VoIP Still Poor for Emergencies and Security

We're using VoIP out here in Baghdad. I must say that it offers significant improvements in quality over what the military historically uses. The Cisco book "Voice Over IP Fundamentals" outlines a 150 ms ping time as a limit for reasonable call quality. But I have found respectable conversations can be had quite well even with ping times upwards of 1500 ms over satellite. There is minor lag between end stations, but the digital voice quality through the modern compression algorithms and modern real time delivery protocols are leaps and bounds above the beeping, static prone, hollow sound of traditional Army MSE voice.

I believe VoIP is a superior means to establish a local phone service than using a traditional PBX (private branch exchange). Rather than investing in the hardware and installation for separate phone lines, one single investment is made for a data network that happens to carry voice. QoS takes care of the prioritization to ensure voice quality does not diminish to heavy data traffic.

Now one major misconception is that VoIP means telephones on the Internet. VoIP is literally just Voice over IP. The voice chat in Apple's iChat, Yahoo Messenger or even TeamSpeak for video games are all implementations of VoIP. The compression algorithms and delivery mechanisms are nearly identical.

What many people don't realize is that most of their telephone calls are already 99% digital and traversing over data networks. IP and ATM have been relaying traffic over trunks for well over a decade. But since the '70s, SS7 (signaling system 7) being the venerable but still widely used hybrid of circuit switching and data packetization, has run the phone service. The only truly analog portion of a phone call in the past 30 years has been the local loop directly to the call office. What really drives the VoIP boat is the interface between a VoIP service provider and the existing PSTN system. The competition for telephone providers of yore was long distance rates. Today, with near ubiquitious access to the data network, the competition for voice providers is additional features for the same price.

Home users will see the least of these options - your standard PSTN features will remain with VoIP (caller ID, call waiting, *69, etc). The users that will push the envelope with be businesses. VoIP allows a virtual, contiguous addressing space for telephone number assignment. Corporations no longer have to lease dedicated circuits to link offices to maintain a linked call space. They can achieve this through a simple data VPN to and build voice on top of a corporate LAN. Corporations no longer have to lease dedicated circuits to maintain business links for priority calls. VoIP allows such an increase in data density on the common circuits that businesses get the same effect merely by using the Internet as a carrier. Corporations are also no longer locked into one telephone company for providing services and particular features. So long as they select a data carrier, an internal IT team can provide all the features they need from hardware managed internally - offering the exactly the features they need without haggling for it.

On a technical side, VoIP in it's current incarnation is not the miracle cure for communications. It has it's flaws and drawbacks.

Security Flaws:

- no encryption: I used a packet sniffer Ethereal just last week to watch the connectivity of the calls going through my network. A hacker could easily make several assumptions based on the data. One, it would be possible to find the call manager or voice gateway by analyzing which IP addresses are consistently accessed by known VoIP streams. This allows for targeting attacks directly on the service provider, spoofing the clients into being redirected from a man-in-the-middle, or faking service disruptions with seemingly legitimate source packets. By further analyzing source and destination IP's, it may become possible to target the call recipient as well (if they are VoIP). Furthermore, all of the data goes through the network via UDP using open protocols, so a sniffer could capture an entire session and recreate an entire conversation without either party ever being the wiser.

- remotely accessible hardware: Cisco ATA boxes (used by Vonage once, I'm not sure what they use now), call managers and VG248s are remotely configurable. For the devices that I have had my hands on in theater, none feature robust lockout schemes rendering each vulnerable to brute force attacks for access. I myself have remotely reprogrammed several "rogue" boxes on my network to lock them out of service.

Emergency Flaws:

- 911 access: This is often cited as the most dominant feature missing from VoIP. Regular PSTN phones receive their 48V operating power over the local loop directly from the call office. In the event of a power outage (local to a home per se), the phones continue to work off their analog line. VoIP requires the presence of power for the ATA and the broadband modem in order to maintain its connectivity to the service provider. Now, this is achievable through auxiliary power (generators, UPS, etc) but it is not as practical to end users as what they are accustomed to.

I have been using [[www.skype.com Skype]] since early June and heartily endorse it, although if you only call people in the US and have a cell phone, it's probably not practical beyond a chat gimmick. I live in Germany and it cuts my rate on calls to the US by about 60%.

I first found out about Skype (and VOIP) in a January 26, 2004 Fortune article (I think non-subscribers can only read the first part). At the time I had 30 hours a month dial-up; Germany deregulated telephones and airlines about 15 years ago, which makes those services about 10 years behind the US.

We moved in May to an area eligible for DSL, so as soon as I got it I downloaded Skype. The basic program, created by the inventors of Kazaa in an attempt to make money legally, is free- this means if you download Skype and a friend downloads Skype, you can talk to one another free of charge. It's like Instant Messenger in that way.

Skype makes money by charging you to rent a phone number that someone can call at from a land line or cell phone. This is called SkypeIn, and it costs 30 euros (~$38) annually. You can choose a phone number from most places in the developed world: the beauty of this is it makes it a local call for people from the area you choose.

