic and regulatory baggage built around who pays who how much money when a phone call gets handed off between parties. In the US, there's the originating local telco, the long distance telco (if it's long distance), the delivering telco (if it's not the originating telco), and the Gore Tax folks, all of whom want their cut of the money, and the settlements and pricing aren't really appropriate to the much lower costs of IP telephony, and the prices and regulators are different for intra-state vs. inter-state calls. In the international calling market, this
Re:H.323, SIP, Telcos, PBXs, Open Standards (Score:1)
In my case, anyway, all the termination points are unmoving so I might be able to get away with 911 by setting the CID on outgoing. Hopefully, anyway.
So which of the standards... (ot) (Score:2)
which ones are designed to explicitly forward ANI information for caller identification? Or is that controlled by whomever provides the service at the junction between the public telco network and the Internet?
You sounded like the guy who might know.
Re:Open standard? (Score:2)
The technology is awesome. I was on the phone from Europe with a colleague in the US, he called me because I wasn't on Skype. Then I booted into windows, started up skype and while still on the regular phone talked over skype as well. The skype signal arrives much faster and is of a much higher quality. Naturally it has everything to do
Re:Open standard? (Score:1)
Huh? No IP is a peer to peer protocol. Beyond that people are often trying to reinvent the wheel.
VoIP (Score:2)
Does anyone know of any cross-platform VoIP/P2P apps?
Re:VoIP (Score:1)
Cross-platform P2P ?
Try gnutella, An excellent client for Mac OS X is Acquisition [acquisitionx.com].
As far as VoIP goes, I'm not too sure =(
Re:VoIP (Score:2)
Back the open standards. (Score:2)
That being said, back the standard that is open to scrutiny, can be updated and improved, and that others can build on.
P2P sounds nice, but if it's proprietary, one company holds all the cards, and if they fold...
Hey, I made a punny!
An Open Mind is good but... (Score:2, Interesting)
The flip side is that sometimes a standard can be *too* open, too easily built upon, and it fragments because no one can agree on exactly what it is any more.
User_A has a SIP phone that supports session-timer, OPTIONS, REFER, and NOTIFY. User_B has a SIP phone that supports rel-100, PRACK, SUBSCRIBE, and NOTIFY. User_C has a SIP phone that supports MESSAGE, session-timer, and OPTIONS. All of these are SIP phones, and you could probably make a phone call between all
Re:An Open Mind is good but... (Score:1)
However the standards make it easy for other people that want to join the bandwagon and support as many RFCs as possible (not your friendly neighbourhood monopoly/big guy but just a couple of guys slapping together some Perl/Python etc). It evens the play field. And with the Open Source implementations (VOCAL/OSIP etc), it makes the barrier to entry almost invisible.
Re:An Open Mind is good but... (Score:1)
However the other problems you indicate could be solved by:
1) Trust envelopes
2) Authentication of messages (especially requests)
3) Blocking of certain IP addresses ( in the IP headers not in the SIP message) -- a la blocking out messages from compromised relays in SMTP.
This brings the intelligence back to the core (or at least the equivalent of residential gateways).
Re:lindows not mp3.com (Score:2)
Well let's just say that creating an OS by hybridizing the least desirable features of two others isn't the optimum engineering solution.
The same is likely to to be true of a VoIP "solution" that piggybacks a propriatary format onto a propriatary p2p network.
The only "problem" that this is a solution for is the problem of how to transfer our money into their pockets.
The very idea should make people break out in a rash.
DARPA, Thompson and Joy created packets with aliena
OSH (Score:1, Funny)
WELCOME TO OPEN SOURCE HELL
It's a well known fact that open source is like Hell. Besides the obvious uselessness of open source (open source is more like open sauce- if sauce is left open, it spoils. It's also like open sores, where sores left open fester) and the total niggerfication of Linux, it's obvious that using open source is like going to Hell, only thousands of times worse.
When Bill Gates sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for your sins, he didn't plan for all of us t
Re:OSH (Score:1)
Re:OSH (Score:2)
Re:OSH (Score:1)
proprietary solutions never last (Score:2)
Taking on.. (Score:2)
I'm willing to say that Kazaa and MP3.com have done more to harm legal P2P and legal MP3 usage/distribution than anything else. I'd rather they had never existed.
Re:Taking on.. (Score:2)
I'm sorry, this argument is brought up a lot, but doesn't hold water.. stinks of the pedophile that claims "It's not about fucking nine year olds, it's about enjoying the natural beauty of children".
What do you think gets shared on p2p? Do-it yourself standup comedy routines? Independent music?
