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RE: DUNDi
Irwin
Interesting - I hadn't heard of this development.
However, I think this is at the geeky end of the market place - the majority
of customers don't mind paying $19.95 per month for unlimited phone service
in the US, Canada and Western Europe with voice mail and caller ID included.
To then take this one step further to make some PC driven look-up into a
database to find that you can connect to a friend for nothing is not what
80% of the population will do. I'm semi-geeky, and I don't think I will do
that. I have Skype, but use my normal VoIP phone to call friends as it is
much easier to do that that see if they are logged into Skype.
I think the general direction will be for service providers to continue to
provide services to end users, and for those service providers to look for
ways to reduce costs - partly to make cash flow positive businesses and
partly to continue to reduce costs to end users. They will use private and
"infrastructure" peering arrangements to do that.
I do have my PowerPoint slides ready for presentation at VON this week - am
I allowed to send an attachment to the group?
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-voip-peering@psg.com [mailto:owner-voip-peering@psg.com] On
Behalf Of Irwin Lazar
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 3:56 PM
To: VoIP Peering
Subject: DUNDi
FYI (Any thoughts? - isn't this what ENUM was supposed to do?)
---- http://voxilla.com/voxstory107-nested-order0-threshold0.html
Asterisk Guru May Have Solved Interconnection Dilemna
By DAVID HOLUB
for VOXILLA.COM
What has been a longtime complaint of many VoIP users - the limited ability
of users on separate IP networks to call each other over a direct IP-to-IP
connection - may well be addressed through a new number discovery protocol
developed by Mark Spencer, the lead architect behind the highly regarded
open source PBX system, Asterisk.
The Distributed Universal Number Discovery, or DUNDI, says Spencer, "solves
one of the holy grails of Voice over IP, direct IP connectivity."
DUNDI, says Spencer, is a "true peer-to-peer" system that allows users of
disparate telephone networks to find each other at a regular phone number
simply by querying tables maintained on each network's server.
Already, said Spencer, a number of commercial and free service providers
have agreed to the standard, including a General Peering Agreement ("GPA")
that is available on a new web sited Spencer developed for the project,
www.dundi.com.
Among the service providers Spencer lists as supporting DUNDI are
VoicePulse, SIPPhone, Free World Dialup, Telesthetics, Nufone and SpeakUp.
Once the providers put up complete tables of their users, including phone
number, device MAC addresses and URL identifiers, a user on one service
participating dialing a user on a separate participating service will be
able to make a voice connection while bypassing the PSTN system.
Currently, for example, a call between a Nufone customer and a VoicePulse
customer, travels over the traditional PSTN between the Nufone and
VoicePulse servers.
Using DUNDI, the PSTN portion of the call is unnecessary as the caller would
be able to find the recipient's phone directly via IP using peering tables.
"This is what VoIP was supposed to be about," said Spencer.
DUNDI, said Spencer, is designed to work with or apart from the DNS-based
ENUM system, which maintains a centralized table of participants on a single
database. "DUNDI doesn't need a central repository, such as ENUM," said
Spencer. "But it can supplement ENUM by interconnecting ENUM repositories."
Spencer says the difference between ENUM and DUNDI is similar to the
difference between looking up a number in a phone book and asking a friend
for the right number to call.
Spencer says it will take a while before DUNDI's effectiveness can be
measured. "We don't have proof that it will work, but we don't have proof
that it won't work," he said. "Time will tell but I have high hopes."
Service providers have been reluctant to enter into interconnection
agreements with other providers, even though such agreements would lead to
lower operating costs and higher quality voice communications by bypassing
the PSTN system. Interconnection agreements would require some sort of
sharing of customer information, not something parties in the highly
competitive VoIP environment were willing to do.
By allowing participants to store there own database of users, and not
requiring the information in the database to be shared, DUNDI helps overcome
the main objection.
Jeff Pulver, of Free World Dialup, was quick to embrace DUNDI. "No matter
how established you get, you must be aware that disruption will happen,"
Pulver said. "DUNDI is disruptive and we support it."
--
Irwin Lazar, CISSP
Senior Analyst, Burton Group
ilazar@burtongroup.com
Phone: 703-742-9659
AIM/iChat: imlazar
Skype: imlazar
sip:452401@fwd.pulver.com
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