Disruptive Telephony

Today I'm back at the Hyatt Dulles in Herndon, Virginia, for the fourth SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) event. These SIPNOC sessions are great because they bring together the people actually operating the SIP-based networks that make up our telecommunications infrastructure. SIPNOC continues to be THE best place I've found to interact with the people actually taking SIP standards and making them happen in the "real world".

I've been to all four SIPNOCs - and I continue to find them outstanding events, not only because of the excellent technical content, but also because of the people.

In many cases, these are the "phone guys" (and gals) who have found their way to IP. The "Bellheads" of the age-old "Bellhead vs Nethead" debate. The "telcos". The people who have been doing telecom for decades... and are now evolving to IP.

In other cases, the people here are the new contenders. The cable companies are here - and they are strongly challenging the legacy telcos, and they are creating entirely new IP-based infrastructures. The "Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs)" and "SIP Trunking" providers are here, too... companies that are reimagining what telecom can be in an IP space. Newer vendors... newer application providers... etc.

It's a wonderful mix of people.

All here talking about telecom in the age of the Internet... sponsored by the SIP Forum.

As I mentioned in a post yesterday on the Deploy360 blog, I will be speaking today at SIPNOC 2014 about TLS for SIP. The abstract for my talk is:

With concerns about large-scale pervasive monitoring on the Internet, many groups are encouraging the increased use of Transport Layer Security (TLS, what we used to call “SSL”). While SIP has had TLS support for quite some time, it is often not used. This session will look at concerns of using TLS with SIP and discuss opportunities for providing higher security for SIP-based communication. The session will also outline some newer innovations such as the DANE protocol that when coupled with DNSSEC can provide a higher level of trust for TLS encryption.

This relates largely to the "TLS for Applications" work we are doing within Deploy360, as well as our advocacy for the use of the DANE protocol to add a layer of trust to TLS/SSL certificates.

As I note in that Deploy360 post, I'm delighted to see on the SIPNOC agenda that speaking before me will be Carl Klatsky from Comcast providing a case study of the lessons they have learned so far in moving to IPv6!

It's kind of fun to scan my list of presentations and look back at what I've spoken about at the past SIPNOC events:

SIPNOC 2011 (employed at Voxeo)

1. SIP Adoption and Network Security
2. Lessons Learned in Large-Scale SIP Interoperability

SIPNOC 2012 (employed at Voxeo)

1. SIP and IPv6 – Can They Get Along?
2. Panel Discussion: SIP Adoption and Network Security
3. BOF: SIP and IPv6

SIPNOC 2013 (employed at Internet Society)

1.IPv6 And SIP – Myth or Reality?
2. Who are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help
3. Panel Discussion: Anatomy of a VoIP DMZ (moderator)

SIPNOC 2014 (employed at Internet Society)

1. Is It Time For TLS For SIP? (also includes some DNSSEC/DANE)

It's nice to have someone else talking about IPv6 this year!

Of course, you'll also find me in the VoIP security BOF tonight... and listening to the other sessions. Unfortunately I have something else happening tomorrow evening back in New Hampshire and so I'm only here at SIPNOC today and will be flying back tomorrow. The SIPNOC event continues all day tomorrow and half a day on Thursday.

Sessions are underway now... here is photo proof:

Unless you happen to be located in the DC area, it would be very hard for anyone to join into this year's SIPNOC event... but if you work with SIP or VoIP networks, I would strongly encourage you to put SIPNOC 2015 on your calendar for next year!

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