Packetizer News

With the increased focus on videoconferencing and VoIP communications, there has also been an increase in the number of questions people have about implementation, configuration, deployment, troubleshooting, etc. Some questions are rather straight-forward, while some really require the expertise of people who have been working in the area for a while.

Packetizer is a community-driven web site that operates a number of different mailing lists and publishes a lot of material in an effort to try to help people build, design, and deploy multimedia communications technologies. On Packetizer, you will find high-level overviews about VoIP, frequently asked implementation questions and details, tutorials, and so forth. However, even with all of the resources already available, there seemed to be something more needed.

After collaborating with a number of people in the community and taking a poll, it was decided that a new discussion forum would be useful. As a result, we created a new site called Packetizer Forums, which is open to everybody to ask questions, provide answers, and to learn. Oh, and having fun never hurts.

We hope you enjoy the added service!

The increased focus on videoconferencing has brought with it a renewed interest in H.323. While this is not entirely surprising, given that H.323 was specifically designed to enable video communications over packet-switched networks, it is nonetheless an indication that H.323 is still a major force in the market.

Over the past several months, we have received an increased number of inquiries related to H.323 on topics related to tools, deployment, protocol questions, etc. Additionally, others in the videoconferencing community, including equipment vendors and stack vendors, have also reported an increase in activity, including sales, feature requests, and so forth.

With all of this renewed focus on H.323, it was a surprise to receive one message that asked whether there was any work going on related to H.323 since it had been several years since H.323 was updated. Indeed, it has been a few years. Even so, there has definitely been work going on behind the scenes.

In fact, the ITU is planning to approve H.323v7 in November. There are also several other H.323-related documents currently in development scheduled for approval in November. Some may be ready, but some may be delayed. The bottom line, though, is that there is definitely active progress. See the current documents in progress here: https://www.packetizer.com/voip/h323/doc_status.html

Equally important, though, is the fact that there is not as much progress as in previous years on H.323, simply because the standard is fairly mature. There are topics related to Telepresence that the ITU will likely explore, but H.323 is already well-suited for such applications: it is a very stable and mature protocol at this point.

In parallel to the work on H.323, though, there is work on a very new multimedia system that has been slowly moving forward. The new system is called the Advanced Multimedia System (AMS), also known as H.325. H.325 is still in the requirements gathering phase, but the road ahead is fairly clear. H.325 will be an application platform that will enable multimedia communications applications to work together in order to provide a rich communication experience. The objective is to enable users to use any number of devices together seamlessly in a communication session. Equally important, by decomposing the multimedia system into a control element and a set of applications, the system will truly be an open platform upon which application developers will be able to create and deliver new features and functionality without being dependent on any other vendor. It is truly going to be a revolutionary technology that is unparalleled by anything in the industry today.

These are definitely some exciting times. Without a doubt, the ITU continues to lead the charge in delivering powerful multimedia communication systems for the 21st century. And Packetizer is committed to sharing information with the world on the progress of those standards.

With all of the emphasis on VoIP, one of the related technologies that we have not addressed as sufficiently as we should have is instant messaging. During the holidays, Packetizer deployed an open source XMPP server called Openfire. To our delight, it worked flawlessly and significantly better than we had expected. Within minutes, we had the server up and running and communicating with the Google Talk service. Read more about this standard that has become the leader in enterprise instant messaging.

We are continually working to improve the content offered on Packetizer. Most recently we made significant revisions to the look and feel of Daily Payload. For those who are not familiar with Daily Payload, it is a site where we publish terse summaries and links to news headlines related to VoIP, videoconferencing, mobile communication, WiFi, WiMax, IM, and other technologies related to multimedia communication.

There are two obvious and significant changes that you can immediately see when you visit Daily Payload. The first is that we've changed the color scheme. We now have a light gray background on the sides and a black header across the top. The second and perhaps most substantial change is the logo. We now have a new logo that appears on all pages and the e-mail messages that get sent to subscribers of the Daily Payload news e-mail lists.

