Disruptive Telephony

Jay Phillips is frustrated. He passionately wants to see open source telephony enjoy success all around the world. Yet right now, when people think "open source telephony", they almost always think of Asterisk... and Jay sees too many challenges for developers embracing Asterisk. Jay, the creator of the Adhearsion telephony framework for Ruby, has spoken about this at recent conferences and pulled together his thoughts in a lengthy post earlier this week entitled "What We're Not Admitting about Asterisk".

Jay argues that Asterisk has not crossed the proverbial chasm for developers and outlines some of the issues he sees.

What is perhaps most interesting about Jay's post is the equally lengthy response by Asterisk creator Mark Spencer. Mark responds to Jay's various points and in doing so provides some good insight into his views on Asterisk's connections to developers, APIs, etc., as well as the differences between the markets that Digium, the company, goes after versus the "market" of Asterisk, the raw telephony platform.

Both Jay's article and Mark's response are definitely worth reading. I'm friends now with both of them and they both bring immense passion and energy to the world of open source telephony. Ultimately they both make the point that we need better tools for developers to create voice applications. This kind of dialogue is great and will only result in better tools in the end. Please do check out the posts.

P.S. Thomas Howe has also weighed in with a post saying this is a clash in world views, which also makes for good reading. I agree with Thomas that we are in a transition into a world of "web-as-a-platform"... basically a transition "into the cloud"... and so we do need "web-centric" interfaces and APIs. But I disagree with Thomas that Asterisk is "tired". To me, Asterisk is just... well... "plumbing". Asterisk is a telephony platform, as is FreeSWITCH... as is Yate... as are all the commercial IP-PBXs. Asterisk is an open source component of the rewiring of our communication infrastructure that we have underway right now. I think anyone, including Mark, would agree that Asterisk has technical challenges it needs to overcome but I, for one, am not ready to write it off yet.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, open source, voip, telephony, jay phillips, mark spencer, adhearsion, apis, voice, applications

On Sunday I'll be boarding a train bound for New York City where I'll be attending SpeechTEK for Monday through Wednesday. As I mentioned previously, on Tuesday, August 19th, I'll be giving a presentation on "Securing CCXML and VoiceXML Applications":

How secure are your speech applications? As the usage of both VoiceXML and CCXML continues to explode, and VoIP usage continues to grow dramatically, especially within enterprise environments, it is increasingly important that you ensure that applications and services are not open to attack. Learn about the potential vulnerabilities in a system using VoiceXML or CCXML, what you can do to secure these systems, and how you can develop a strong architecture.

It will be fun to expand my VoIP security commentary beyond my usual scope of networks and more into voice applications. I'm planning to record it (and have permission to do so) and potentially put it out as a Blue Box podcast.

At SpeechTEK there will also be a good number of us from Voxeo there. We'll have a booth (#804) and we've got some exciting announcements coming up... ;-)

If you are down at SpeechTEK, please do drop a note and let me know.

Technorati Tags: conferences, speechtek, voxeo, danyork, dan york, voicexml, ccxml, security, voip, voip security

This afternoon I'll be heading to the airport to fly out to Chicago to be part of ClueCon this week. Haven't heard of ClueCon before? Here's the quick summary:

ClueCon - is an annual 3-Day Telephony User and Developer Conference bringing together the entire spectrum of Telephony from TDM circuits to VoIP and everything in between. The presentations and discussions will cover several open source telephony applications such as Asterisk/Callweaver, Kamailio (formerly OpenSER), Bayonne, YATE and FreeSWITCH.

Billed as the "Telephony Developer Conference" it primarily focuses on the whole world of open source telephony.

I'll be there as part of two panels. First, tomorrow I'll be joining fellow VoIP bloggers Andy Abramson and Thomas Howe on a "VoIP Roundtable" to talk about current industry themes and trends. Then on Thursday I'll be part of a "VoIP Security Roundtable" talking about... gee... can you guess?

It should be a fun event... I'm looking forward to catching up with Andy, Thomas, Moshe Yudkowsky, Jon Todd and several others. There are also some folks on the schedule with whom I have corresponded but never physically me, so that will be nice as well. If any of you reading this will also be there, please do feel free to drop me a note so that we can connect.

Technorati Tags: telephony, cluecon, cluecon2008, voip, voxeo, open source, opensource, dan york, danyork, conferences, chicago, applications, telecommunications, developers

What if we could design SIP-based VOIP systems... but without any servers? What if we could have SIP endpoints just communicate with each other and "self-organize" into networks? What if we could essentially build an open standards-based version of Skype? How would it work? Who would use it? How would we secure it?

Those are all questions we discussed in the Squawk Box podcast / interview I did with David Bryan on July 10th. David is the co-chair of the IETF's P2PSIP Working Group and also the CEO of SIPeerior Technologies. It was a great interview where we covered all these questions and much, much more.