The amount of independent music on p2p networks is vanishingly small. Sure, it may go up in the future, but let's not blink innocently and talk about how p2p is an "independe
Re:Taking on.. (Score:1)
I'm not against p2p networks
Well when they've got porn, how could you be!
Re:Taking on.. (Score:1)
Writer is clearly mis-informed (Score:2)
OK, Robertson may have capitalized on these trends as they were becoming mainstream, but he's really been
Re:Writer is clearly mis-informed (Score:2)
Wonder what this means for Lindows. Can MR run a SIP phone business as well as Lindows? The story I heard about the funding of MP3.com was classic dot-com mythology, though it is evidently true:
Monday: Sequoia Capital: Hello Michael, we are interested in seeing your business plan. Can you send it to us? We would like to review it and fly down to talk to you on Wednesday.
MR: Oh, OK, I'll send it to you. (Feverishly writes up 2 page plan.)
Sequoia calls back later in the afternoon: Michael, you don't have to
Re:Writer is clearly mis-informed (Score:2)
Re:Writer is clearly mis-informed (Score:2)
MR didn't get anywhere near that kind of money. That's the selling price of the company, not the net to him. How much he made has not been made public, though I'm sure it was a decent piece of change. Who knows, maybe Lindows is profitable and they don't need VC. Seems hard to imagine, however.
That's why I'm speculating he may be more interested in the SIP phone. It seems MR cares about OSS only to the extent it can make money for him. If Lindows isn't going to get the return for him MP3.com did, it's on to
Re:Writer is clearly mis-informed (Score:1)
Who Lindows is competeing with head-on is Microsoft. Try telling that to a VC:) I don't think he was planning on getting too many investors. He had his own money to invest in the Lindow distro, and development costs were not exorbient because the vast majority of his product was free.
Two versions of VOIP. The article lacks details. (Score:1)
The second version is the one that allows someone on the internet to actually connect to the phone company's system and make someone's actual phone ring.
The first version is nothing special.
The second version was big on the net until most free version went bankrupt because ad revenue wasn't there. I could make a long distance call across the USA for free which wa
Re:Two versions of VOIP. The article lacks detail (Score:1)
Since Voxilla.com is mostly about VoIP, the distinction between this kind of service (which you say is "nothing special") and IP-to-Phone service (your "second version") is pretty much evident throughout all the site's pages.
As for IP-to-IP VoIP not being "special," I think a lot of people (including the 60,000 or so who have signed up around the world with Free World Dialup, the 1.2 million who have signed up with S
Thank you (Score:1)
Article slashdotted, have mercy for Voxilla server (Score:2, Informative)
VOXILLA.COM Staff Report
It says a lot about the future of internet telephony [voxilla.com] that two of the most successful bad boys of the internet - Kazaas Niklas Zenstrom and MP3.coms Michael Robertson - have turned their attention to promoting the growth of Voice over IP.
Both Zenstrom and Robertson incurred the ire of the music industry and the Recording Institute Association of America because the technologies they helped establish made it much easier to download copyrighted music over the net. Robertson came fi
Can anyone explain these protocols ? (Score:1)
Whats the main differences between SIP and Skype ?
What are the advantages of each ?
Re:Can anyone explain these protocols ? (Score:1)
Re:Can anyone explain these protocols ? (Score:1)
Re:Can anyone explain these protocols ? (Score:1)
2 Things (Score:4, Insightful)
1. That a standard protocol is established. 2. It is packaged in a convenient form so that minimal effort will be required of people switching from land lines.
The obvious attraction of VoIP is not enough on itself to make it succesful, rather it will need a big push in order to get going. All I have seen so far is that it has barely advanced beyond the simple voice chatting features of an IM client such as ICQ. It needs to become more than just a fancy feature to list out. A standard protocol is without question the key as it was the creation of the 802.11 protocols that allowed WiFi to take off into what it is today. my 2 cents.
VoIP is BIG, and it's been here long .... (Score:1)
Skype's is not anything really impressive.. (Score:1)
broadband to broadband is better than using the phone when it comes to delay, dialup is about the same or better. i am used to 1/2 second delay on calls from asia to usa.
the product is beta, they have mentioned plans for mac, pocketpc & linux fur
Re:2 Things (Score:1)
it is using a standard protocol (the main point of the interview)
and it is packaged in a convenient form
1 open box
2 plug it in
3 use
Re:2 Things (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing about SIP is that it is a generic protocol for starting and running conversations. It's not limited to one medium like say Jabber is limited to text IM only. You can use SIP for IM, VoIP, videoconferencing, file transfer, shared whiteboards, whatever you want. It's pretty cool. And it has loads of real-world vendors behind it. Forget about dodgy startups like Kazaa, I'm talking Nortel, Alcatel, Microsoft, et al. That's important because these are companies that ship real products (i.e. phone on your desk, the phone switch in the basement of your office, etc etc). They can simply roll SIP in and migrate customers very smoothly to it. The analogy to MP3 doesn't really hold, because the real strength of SIP from a consumer perspective is that it will be transparently embedded in everyday items - most users will never even hear about it.