One of the features that we added to Daily Payload some time ago is a view of the site designed specifically for mobile devices. If you use a mobile device, you might find that you are redirected to dailypayload.com/mobile. Or, perhaps you will not. We do not have the signatures for every possible mobile device out there, but Windows Mobile, iPhone, and a few other mobile devices are recognized, and users are automatically redirected to the /mobile section.

Another feature added a long time ago is an RSS feed. That probably needs little mention, since it is clear from the volume of traffic to the site that many people have discovered this one. But, in case you are not aware, we do syndicate the postings on Daily Payload via RSS.

A new feature that we have added, but not immediately visible, is the ability to post complete articles on the site through the web browser. We plan to start publishing more original content and would invite people from the public to submit content, as well. If you are interested to write a news article, send it to us for review. We do not object to product promotions, as long as the article also contains useful and interesting information on voice, videoconferencing, or related technologies.

Lastly, feel free to send us feedback on anything you like or don't like. We welcome the input to help improve the growing Packetizer community.

ITU-T Q12/16 met the last week of August to make progress on the Advanced Multimedia System (AMS), the next-generation multimedia communication system that will enable users to communicate using a multiplicity of communication modes across any number of independent devices. The focus of this meeting was primarily on network architecture and requirements. Read the full story here.

Experts working on the next generation multimedia communication system known as AMS recently completed a meeting, reaching some important decisions on architecture, terminology, and protocol syntax used in the new system. The new system will be a decomposed system, allowing anyone to create new applications and will utilize XML as the basis for the signaling protocol. You can read the full story here.

ITU-T SG16 formally approved Question 12 as a new Question focused on the study of the Advanced Multimedia System. This is really exciting, as we are now looking toward the future of distributed communication capabilities and truly enabling coordinated multimedia applications -- something that the industry has, thus far, not successfully delivered.

So, work on AMS is moving ahead! During this meeting that just concluded in Geneva, a number of new requirements were added to the AMS project, the AMS project description was reviewed, and the experts agreed on a document that that will serve as the skeleton document for the AMS terminal architecture.

The next meeting of Question 12 will be held in late June or early July 2008 in North Carolina, USA. The exact date and location of the meeting will be sent to the SG16 mailing list once it has been finalized. For information related various AMS-related mailing lists, visit http://www.packetizer.com/voip/h325/lists.html.

The Packetizer VoIP Bandwidth Calculator was recently updated to include a Spanish translation! This is exciting since, although Packetizer's visitors come from nearly every country in the world, this is the first non-English web page published by Packetizer. While trying to make the entire Packetizer site multilingual would prove to be a nearly impossible task, certain content like the VoIP Bandwidth Calculator are definitely good candidates for translation since it is such a useful tool.

We would like to reach out to the Packetizer Community and ask for your help: if you are a user of the VoIP Bandwidth Calculator and would be willing to provide us with a translation into a different language, do it! We will gladly put up any language version that is provided to us. All we would need is a translation of the text that appears on the page in your language in either a Word file or a UTF-8-encoded .txt file.

ITU-T SG16 Question 12 met last week in Seoul, South Korea to make progress on the requirements for the Advanced Multimedia System (AMS). A lot of progress was made, with requirements coming from several companies and integrated into a single document. While the requirements have largely focused on the terminal equipment thus far, it is very clear that AMS represents a significantly different kind of system than what was delivered with legacy systems like SIP and H.323. The next SG16 meeting at the end of April 2008 will make more progress on requirements, but will also begin to seriously examine system architecture proposals.

For those working on open source H.323 projects, you have undoubtedly had some difficulty accessing mailing lists, finding current code, or finding a person to whom you could ask questions. Further, the old OpenH323 site has not been updated for nearly four years. We found that terribly unfortunate since work is and has been actively ongoing, in spite of the OpenH323 site owner's reluctance to keep the site updated. So, we worked with the open-source developer community to launch a new open-source H.323 web site and created new associated mailing lists. The new site is called H.323 Plus (or, as some prefer, "H323plus").