First Bluetooth VOIP beats out British Telecom to be first to market

article: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23554

Truphone enables VoIP calls over Bluetooth

Beats BT's Bluephone to market

By: Tony Dennis Friday 27 May 2005, 17:56
A PLUCKY BRIT company, Software Cellular Network (SCN) appears to have beaten the might British Telecom (BT) to offering cheap calls via Bluetooth. SCN's software offers VoIP over Bluetooth on Series 60 handsets.

The aim with SCN's Truphone software is to enable a regular mobile handset - like the Nokia 6630 - to make low cost VoIP calls by linking to a nearby Bluetooth access point.

That access point can be your desktop PC connected to the Internet via broadband, for example. It's virtually identical to BT's promised Bluephone except the later has its own standalone router rather than using a Windows PC.

SCN says a beta version of the Truphone software is available via email request ton info@scn.com. The intriguing feature of Truphone is its ability to 'hand over' to a cellular connecion when the Bluetooth connexion is lost.

At present Truphone only works on the 6630 although supporyt for all Series 60 handsets is promised soon. µ

New Billing software announced

Good Day,
I'm finally getting around to officially announcing ASTPP. For the last
6 months, I've been working on converting ASTCC into a decent billing
package for asterisk. I'm just finishing up fixing a few bugs before
the 1.0 release and would appreciate if there would be a few who would
be willing to do some testing on the software. Here is a list of features:

Provide call rating for Asterisk.
Integrate with Agilebill (www.agilebill.com)
Support for:
An unlimited amount of different price lists.
Realtime or batch billing
Rates are billed to 6 decimal places.
Rates are highly configurable.
Import rate lists in cvs format.
Variable billing increments.
Call setup charges.
Resellers.
Web interface provides:
- Card balances.
- Ability to configure routes.
- Ability to configure most of ASTPP.
- Setup Brands.
Charges can also be posted directly to AgileBill.
Interface for customers to view their calls.
Provide "realtime" billing to Asterisk calls by simply adding a line
to your dialplan.
Auto configure users and DIDs by using plugins from AgileBill.
Source Code included.

The webpage for this software is found at
http://www.aleph-com.net/astpp/ We will be providing paid support for
the software in the next few weeks.

Thanks,

Darren Wiebe
darren@aleph-com.net

Some Cool VOIP Animated movies for the newbies and experienced alike

Found this on the VOIP Security mailing list. A site with dozens if not hundreds of tutorials on anything to do with "the internet". Has quite a featureful section dealing with VOIP. Just click the V, then look for VOIP.

Here is the original posting...

Colleagues

These are animated tutorials to help educate the general public about VoIP.

TECHtionary.com TECH-TIP VoIP Testing Is About "Fuzzing"
An animated tutorial is available at
<http://danbaldwin.bm23.com/x/trackclick.php?id=1117128_20838f91_62545&url=http://www.techtionary.com> http://www.techtionary.com

Before and after installation a VoIP system various tests should be
completed. In addition, there are certainly other tests such as functional
protocol testing called fuzzing that should also be completed. While there
are examples of security attacks such as DOS, IP-Sec and others located
throughout TECHtionary, in this TECH-Tip here are two animated examples of
how VoIP attacks can occur. One is MIM-Man-In-the-Middle attack. Another
example is a SIP attack. In other words, since SIP is a common set of
communications protocols attacks or intercepts will be prevalent.

More Details Covered in the Tutorial

Here are some of the kinds of attacks that your VoIP system should be
designed and tested to protect against:

*Toll Fraud - the IP version of the classic attack by a person
impersonating an employee or Console Cracking (asking the operator for an
outside trunk) to make long distance calls. However, the attacker
impersonates a valid user and IP address by plugging in their phone or
spoofing the MAC ethernet address.

*Eavesdropping - the attacker sniffs (taps into the LAN wireline or
WiFi connection) to intercept voice messages. Easily available programs
such as VOMIT-Voice Over Misconfigured Internet Telephony perform this
function.

*Call Hijacking - attacker spoofs a SIP Response redirecting the
caller to a rogue SIP address and intercept the call.

*Resource Exhaustion AKA-Also Known As DOS-Denial Of Service attack.
This attack reduces the number of available IP addresses, bandwidth,
processor memory and other router/server functions.

*Message Integrity - MIM-Man-In-the-Middle attack to intercept, alter
or redirect call.

*Message Type attacks - attacker bombards (repetitive) SIP server
with BYE or CANCEL messages or ICMP-Internet Message Control Protocol "port
unreachable" messages.

