Irwin Lazar's "Real-Time" Blog

VoIP quality better than PSTN

VoIP Central posted results from a recent Minacom report entitled VoIP quality better than PSTN. The Minacom report contradicts an earlier report from Brix which stated that call quality was dropping (as measured by their "Test your VoIP" web site.

Minacom seems to have conducted a more thorough study whereas the Brix results were strictly based on results of tests run by users of its web site. Those results are skewed because there is no way to know if the users of the Test Your VoIP site were only those having problems. It wasn't a random sampling of call quality across geographies.

These results are certainly good news for VoIP providers (though they do note that the PC-based VoIP services (e.g. Skype, Google Talk, etc.) did exhibit worse quality than the VoIP over broadband services.

The Top 30 VoIP Blogs

Thank you to "SmithonVoIP" for including me in "The Top 30 VoIP Blogs." His list is a good resource, and all of the ones he notes are in my FeedDemon VoIP subscription folder.

Navigating the HD waters

I spent this weekend making the plunge into the world of HD television. After a ton of reading of posts on avsforum, the mother of all audio-video discussion boards, and a lot of good advice from my former colleague Dave Passmore, I plopped down a few bucks on a new JVC D-ILA 56" TV and set about figuring out how to get HD television into my living room.

For those of you who haven't taken the plunge, be prepared for a lot, and I mean a lot of research and work. The terms and concepts that one has to learn to become proficient in HD-TV "speak"are just astounding. To give you a small sample, just picking the right TV requires as much work as the typical college course. First off you have to learn the interface types, HDMI, composite, component, digital, and so on. Then you have to learn about resolutions, 720p versus 1080i, or the newer 1080p. Each of which have their relative strengths and weaknesses. For example, most HD TVs come in either 720p or 1080i. 1080i has slightly better resolution, but is interlaced, meaning that fast-action scenes such as sporting events aren't as crisp. The new breed of sets now hitting the market are 1080p, which gives you the best of both worlds, but the drawback is that only the new generation of DVD's can take advantage of 1080p. Almost all high-def broadcasts are in 720p or 1080i. And before we leave our discussion of sets, one has to learn the difference between plasma, LCD, LCD projection, DLP, LCoS, and conventional tube TV. And don't even think about picking the size of your TV until you've measured your room and how far your seating position will be from the TV.

Selecting the right programming is another challenge. For those of you lucky enough to have access to Verizon's FiOS service, well from what I've read your work is done. For the 88.5% of us that don't have FiOS, it gets a little tougher. DirecTV and Dish Network all offer various service packages, DirecTV's is the most complicated, you can only get local HD channels via the dish if you are willing to give up TiVo (though their own DVR is hitting the streets now), otherwise you need an antenna, something my parents had on their roof in the 1970s but is now back in vogue in the HD-TV world. Cable presents another alternative, but reports are that cable infrastructures are strapped for bandwidth so new channels will be few and far between. DirecTV compresses its HD signal, which many argue offers lower picture quality (PQ) than cable.

In the end I wentwith DirecTV's current (but soon to be obsolete) HD-TiVo since I got them to give me one in exchange for buying NFL Sunday Ticket, but I'm expecting to replace ithe TiVo with their new DVR (assuming they can avoid losing a lawsuit to TiVo - for those of you who haven't heard, Dish Network is now under court order to disable most of their customers DVR's after losing such a suit). For local channels I'm using one of those old fashioned UHF antennas that I haven't seen in 20 years (not quite the old metal loop, but pretty close).

Anyway the point here is that I don't believe HD-TV is ready for the masses just yet. There is a terrific opportunity for reputable organizations to help educate the the consumer market, but unfortunately there is also a huge opportunity to take advantage of the uninformed - witness Best Buy and others selling "Monster" brand HDMI cables for a hundred bucks when a $15 cable from a place like monocable.comwill work just as well(thank youavsforum for saving me $250)

But in the end, it's worth it. The picture quality of HD, especially for sports, is just astounding. It's the future of television, but it will be a bumpy road getting there.