P2PSIP, to me, represents one of the most exciting new directions for SIP research and is something I'm definitely following closely. I wrote about my interest in P2PSIP clouds (and connecting them to larger clouds) at some length over on Voxeo's Speaking of Standards blog... it's all about clouds of SIP communication... and how we weave them all together. It's a fascinating time.

If you'd like to understand what P2PSIP is all about, please do definitely check out the Squawk Box podcast... and then, if you are so inclined, head over to P2PSIP.org to find links to learn more and download code...

Technorati Tags: sip, p2p, p2psip, telephony, peer-to-peer, voip, ietf, dan york, david bryan, squawkbox, sipeerior, cloud computing, clouds

If any of you reading this will be out at O'Reilly's OSCON Open Source Convention next week (July 21-25) in Portland, Oregon, I (Dan York) will be there giving a talk on Wednesday on "Mashing Up Voice and the Web Through Open Source and XML". Here's the abstract:

With over 4.5 billion mobile and fixed phones out there as of November 2007, the phone represents the most ubiquitous user interface out there. As “mashups” on the Web let us quickly and easily access information from multiple data sources, how do we extend those mashups to the world of the phone? How do we bring the old world of voice and telephony into the new world of the Web, social networks, and social media? And how do we do that using open source tools and open standards? In this session, Dan York will introduce participants to the world of “voice mashups” and how applications can be quickly built on top of open source and open standards. Topics covered will include:

• The technology and architecture behind voice mashups
• The open standards in voice of VoiceXML, Call Control XML (CCXML), the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and new standards emerging from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• Open source tools related to voice including Asterisk and RocketSource.org
• How to quickly build voice applications that interact with web sites, databases, and even new services like Twitter.

During the session, York will demonstrate multiple applications and provide participants with sample code, tips, and pointers so they can return home and get started building voice applications with open source and open standards.

If any of you will be attending, please do drop me a note as I always enjoy meeting up with people who read this blog. If you are not attending but are interested, it's not too late... you can still register at the OSCON site. Should be a great convention for those interested in open source development. The schedule is pretty amazing as it truly has a collection of some of the best folks out there in the open source world. (The convention starts on Wednesday with Monday and Tuesday being for tutorials.) I'm definitely looking forward to the event!

Technorati Tags: open source, conferences, oreilly, development, python, voicexml, ccxml, sip, portland, dan york

Earlier this week there was the announcement that Sangoma was acquiring Montreal-based startup Paraxip for $4.8 million which was interesting to me on a couple of levels. First, I've known David Mandelstam from Sangoma for now around 8 years since way back when I was part of the open source startup e-smith up in Ottawa. David and I have continued to meet at trade shows over all these years and he's a great guy. So I'm pleased for him that Sangoma is growing.

It's also an intriguing transaction because it moves Sangoma is a different direction from its past... they have primarily been a provider of PSTN-connection hardware with a heavy focus in recent years on Asterisk and open source. Now, with Paraxip, they move into Windows-based enterprise software! As Jon Arnold points out, the two companies already announced last September the integration of their products, so that part of an acquisition has already been done.

In any event, I'm pleased for them all that this has worked out and I wish them all the best. Here is some good analysis of the deal:

• Garrett Smith: Sangoma Broaden’s Their Horizons With Paraxip Deal
• Jon Arnold: Sangoma Acquires Paraxip - More Canadian Consolidation

Technorati Tags: sangoma, paraxip, asterisk, opensource, voip, telecommunications, canada

On yesterday's Squawk Box podcast, we had a lively and enjoyable conversation on the subject of "Is Voicemail Dead?" - building off of Michael Arrington's recent TechCrunch post and Andy Abramson's followup post. It was a fun conversation with different perspectives that definitely highlights that the way in which we are using voice messaging is definitely changing. You can listen to the show from the Saunderslog page or in iTunes. The Calliflower show notes page also has more links and a transcript of the live chat during the call.

Technorati Tags: squawk box, voicemail, telephony, phone, dan york, telecommunications, voice messaging

I realized today that although I wrote that Skype's Mark Bartlett would be joining a Squawk Box conf call back on Friday, June 20th, I never followed up with the link to the show.

That discussion about the Skype 4.0 beta is available from Saunderslog.com. I could not participate in the actual call, but it sounded interesting. I'm still not thrilled by Skype's cross-platform "answer", but it is what it is. Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal has a longer writeup about the call which covers some of the main points of the call.

Technorati Tags: skype, voip, skype 4.0, squawkbox

Garrett Smith and the team at VoIP Supply have partnered with Digium to have a little bit of fun with a new contest: "101 Things You Can Do With Asterisk Contest". They started out looking for 101 unique things you could do with Asterisk and the idea that when they got 101 submissions they would pick one random winner for a $1500 VoIP Supply shopping spree.