Part 2 will explain various types of VoIP systems and different security
formats. In Part 2, there are detailed animations on:

*Proxy/Gateway/SBC-Session Border Controllers In/Outside the Firewall
*Proxy/Gateway in Co-Edge Mode
*Proxy/Gateway Outside the Firewall

This tutorial will review these formats and risks associated with them. For
example, when a firewall provides NAT between an internal and an external
network, proxies may allow VoIP traffic to be processed properly, even in
the absence of a firewall that can translate addresses for VoIP traffic.
Since VoIP is not the only type of data traffic and since each customer
situation is completely different, guidance from the VoIP/IT designer is
essential.

Thomas B. Cross

TECHtionary - www.techtionary.com

Pingtel open source VoIP attacks Europe – good news

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/22/pingtel_voip/
Pingtel open source VoIP attacks Europe
By Ben King (feedback at theregister.co.uk)
Published Sunday 22nd May 2005 23:18 GMT

Open source VoIP has been touted as bigger than Linux, and the
competition is hotting up in Europe as one of the US pioneers crosses
the Atlantic.

The normally sleepy world of office telephony hardware, the private
branch exchange (PBX) systems which put you on hold and transfer you
to people's secretaries, has already been shaken up by the arrival of
voice over IP.

VoIP has allowed a few new players such as Cisco to join Nortel,
Siemens, Alcatel and the rest of the club of companies which supply
proprietary PBX hardware at high margins.

Recently, however, open source platforms are emerging which allow
organisations to use a cheap off-the-shelf server to do exactly what a
PBX would have done, and in many cases more, at a fraction of the
cost.

In March The Reg spoke
(http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/03/16/asterisk_open_source_pbx/)
to Mark Spencer, originator of the best-established open source PBX
platform, Asterisk.

Now Pingtel, sponsor of another major open source VoIP initiative,
SIPfoundry, is making its debut in Europe. Pingtel is a commercial
company which packages and sells products based on code from the
SIPfoundry open source community.

"Pingtel contributed a lot of code to SIPfoundry but our business
model is very similar to that of Red Hat or SuSE/Novell," says Bill
Rich, CEO of Pingtel. "We take the code that is on the SIPfoundry and
make it acceptable to enterprise customers, with support, usability,
and reliability, and the features that make it possible for the
enterprise customers to use it."

SIPfoundry was founded fourteen months ago through an amalgamation of
code from Pingtel, and the ReSIProcate community. Some members of the
Vovida community also joined.
Revenge of the SIP

Pingtel was formerly a proprietary company dedicated to selling
systems based on the SIP IP communications standard. It decided to go
open source, says Rich, because the general drift of the SIP industry
was driving in that direction.

"We have always been a leading proponent of SIP and SIP-based
communications," he says. "One of the hallmarks of this technology is
to redefine how people communicate. IT has the power to drive a really
strong drive of commoditization through the industry."

In a SIP based world, when any handset or soft phone can talk to any
PBX, there won't be much money to be made in hardware or software, at
least not for companies without a global brand name.

So better to be the ones who kick the bottom out of the hardware
market themselves, and make their money selling support and services.

"We can either be the commoditizer or the commoditizee*. We think the
market is going that way and we wanted to be the one that does the
commoditizing," says Rich. "When commodification enters the value
chain, the number of vendors goes up and there is strong downward
pressure on prices, and that is good for the customer."

PBXes won't become a commodity overnight, though. Open source PBXes
are still an unknown quantity, and the corporate market will take some
persuading before it abandons the comfort of established suppliers.

The small and medium business world, however, is already showing some
interest, and Pingtel gearing up to satisfy it.

"We have just started building our channel… really in the fourth
quarter of last year. We now have 40 resellers signed up around the
world. Our core focus is on the SMB market with the product delivered
through VARs and resellers."
Star wars: Asterisk versus SIPfoundry

So now that Asterisk has a serious rival in the open source VoIP
world, which is better?

"They compare at a pretty basic level," says Rich. "They are both open
source communication platforms."

The key difference, he says, lies in the fact that SIPfoundry cleaves
much more closely to the SIP standards. SIP is essentially a
peer-to-peer communications protocol, with most of the system
intelligence distributed to the edge devices on the network.

As Rich puts it, "Asterisk is an open source PBX. It is an
architectural model that works in a centralised control system. In
SIPfoundry, the smarts enter the system at the end point."

