Almost ready for prime time. (Netcomm Update) (Internet/Web/Online Service Information)(Column) Morris Edwards. Abstract: Internet telephony offers the prospect of cheap long-distance communication as well as several novel application and multimedia capabilities of the World Wide Web. However, only about 500,000 people are using the Internet for telephone communications, because of several obstacles to be overcome. These include poor voice quality, response delay and below-standard call completion rates. Also, most PCs are not equipped for Internet telephony. A telephony-compatible PC should be at least a 486 with 25MHz speed, with microphone, speakers, a 28.8-Kbps modem, a sound card and appropriate software. The available software lacks interoperability. Another major problem is related to concern from America's Carriers Telecommunications Association (ACTA). However, availability of new software and the growing use of company intranets will boost Internet telephony and estimates show there may 16 million users by 1999.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 A. Verner Nelson Associates Call anywhere, talk forever, and never pay long-distance charges. That's the promise of Internet telephony, a concept that scares some phone companies but intrigues many network managers, chief financial officers, and users at organizations of all sizes.
Internet telephony promises not only substantial cuts in communications costs, but a wide variety of new multimedia capabilities and applications on the World Wide Web. Until now, though, it has mainly been the province of the hobbyist willing to accept poor voice quality and other inconveniences in order to chat with people around the world free of charge. This situation is about to change, thanks to the growing use of corporate intranets, and the imminent adoption of standards for Internet phone software and priority transmission schemes for the Internet better suited to carrying delay-sensitive voice traffic.
OBSTACLES TO GROWTH
Half a million people currently use their computers to make phone calls over the Internet, according to a recent white paper by International Data Corp. (IDC), a market research firm in Framingham, Mass. IDC estimates there will be at least 16-million Internet telephony users by 1999, and even more if the long-distance carriers, regional Bells. and cable companies start to target the market. In that case, IDC estimates, we could have more than 63 million people making Internet phone calls by then. Before this can happen, though, there are several obstacles to overcome. For one thing, response delay, voice quality, and call completion rates are well below business standards.
Besides the inadequacies of the Internet, s current infrastructure and protocols, there's also the lack of interoperability among today's proprietary products. in addition, most PCs are not equipped for Internet telephony and will need to be upgraded.
At a minimum, the PC should use a 25-MHZ 486 design and come with microphone, speakers, sound card, kb/s modem and client software. Figure on $50 to $100 for the software and $300 to $400 for the rest. Because of their proprietary designs, today, s products limit calls to people on the Internet who are using the same software. Each software vendor maintains a server with the IP (lnternet Protocol) addresses of its users. A caller simply logs on to the server, checks to see which users are on-line and clicks on the IP address to initiate the call.
Alternatively, callers may bypass the server and simply enter the IP address of the person they are calling. Since this person must be on-line waiting for the call, however, it may be necessary to make a regular phone call to establish the Internet voice connection.
Another emerging concept is that of Internet telephony gateways, which are appealing to firms with a high volume of international or long-distance calls. A company might install a gateway in its London and Washington, D.C., offices, for instance. A caller in London clicks on the client software, connects to the local gateway, and dials the colleague's Washington number. The call travels over the Internet to the Washington gateway, which connects the call to the local person.
PROGRESS ON INTEROPERABILITY
With Internet telephony, any connection may be a poor one, depending on how it is routed through the Internet and the amount of congestion at the routing nodes. Response delays of 1 or 2 seconds are possible, compared with typical delays of 50 to 70 milliseconds with the regular phone network. However, since the infrastructure of corporate internets is more controllable, Internet phones working over intranets should come close to matching the performance of regular phones.
Once the caller is linked to another user, the telephony software samples and digitizes the caller's voice from the PC microphone, compresses the signal and transmits the compressed packets to the other party using TCP/IP When packets are late or lost, the software compensates by averaging over the gaps. This can hurt speech quality and, occasionally, when congestion is severe, may cause a loss of connection.
Differences in the voice-compression algorithms add to the interoperability problems created by the proprietary software designs. Help is on the way, though. Last March, Microsoft and Intel convinced more than 100 vendors to agree on a common standard and incorporate it in their products.
The agreement includes such ITU standards as H.323 for audio conferencing and videoconferencing and T. 120 for data conferencing. It also incorporates specifications developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to improve the performance of telephony and other multimedia applications over the Internet.
RTP (Real-time Transport Protocoi),
for instance, includes packet sequencing information and time stamps for synchronizing data streams. A companion protocol, RTCP (Real-time Transport Control Protocol) provides feedback on current network conditions, allowing the telephony software to switch compression algorithms in response to degraded connections.
Another important protocol is RSVP (Resource reservation Protocol), which dynamically reserves network resources such as bandwidth or buffers to guarantee quality of service for telephony and other multimedia applications on the Internet.
REGULATORY ISSUED LOOM
Even when performance and interoperability problems are solved, though, there's still a major obstacle to Internet telephony in the form of the America's Carriers Telecommunications Association. ACTA represents about 130 interexchange carriers, who are concerned that telephony services offered by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) could decimate their revenues.
Last March, ACTA petitioned the FCC to ban the sale of Internet telephony products until voice traffic on the Internet could be segregated and metered. In a later addendum, it also asked the FCC to regulate ISPS as though they were phone companies. The filing elicited responses from more than 80 companies, some of whom have formed the VON (Voice on the Net) Coalition to lobby against regulation and controls. Industry observers consider it unlikely the FCC will rule in favor of ACTA since it would stifle innovation and be counter-productive. Meanwhile, the major carriers are moving ahead with their own plans. AT&T and MCI intend offering Internet gateway service within a year or so. AT&T is also planning a Web-hosted service that will let Internet users establish a voice call by clicking on a Web-page icon. Sprint is also readying an Internet telephony service using RSVP.
In another boost to Internet telephony, Netscape and Microsoft have incorporated voice capabilities into their latest browser releases. Netscape's CoolTalk lets users speak to each other and share a collaborative tool called a whiteboard, which allows simultaneous viewing and editing of graphical images using drawing, zooming, and markup tools. Version 3 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer also has a telephony component and a collaborative conferencing tool known as NetMeeting.
BRIDGE TO THE 21ST CENTURY?
Among Internet telephony software vendors, the leader is VocalTec, an Israeli company with offices in Northvale, N.J. VocalTec's Internet Phone had more than 90% of the market last year. Now the field is more competitive with offerings from Intel, IBM, and a host of others, including two fast-rising stars: NetSpeak with its WebPhone, which provides full-duplex, encrypted point-to-point communications with integrated voice mail; and Camelot with its DigiPhone.
Vocaltec's software works with both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. In October, the firm announced support for the H.323 standard in future versions of the software and its other products and said it had demonstrated interoperability between its software and Intel's Internet Phone software and Microsoft's Netmeeting.
With another product, its Internet Telephony Gateway, Vocaltec bridges the old world of telephony with the new era of Internet telephony. It permits point-to-point calling via two gateway servers that hang off LANs on either end of a corporate internet. Could this be the much-talked-about bridge to the 21st century?
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