Aswath Rao – Graves On SOHO Technology

Initial Experience With Southwest Airlines In-Flight Wifi

July 27, 2010
Michael Graves
Broadband

This past week I was called upon to give a demonstration at a TV station in San Diego. The exercise involved flying from Houston to LAX and spending a day in our Burbank office getting the demo gear ready to roll. The next day an associate and I would drive down to San Diego to make the presentation.

For various reasons I don’t often fly Southwest Airlines, but it just happened that they were the best choice this time around. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the outbound flight was equipped to offer in-flight wifi.

Aswath Rao On Why Trapezoidal VoIP Is Evil!

September 10, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

alt_vvx1500_2_1 This week’s VUC call sure is timely for me! VoIP pioneer Aswath Rao will be walking us through the evil that is “trapezoidal VoIP.” His words, not mine.

Why is this extra timely for me? Well, I spent considerable time today dealing with the very trapezoid in question. My forthcoming review of the Polycom VVX-1500 Business Media Phone has gone to the publisher for a final polish. With the text in their hands my task turned to producing the supporting images, sound files, etc that they might want to run. This time around they want to run a recorded video clip example of the what you see on the VVX LCD screen. It’s a good idea, but as it happens, not so easily done.

Considering Wideband Audio Over The Traditional PSTN

August 3, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

Question: What was the first HDVoice product that Polycom offered?

Answer: The Polycom VTX 1000 conference phone.

The thing that makes this fact so curious is not immediately obvious. The VTX 1000 is not a SIP device, nor even IP capable. Like it’s closest relative the Polycom SoundStation 2, it’s designed to connect to a plain old analog phone line (a.k.a. POTS, the PSTN).

Of course, the common wisdom is that you just can’t have wideband telephony over the PSTN. Yet the VTX 1000, circa 2003, delivers wideband conference calls so it seems that assertion is not strictly true. Understanding this is in a little more depth would seem like a good thing. Happily, Polycom published a white paper describing the internals of the VTX 1000.