Mark Spencer, CEO at Digium and Rich's opposite number in the Asterisk
community, agrees, broadly:

"In a sense, I would say that whereas Pingtel views SIP as the be-all,
end-all of all telephony, we hope that Asterisk will be that be-all,
end-all to the degree that such a thing could possibly exist."

Asterisk is SIP-compatible, but doesn't have the same degree of
closeness that SIPfoundry has to the Internet Engineering Task Force,
which defines the SIP standards.

Rich points out that many of the key members of the key IETF working
groups also sit on the board of SIPfoundry.

These include Robert Sparks, SIPfoundry president and co-author of the
core SIP specification, who co-chairs the IETF's SIMPLE working group
(on instant-messenger style presence applications), and Cisco alumnus
Rohan Mahy, Co-chair of the SIP and SIPPING (investigation of new SIP
applications) working groups.

For those who are keen to stick as closely as possible to the SIP
standards, that's an advantage. But Asterisk will be more
fleet-footed, says Spencer:

"As new needs come along, Asterisk (like any software implementation)
can be completely changed at any level in order to accommodate the new
requirements, whereas SIP (like any protocol definition) can only do
so within the constraints of retaining backwards compatibility and
with lengthy debates in a standards body."

You pays money (or not, given that it's free software) and you takes
your choice. In a market which is likely to expand rapidly, there is
certainly room for both.

"While one could view Pingtel and Digium as competitors," says
Spencer, "I think we both benefit from having someone else in the open
source space, as it helps lend additional credibility to what we're
doing and pushes us to work harder to deliver what customers and users
are demanding."
Bootnote

* We're not quite sure what a commoditizee is. It may be like a
chimpanzee – a gorilla after a thorough downsizing. Whichever Cisco
becomes, it's sure to raise a few eyebrows on Wall Street

Vonage getting into WIFI-VOIP?

Link: http://news.com.com/2102-7352_3-5706515.html?tag=st.util.print

By Ben Charny
http://news.com.com/VoIP+firm+Vonage+testing+routers+for+mobile+service/2100-7352_3-5706515.html

Story last modified Fri May 13 11:45:00 PDT 2005

Vonage, a provider of Internet-based calling services, is testing wireless routers, a sign the company is on the verge of debuting a mobile offering.

The ongoing customer trials involve a new Linksys Wi-Fi router that Vonage could market along with its calling plans, according to an e-mail sent to customers and seen by CNET News.com. Vonage has in the past acknowledged that its customers are also testing a handset equipped with a Wi-Fi antenna and radio.

With the special router and handset, individual customers would be free to roam about their home or office, untethered from a modem or phone jack and without a connection to a laptop or desktop computer. Vonage could also market the routers to hot spot providers such as Boingo Wireless for installation in airports, coffeehouses and other such locations where wireless hubs have slowly begun to appear.

Current Wi-Fi hot spots often pose problems for VoIP users. In theory, someone should be able to walk into a Wi-Fi-enabled cafe, fire up a laptop, log on to the Internet and start dialing. But that now requires technical know-how and configuration hassles that most consumers don't want to deal with. The new routers are designed to do most of the heavy lifting.

Vonage and many others among the new breed of telephone companies using voice over Internet Protocol, are trying to cash in on mobility in the same way cell phone operators have. Skype, a Vonage competitor, says it's working on a Wi-Fi handset similar to Vonage's.

VoIP is software to make or get phone calls using an Internet connection, and it's expected to roil the traditional telephone industry because VoIP calls are much cheaper and come with many more features.

Support for Wi-Fi continues to grow, a positive sign as Vonage and other VoIP operators prepare their own services. On Friday, cell phone operator Nextel Communications, which is in the midst of being purchased by rival Sprint, began offering a $40-a-month service providing unlimited access to 7,000 hot spots run by partners Boingo and Wayport.

Copyright ©1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

XTEN Softphone now available for Linux

Link: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050516/to206.html?.v=4

Press Release Source: Xten Networks Inc.

Xten VoIP Softphones Now Available for Linux
Monday May 16, 8:57 am ET

SANTA CLARA, CA, May 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Xten Networks, Inc. (OTCBB: XNWK - News), a provider of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), Video over IP, Instant Messaging (IM), and Presence SIP softphones, announced today that some of its SIP softphones and software development kits (SDKs) are now available for Linux.

"Xten has done and continues to do very well on the desktop. The company is now becoming more active in developing and selling solutions into the appliance oriented market," commented Erik Lagerway, COO and President for Xten. "The first step towards creating some of these embedded solutions is support for Linux."