What happens to call charges if this takes off. (Score:4, Informative)
The internet comes along and suddenly lots of circuts are open for extended periods for a single fee. In Australia it took a long time for Telstra to accept that internet data calls should not be charged on a time basis. They realized at last that if you're a telco that's OK if its a marginal exercise and you can add circuts into the core network to utilize capacity (even if you have to provide additional capacity it can still be profitable at the margin).
But now someone wants to move all traffic into the additional lines and leave your 'core' circut sales out of the equation. So before you would call China twice a day and it would cost you $1.00 for the call and 20c for the daily internet connection. Now with VOIP you get it all for 20c. The low income additional circuts have to pay for all network costs.
Even if you think telcos overcharge they will be reasonably upset if suddenly all their long distance calls go VOIP and they get no income from them but still have the same traffic volumes.
Does anyone think they will sit and watch it happen.
Re:What happens to call charges if this takes off. (Score:3, Insightful)
In Europe that's pretty much what they'll have to be doing unless they develop a large enough lobby to overthrow the current legislation. Which is unlikely because Europeans can call the US for something like 5 eurocents a minute thanks to deregulation of the long distance industry. (Whomever is in the EU and paying more should hook up with a better company) Overturning that would be fairly impopular with the electorate.
The problem is that ex monop
Re:What happens to call charges if this takes off. (Score:2)
Going VoIP might finally slash that last cost, but in reality I'm using ADSL and still has to pay for the phone line even if I'm not making a single telephone call.
Bottom line, with internet connection and cellular phone connection costs are many times higher than ever before. Though I hope that this makes everyone more open for alternatives
He is correct regarding proprietary formats (Score:2)
Using an open technology platform for this also makes sense, as it enables third party providers to tailor SIP-based solutions without needing to sign up for a proprietary protocol.
In fact, it seems like its only groups such
Re:He is correct regarding proprietary formats (Score:1)
Re:He is correct regarding proprietary formats (Score:2)
Re:He is correct regarding proprietary formats (Score:2)
At 64Kbps, you ought to be able to do the crypto in software. Crypto is cheap enough these days that it should be in every network product.
fearsum boredom (Score:2)
<prompt>
<audio>What you talking about willis?</audio>
</promtp>
<fiel d name="answer">
<noinput>
Just because you didn't make governor...
</noinuput>
<help>
<audio>
There is no help you're too short to compete again Ahnuld
</audio>
......
Ok seriously vxml is nice and all, but its
expensive as hell to set up a functional
site using it. Not only do you need the
programmers, you also need ivr, asr, tts,
vxml interpreters, not to men
Somebody has to say it . . . (Score:1)
Here's how to sell it (Score:2)
Damnit (Score:3, Insightful)
Really... Roberson isn't coming up with ideas that nobody's ever heard of before, and he sure as shit isn't a marketing genius. So WHY do I keep reading about him in various places? What has he ever done to deserve the media attention that he gets?
Re:Damnit (Score:2)
MP3.com is a failure!?!?!? The guy sold it for like over a quarter billion dollars. That's probably more than I could ever make (Or spend) in a lifetime!
I'm not sure about Lindows, though. They seem to be coming out with lots of new stuff and they have that deal with Seagate now. Are Lindows PCs still sold at Wal-Mart?
Re:Damnit (Score:2)
mp3.com = failure
I'm still wondering how Robertson was able to get so much money out of it.
Re:Damnit (Score:2)
SIP for Linux (Score:2, Informative)
speak-freely (Score:2)
Maintainership is in transition, but the package is already mature so that's not too big a worry.
old homepage:
[fourmilab.ch]
http://www
VIOP services are nothing new! (Score:1)
Zenstrom vs. Robertsonworth (Score:2)
"Yes! In your face, Zenstrom!"
- Yes, I'm easily amused. Why do you ask?
how long before... (Score:2)
As it is right now, when you hook up a computer on the 'net, it is less than 5 minutes before someone is trying to hack it/anonymously FTP from it/spread a virus to it.
another perspective on SIP (Score:1)
Comparing XMPP/Jabber and SIP/SIMPLE
http://www.jabber.com/pdf/The_IM_Standards_Race
more related data for curious phreaks (Score:1)
Re:The Linux Pledge V1.00 (Score:2)
Haha, not quite (Score:2)