However, they discovered there are a lot of people out there with ideas for what you can do with Asterisk. They put up their blog post at 11:08am and their 101st comment came just over two hours later at 1:21pm (a few comments had multiple ideas). As I write this, the list has grown to 151 comments and Garrett and crew have indicated that they will be leaving it open until Friday and then making their drawing.

Some great ideas in the comments to the post - well worth a read!

Technorati Tags: asterisk

Is Craigslist really blocking phone numbers from VoIP service providers or pre-paid cell phones as an anti-spam measure?

Last night over on the VoIPinsider blog, Cory Andrews wrote that Craigslist is apparently blocking VoIP or prepaid cellular numbers as part of their anti-spam measures. Now I'm a huge fan of Craigslist and we've sold lots of items (including, now, our house) via Craigslist. But we've also seen the spam out there and personally been contacted in response to one of our ads by a sleazy individual who was trying to scam us out of money. Techdirt, in fact, says that the battle has been lost and that the spammers are taking over Craigslist. While it wasn't that dreadful in the Vermont Craigslist area, there certainly was some spam and you can understand the folks there wanting to do all they can to block spammers.

But to block VoIP service providers? Just as increasingly large numbers of users move over to VoIP services?

THE APPARENT ACTIONS

It seems a rather draconian - and misguided - measure. As the VoIP Insider article states:

A few months back, Craiglist instituted a telephone verification process that places an automated outbound call to a user placing a classified ad in certain categories. The call delivers a unique code using text to speech, which is then used by the poster to authenticate the ad they are placing.

This is an effective measure for dealing with spam, and a great thing for legitimizing the Craigslist user experience….but not so great if you are a Craigslist user and you also happen to be a VoIP or prepaid cellular user.

The problem is that Craigslist is categorically blocking legitimate VoIP and Pre-paid cellular users from authenticating themselves.

While I've not encountered the phone verification process in any posting I've done to Craigslist (but have seen CAPTCHA images all the time), I can see how the process would be useful in combatting spammers. The article goes on:

Craig’s uses a 3rd party service, ReduceFraud.com to screen out VoIP and Pre-paid cellular numbers, and will not deliver an automated verification call to a number that is determined to be such. (Since only SPAMMERS use VoIP and Pre-Paid Cellular!!!) What sophisticated algorithm does ReduceFraud.com use to identify VoIP numbers, you ask? They check the DID number to see who owns the NPA NXX X number block, and if the DID number is owned by Level 3 Communications, they classify it as VoIP of course. Whizbang!

Oops.

My immediate question was whether this is for all VoIP service providers. This BroadbandReports.com forum thread would seem to indicate that "fixed lines", even fixed VoIP lines, would come up as okay. So phone numbers from VoIP services from telephone carriers or cable providers would probably be okay. So it may just be the phone numbers of VoIP service providers who are not tied to a fixed infrastructure (and who provide connectivity to so many of the innovative services out there today!).

THE PROBLEM

There are, though, some fairly obvious problems with this approach to blocking phone calls:

1. LOCAL NUMBER PORTABILITY - Here in North America, phone numbers are "portable" (to a degree) via "Local Number Portability" (LNP) between carriers. So a phone number that may come up as "fixed" may in fact go to a VoIP service (and possibly to a spammer) due to LNP. Now perhaps the third-party service used by Craigslist is doing LNP database lookups.

2. FORWARDING SERVICES - There are plenty of services (including one identified in the VoIP Insider article) that will forward calls to another phone number. I could even do this easily with something like Asterisk running on my (fixed) home phone number that then forwarded the call out via SIP.

It seems to me that it would be relatively trivial for any serious spammer to obtain a "fixed" phone number that would defeat this blocking mechanism. Certainly this would block some of the less savvy spammers who are just trying to use disposable phone numbers... but in the meantime it may well block legitimate posters who happen to use telephone numbers from VoIP service providers.

THE ANSWERS?

So is Craigslist really blocking VoIP phone numbers? Garrett Smith (from VoIP Insider) indicated in an email that someone there was in touch with Craig and Craig indicated he was not personally aware of the blocking. Obviously, someone within the Craigslist organization has engaged this external company, ReduceFraud.com, in their ongoing efforts to fight spam. The blocking seems to lie in there. What needs to happen now is some conversation with those folks to understand what exactly it is they are doing.

We'll have some conversation, in any event, about this issue on today's Squawk Box at 11am US Eastern Time. Feel free to join us if you would like (you need to login via Facebook).

It's an interesting question - in the era when people can obtain cheap (even free) "disposable" phone numbers, how do you balance providing access to legitimate users while blocking using those numbers as a way to spam or perform other malicious actions?

Technorati Tags: craigslist, voip, spam, fraud