Xten's softphones for Windows, MAC OS X, Pocket PC and now Linux are software applications, which run on devices such as personal computers (PCs) or personal digital assistants (PDAs) or can be integrated into set-top boxes, embedded devices, instant messenger applications, and the like. When an Xten softphone is connected to a service provider's network, the user can make and receive calls to and from other "on-net" callers (IP-to-IP) and/or "off-net" callers (IP-to-PSTN/Cellular) with the same quality of service they would expect from an IP handset. However, at a fraction of the cost, while providing more features and functionality than an IP handset.

The Linux version of X-Lite has been tested on Debian®, RedHat Fedora, S.U.S.E.® and Sun® JDS. A free version of X-Lite for Linux is now available from Xten's website, please visit http://www.xten.com.

Rogers has upper hand – aquisitions spring and will be offering voip sooner than later

Toronto Star
May 16, 2005. 01:52 PM
CRTC decision dealt blow to Bell, an ace to Rogers

TYLER HAMILTON

Ted Rogers is on a tear.

Rogers Communications Inc.'s wireless business is booming in a market
that's been whittled down to three. It has bulked up by making three
significant acquisitions or strategic investments within the past
year, including last week's $330 million deal to buy Sprint Canada.

And on Thursday, the federal telecom watchdog reaffirmed that Rogers
and other cable companies can market, price, and bundle local phone
services based on Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, without the
restriction of regulation.

These gains for Rogers have, to some degree, come at the expense of
arch-rival Bell Canada, the country's largest phone company. Bell's
wireless business has struggled recently and it stands to gradually
lose Sprint Canada as a purchaser of wholesale network access once
Rogers takes it over.

The CRTC ruling was also bad news for Bell. The regulator confirmed it
wasn't going to regulate phone-over-cable services, but it also
confirmed that it would regulate VoIP services offered by Bell and
other phone giants.

In other words, by being forced to seek regulatory approval whenever
it wants to change the price of a VoIP service, Bell will be battling
Rogers with one arm tied behind its back. That's on top of the fact
that every VoIP sale it makes is likely to cannibalize its traditional
local line business.

What irks Bell even more is that pricing changes, even if approved,
are still tied to certain service "bands." For example, band A
represents large urban cores such as Toronto and Montreal, while band
B is for smaller cities of more than 150,000 household lines.

Rogers, when it launches its phone service this summer, will be free
to offer different pricing in different markets. Someone in Toronto
could pay $30 a month, while in Ottawa the same phone-over-cable
service might cost $35.

Not so for Bell. If it wants to reduce the price of a VoIP service to
$30 to compete more effectively in Toronto, it would have to also
lower it to $30 in Ottawa, which is in the same band, even if there's
no competitive reason to do so.

Take the case of Videotron Ltd., which in January launched
phone-over-cable service in Montreal's South Shore. In its first two
months the company sold nearly 15,000 lines, an impressive number
given the limited size of the market. Videotron was reportedly so
overwhelmed with requests that it decided to stop advertising the
product.

Bell can't lower the cost of its service just in the South Shore, or
even just in Montreal, to compete against Videotron. If it did, it
would have to lower the price accordingly in other band A markets,
such as Toronto.

This is part of the reason why Bell, perhaps for the first time in its
recent history, has something to truly fear. Bell said earlier this
month it lost 10,000 local phone customers in the last quarter because
of Videotron's launch.

That's just in the two months. Imagine the impact when Videotron
expands its service across its Quebec operating territory? Now,
imagine what Bell will be contending with this summer when Rogers
comes to market with its own phone service, emboldened by its
acquisition of Sprint Canada and the half a million local phone
customers that come with it?

Should we feel sorry for Bell and the other big telcos, a group with a
98-per-cent share of the residential local phone market? No way. By
the end of next March the CRTC is expected to outline criteria for
deregulating all local services — VoIP or otherwise — so it's only a
matter of time before the muzzle is taken off and Bell is unleashed
into the open market, fangs and all.

Between now and then the CRTC is hoping that new VoIP providers will
firmly establish themselves as competitors. Bell will just have to
tough it out during this period.

Unfortunately, the CRTC has reduced this to a battle between cable and
phone companies. The group to feel sorry for is the smaller
independent VoIP providers, such as BabyTEL, Inter.net and Comwave.
They may not have as much to fear from Bell anymore, but they're still
up against big cable companies like Rogers, left free under the CRTC
ruling.

Next Page »