Clearing My Head

I saw this today on CNN. The story is here.

A man refused to turn off his cellular phone while on a Southwest Airlines flight, and as a result was cited. It’s about time I say! I fly a lot, and numerous times I’ve seen people stay on calls even as the aircraft is speeding down the runway. This despite the crews many attempts to get them to stop.

Most people don’t need to be on that call. If they truly do the  they shouldn’t be on that aircraft. In either case there lapse in judgement is theirs.

In this particular story the man was literally taking a call from his fathers heart surgeon. So it may truly have been a matter of life and death. Even so, the man had no right to risk the lives of the other passengers. I feel that the ticket is completely warranted. If I were him I’d just pay it…the cost of doing what I had to do at the moment, without regard for the rights of others.

I certainly hope that we NEVER allow the use of cell phones on domestic flights. I’m all for in-flight internet access, but I can’t support anything that will raise the ambient noise level of the cabin substantially.

Part 1 of this article is now online right here. This part describes the reasons for adding a cellular trunk, potential benefits, and walks through selecting the gateway device.

Part 2 is in progress and will describe the setup and use of the gateway under various circumstances.

Holy C%&^@. Does the broadband in this hotel ever suck!!!! Seriously, I’d be better off with a 56k modem and trying to dialup my Covad access. This week I’m staying in Austin TX at the Candlewood Suites, which is an extended stay portion of the Holiday Inn empire. At $119 a night its not dirt cheap, and they promote the free broadband as a major feature. It’s wired too, which is normally better than free wireless.

However, it’s provided through an outfit called SuperClick. They suck. I spent 30 minutes on the phone to them this evening just because their captive portal arrangement was so slow that it never offered me a login page.

Their tech support was operated out of Montreal, which is nice…I love Montreal…IMHO its one of the greatest cities to visit in North America.

Je suis Canadien, j’adore Montréal. New Orleans as well.

But even after they got me logged in the service was barely functional. For some insane reason they backhaul everything to a location in Atlanta. Any web service that makes an effort to guess my location by IP thinks that I’m in Georgia.

Maybe this will be the motivation for me to sign up for an EVDO service, or perhaps WiMax eventually. Since T-Mobile is finally rolling out its 3G network maybe I can tie a new wireless broadband service into my cell account. I spend enough days on the road that lack of functional broadband causes serious frustration.

Do you hear that Mr Holiday Inn? I will not be staying here again. I’ll be at the new Hyatt Place or Marriott down the way. G’night.

The first part of the article about GSM the gateway is off to the publisher at www.smallnetbuilder.com. The first part covers my motivation for adding a cellular trunk. It also describes the differences between ITSPs addressing the broad residential voice-over-broadband marketplace vs those addressing the SMB/Asterisk user space.

The ability to provide ones own 911/411 service is perhaps a greater concern to end-users who select ITSPs that target SMBs (or Asterisk users) as these are less likely to provide 911/E911 service.

Part 2 will deal with the specifics of installing & configuring the gateway device, as well as my experience using it these past few months. It’s been very reliable, as has the T-Mobile service that it rides.

Many thanks to Tim at Small Net Builder. He’s been very supportive of my efforts, which helps me to undertake ever more projects. It’s a pity that my day job gets in the way sometimes. However, they too may soon be drawn into evaluating some HD Voice hardware.

It certainly appears that HD-DVD lost. But it also appears that Blu-Ray did not win. Yes, this was a classic lose-lose situation. For all it’s back room dealing Sony may blow this in the end.

Blu-Ray sales peaked for a few weeks in January but have since slumped. Consumers just may not see value in the price of the players or the media. Ars Technica has the details.

Wait, the price of Blu-Ray players has actually been on the rise since Toshiba conceded the battle! Even I, who still has a first generation Toshiba HD-XA1 HD-DVD player, won’t be buying a Blu-Ray player any time soon. They’re just too expensive.

Read the rest of this entry »

The rumor has been confirmed true, I’ll be writing a review of the new Polycom Spectralink 8002 SIP WIFI handset. It arrived Wednesday. I’ll be installing new WMM capable wifi APs in order to facilitate this review. The review itself will eventually appear at www.smallnetbuilder.com.

I’m really looking forward to this. Many thanks to the folks at Small Net Builder and Polycom for making it happen.

Brough Turner has written an updated version of his classic opinion/overview of network QoS. His opinion that we’ll never have end-to-end QoS on the internet raised some eyebrows in December 2006…but he was dead right, and remains so to this day.

The updated version includes some new information about potential business opportunities for farsighted ISPs who might offer a better class of service through ensured QoS.

Not to give away the punchline, but here’s his summary:

There is no Internet QoS today, and it’s unlikely any complex QoS scheme will ever be added to the Internet as a whole. To the extent next generation networks with rich QoS are deployed, it will only be within walled gardens. But there may be opportunities for ISPs to create a simple premium service that could generate incremental revenue.

It’s a good read, not too technical and with references from good solid sources.

My own posts about small network QoS and traffic shaping have been the most popular posts since I started writing this blog. There appears to be real hunger for information about this stuff. Brough gives us a definitive overview of the subject.

Many thanks!

OK, VOIP over Wifi and VOIP via mobiles (cell phone networks) is getting a lot of attention lately, be it Skype, Truphone, Gizmo, iSkoot or whatever. Martin Sauter has a nice post about just how easy it is to capture, decode and hear VOIP call on a wifi LAN.

Is this news? No. It’s not. This has been known for some time. Like all things on networks some attention needs to be paid to matters of security. If you’re in the wild world (ie. not on your own LAN) then its difficult to be certain that the call is secure. You can use VPN technology or TLS/SRTP if your provider supports this. I look forward to TLS/SRTP support in Asterisk, which is underway and to be in v1.6.

While we’re on the topic, if you’re at all concerned about VOIP security you should be paying some attention to the Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) This is a great resource for voice security information.

Alan Lord recently posted a review of the new Siemens S685IP SIP-DECT cordless phone. These look very nice. Less expensive than the snom m3, and able to switch between one analog line and numerous VOIP providers.

I hope that these become available in the US some time soon.

This week I finally received a response to a query I sent to snom about the m3 system. I need a little extra range in some cases so I asked about roaming between fixed bases. They responded that they do not provide roaming support, which would add considerable complexity and cost of the system. However, they are expecting to offer a DECT repeater some time in June.

DECT repeaters are a little like Wifi range extender devices. They expand the wireless range by using a wireless peer-to-peer backhaul strategy between bases.

Given that the m3 hardware is OEM’d from RTX, a Danish company, it could well be that snom is planning to offer their DECT repeater as well.

Incidentally, the RTX Dualphone 3081 looks identical to the Polycom IP200W. Literally identical.