Graves On SOHO VoIP

I really must make it to the US version of ECOMM in 2010. If only to hear Brough Turner in person. But for now, here’s a session he did at ECOMM ‘09.

I especially like his point that “If you are arguing about network neutrality you’ve already lost!” That comes just at a time when the now ages old NN debate in the US is heating up at the FCC level.

Networking visionary David Isen delivered the keynote address at the Broadband Properties Summit on April 28th. He’s just posted a transcript. It’s a good read, and a very insightful video clip. Highly recommended.

As mentioned last week for the next few days I’m appearing nightly at the Hyatt Regency SFO. I don’t normally stay at Hyatt’s as they’re typically beyond my budget, but a UK based coworker is here and I decided to stay where they put him for convenience. He’s here two weeks so he got a deal, for my three nights I didn’t.

Anyway, returning to the theme of broadband this place, which is vast, has wifi throughout the rooms. Last night it was solid and pretty speedy. This morning it’s simply D.O.A. A call to in-house tech support, provided by a company called Z-Net, had me try various things…but no joy. I have both  a laptop and a netbook, neither of which get issued an IP address. Although both report decent wifi radio signals.

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Just recently both Andy Abramson and Rich Tehrani had posts describing their experience with  broadband internet access at hotels. I can barely convey how this is a topic that strikes a nerve with me. At times during my working year I travel extensively. Anyone who has been following my Twitter stream will know that I’m been to and from SFO so often recently that I’m starting to feel like a migratory bird. The local taxi drivers are starting to recognize me!

Suffice it to say that I stay in a lot of hotels. In the past month of activity on the west coast that includes two Hiltons, Le Meridien, the MarQueen Seattle, a La Qunita and a Club Quarters. Next week I’ll be appearing nightly at a Hyatt. Talk about a diversity of establishments!

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I just finished listening to Brough Turner’s Ecomm 2008 presentation called “Own The Network.” His talk is available for download from IT Conversations, the accompanying slides and notes are available from his blog.

Mr Turner’s key assertion is that we insist upon owning the dark fiber to our homes & businesses. This is very similar to David Isen’s idea of “Fiber From The Home.” It’s a principle that I can completely get behind.

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Timothy B. Lee over at Ars technica has an excellent piece on a pilot project going on in Ottawa, Ontario. A neighborhood is getting fiber installed to their homes at their own expense. Once that’s in place any ISP that wants to sell into that area will simply access a central facility to link to the homes in question. The homeowner owns the famously troublesome last mile. It completely bypasses the ILEC and CableCo.

My reactions to this are many. I certainly hope that the project is successful. Ottawa, while unbearably cold in winter, is a serious high-tech town at heart. I wish someone were that adventurous in the US.

With installation costs per home in the $1000 to $2700 range I don’t mind telling you that I’d jump on this in a heartbeat. It’d be like getting FiOS, but owning the last hop yourself.

In the US I doubt our backward thinking ILECs and CableCos will even notice. I see nothing that suggests they are interested in new ways of approaching the market, even if it could leapfrog them into new opportunities. All they want to do is protect their monopoly positions and find new ways to charge ever more for the same old level of service.

No, this kind of NewThink takes a fresh perspective. Let me state unequivocally, if you build it I will pay.

After several months of thinking about it I finally got around to recording a screencast tutorial about setting up the traffic shaping feature in m0n0wall to accommodate VOIP traffic. Phillip Cooper’s series of screencasts were the inspiration for this. In going though his work (thank you!) it occurred to me that  documenting the settings that allow my VOIP systems might be useful to others.

I have a new (ish) Comcast cable modem service here in my office, which gave me a testbed to setup another router and go through the setup process from scratch.

The finished screencast is not online yet. I’ve passed it to the m0n0wall project leads for comment & revision before making it public. It should be available in the next few days.

Well it certainly was a pity that today’s VOIP Users Conference call didn’t happen. Randulo, our host, was just about to start the call when he lost IP connectivity with the world. As such he lost control of the Talkshoe conference bridge. People could call in, but he could not unmute anyone.

Judging from irc channel and the Talkshoe web app there were a number of people trying to be on the call. However, the conference bridge kept us all muted. Too bad.

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