Hacking a Mac Book - Redux

It looks like the recent publicity over individuals attacking Mac Book's via WiFi flaws to gain control of the system may have been fabricated.

Mac Daily News has the scoop, noting that the hackers relied on third-party wireless cards to conduct their attack. Since the Mac Book has built in WiFi, it would be extremely unlikely to find someone using a third-party wireless card to attack.

The Washington Post's Brian Krebss stands by his assertion that it was the Mac's own wireless capabilities were attacked. But the onus is now on SecureWorks to demonstrate that what it found was a flaw in the Mac itself, and not a flaw in a third-party wireless card that nobody will ever use anyway.

Collaboration Loop - Turning Off the Collaboration Spigot at 30,000 Feet

David Goldes writes at Collaboration Loop about Boeing's recent announcement that it was ending it's Connexion in-flight Internet service. I had the opportunity to use the service one time on a flight from Frankfurt to Washington D.C., and it worked flawlessly, allowing me to surf and hold an instant message session with a co-worker while crossing the Atlantic at 37,000 feet.

Boeing notes that the service had low adoption rates by carriers. I'm surprised. One would think that given the ubiquity of wireless, there would be a great deal of demand for WiFi in the sky. Given the need for airlines to develop new revenue models, I would have thought that some, especially those extremely popular with business travelers such as JetBlue, would have jumped at the chance to add yet another pay-as-you-go service to go along with lunchboxes and such.

Maybe these services will gain new life once wireless iPods hit the street and create demand for WiFi that extends beyond the business traveler with a laptop. Of course, if security crackdowns continue maybe we'll all go back to reading books on flights.

Now writing at Collaboration Loop

I've moved from VoIP Loop to Collaboration Loop to focus a bit more on how real-time and non-real-time collaboration tools are being used in the enterprise. My first post covers video conferencing trends in light of recent security changes for the business traveler.

VoiceCon - Next Week

Next week is VoiceCon Fall in San Francisco, CA. I will be speaking at three sessions:

• Special Focus: SIP Futures, Tuesday August 22, 2:45-4:00
• IP Telephony Security: Conducting a Vulnerability Assessment, Wednesday August 23, 1:00-2:15
• The Role of Open Source in IP Telephony, Thursday August 23, 8:00-8:45

In addition my colleague Chris Kardish will be speakingon Tuesday from 1:00-2:15in a session entitled "Connecting Remote Sites/Teleworkers."

The complete VoiceCon program is available here. The program looks solid, especially the conference-within-a-conference on unified communications, which is increasingly the hottest topic in the enterprise real-time space right now.

VoIP Hacking Tools Arrive, Should You Be Afraid? | Nemertes Research

Nemertes Research has published an impact analysis that I wrote about the release of VoIP hacking tools by Mark Collier and David Endler at BlackHat a few weeks ago.  The analysis is free, but only to those who subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

 

The impact analysis is a weekly note that we publish on a hot topic, it provides a concise analysis of a news event and our recommended actions for enterprises, vendors and investors.

Lazar, Kardish Join Nemertes Research

Nemertes Research issued a press release this week to announce my joining as well as the arrival of Christopher Kardish. Chris is our primary analyst covering wireless/mobility and he brings a terrific resume to the team.

The Power of Blogs

Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch noted that this morning he received "A Present Of Sorts", a Washington Post story on how marketeers have discovered the power of blogs (in this case, Nokia among others). In this example the article noted how Nokia marketed it's new N-series phone by sending free units to 50 well-read bloggers. The end result was a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth exposure for the product.

Of course there's a danger here, that bloggers will start expecting these sorts of things, but demo units for testing for the trade press has been a long standing tradition. This article demonstrates how many bloggers have established themselves as being as credible as the more traditional trade press.

Congrats Andy (and Happy Birthday!!)