I got SkypeIn, which includes voicemail, and got a Virginia number, so my family can call me for far less than the ~10 cents/min. they were paying using Costco phone cards.

So you can get calls, now how do you call a regular phone from your computer? This is called--you guessed it--SkypeOut. SkypeOut rates vary, but basically you can call anywhere in the First World (all English-speaking countries plus parts of China, Western Europe, etc.) for 1.7 euro cents/min, or approximately 2 cents a minute. This whups the 3.9 euro cents that crummy Deutsche Telekom charges me. Skype has really flourished in Europe and Asia, where cell phone calls cost the caller far more than those from a land line. It has not caught on in the US as much because of the relative cheapness of cell phones.

As for emergency services, we kept our land line; as Mark pointed out VOIP is not set up to handle 911 yet. Skype tells you to do just that when you download it. Additionally, I've never gotten a "spam call" but I'm sure somebody will figure it out pretty soon. If you add the number or Skype user ID of everyone who has your number or user ID, you'll know when someone unkown is calling you.

<b>Quality</b> is better than a cell phone, not as good as a land line.

Complaints: there are few USB phones, and most are too expensive. We used just a basic mike and speakers, but that was hard for the people we were talking to because they'd hear their own voice echoing from the speakers into the mike. I recently invested $36 for the Logitech Premium USB Headset 350 on Amazon (looks like it's now $32.79), which came with 120 minutes SkypeOut credit (which I thought was a lot of money but is only about $2.50--shows you how cheap it is). It works well but in order to hear incoming calls I have to keep it unplugged. Once the call comes in I can't figure out how to get it to switch over to the headset so I'm still using the mike for incoming calls but turning down the speaker to minimize the echo on the other end.

In conclusion: If you need to call someone overseas, or want to talk to a good friend, family member, or sweetheart for free on your computers, give Skype a try. There's a good introduction in the upper left hand corner of this page under "What is Skype?"

If I forgot anything email me or reply to this post. Skype is pretty cool!

I have it at the house and I think it's great. Also just recently at DEFCON the big-wig from PGP released a VOIP Encryption idea of some sort. Didn't read up too much on it but sounds like it's up and coming.

With more and more users moving to cable, DSL, and now even VOIP, how much sooner is IPv6going to arrive in the home and will it help with spamming issues? I had read somewhere that at the class-A level inter-network that IPv6 was starting to get serious implementation. Most if not all major OS's provide compatibility and IPv6 is supposed to provide better security than IPv4.

Business Cases for VOIP

1) Garrison: We are experiencing a lot of units shuffling between garrison buildings and new folks coming to Hawaii to fill new "Modular" units. When there is not a building to hold a unit, the garrison has been setting up trailers. Some locations that they have been selecting or projecting for trailers have no copper or fiber connectivity to the voice and data infrastructure. Some of these locations can be .5-20 miles from the nearest manhole and can cost anywhere from 100K to millions of dollars to lay outside plant infrastructure. A possible solution is to shoot a building to building free space optics or wireless shot from our nearest Area Distribution Node and push NIPR, SIPR (encrypted with a TACLANE), and VOIP over that shot. We are estimating over 50% savings utilizing FSO and VOIP for temporary buildings or buildings that are not financially feasible to lay outside plant to.

2) Tactical: Our largest customer, the 25 Infantry Division, wants the ability to mantain the same DSN/Commercial number that they have in their office when they deploy (for VIP's only). One option is to utilize VOIP to provide them the same number anywhere in the world.

3) VIP Factor: Some of our VIP's (generals) see this little icon on Outlook 2003 when clicking on a contact that says "Make a call". They want to be able to just click on a contact and some phone calls that person from email. Microsoft has told us that this feature is currently more computer to computer, and with Vista we will be able to utilize computer to call manager.......

Issues:

1) E911: Further time and money must be invested to update and syncronize the VOIP Call Manager's Database with the states E911 database.

2) Power: Landlines are powered through a copper pair that leads back to one of our Lucent 5ESS switches. Each of these switches are on both UPS and Generator power. Because of this, power to a phone is never lost anywhere on base utilizing this system. Now with VOIP, our IP network follows the standard I3MP design (MCN to ADN to EUB). Only our MCN's are on critical power. Because of this, if power is lost to an ADN, an EUB, or to the VOIP phone itself, phone calls can not be made. This is introducing 3 critical failure points for power into our voice network, where there were no points previously.

3) DISA DSN Area Codes: If we provide a Pacific DSN number to a unit deploying to Afganistan or Iraq, they will have a Pacific DSN number matched to a CENTCOM location listed within a phone book. This could cause confusion and I doubt that DISA would like it.

Way Ahead:

Although we currently utilize VOIP capable Lucent 5ESS switches, we are leaning towards Cisco call managers so that our staff is trained on the same equipment utilized in the field (our DOIM often gets phone calls from field exercised and deployments for help). I am currently working with Cisco to create a draft ROM. Have any of you all fielded a Cisco VOIP solution in your unit and have any comments that might assist in our planned fielding?