Transcript Culture Clash

Culture Clash—
IMS vs. Peer-to-Peer
TMIA 2006 Annual Meeting
February 28, 2006
James Rafferty
Sr Product Manager
[email protected]
Proprietary and Confidential
Agenda
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Background
Directions in Voice over IP
IMS
Peer-to-Peer
War, Compromise or other?
What Does it Mean?
– Business Side
– Technical Side
 Summary
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Background
 After some false starts, Voice over IP
is hitting the mainstream
 Data points:
– Skype has 60 Million registered VoIP users
and was bought for $2.6B by E-Bay
– Vonage has over 1 million paying customers
– In the US, both incumbent Telcos and Cable
MSOs are starting their VoIP rollouts
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Directions in Voice over IP
 SIP has become the protocol of choice,
with just a few exceptions
 Fixed price packages for unlimited calling
and common services are generally available
 Prices for “minutes” continue to go down
 Strong interest from carriers in rolling out
value-added services to augment vanilla
phone revenues
 Traditional voice carriers now have some very
“untraditional” competition
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VoIP Architectural Models
 VoIP began as “replacement” telephone service,
with VoIP gateways bypassing Class 4 switches
 This evolved to the Softswitch model, which
decomposed operations into multiple network
elements
 SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) began as Peer-toPeer, but has evolved to have more complexity
 Skype borrowed peer-to-peer concepts from file
sharing services using a proprietary protocol
 3GPP standards group proposed the IP Multimedia
Subsystem (IMS) for next gen IP wireless services
– Now strong interest from wireline providers such as BT
 Where is this all going?
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Two Prevailing Models
 Two very different models are gaining
the most traction today for VoIP
– IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)
– Peer-to-Peer
 Let’s review the drivers for these two directions
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IMS
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IMS is the latest attempt by the big telecom players
to create a rich service creation environment
Previous efforts like the Advanced Intelligent
Network (AIN) had limited success
So, what’s different about IMS?
1. Based on Voice over IP technology, which is replacing
legacy switched technology used in AIN
2. Based on SIP, which already has a growing
community of application developers and equipment
vendors
3. Strong interest from both wireless and wireline
carriers
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Top Level IMS Picture
Service
Layer
Application Server
Application Server
CSCF (SIP)
MRF
HSS
Control
Layer
Other Elements
Media
GW
PSTN
IP /
MPLS
Wifi/
WiMax
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Connectivity
Layer
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Rich Media Services in the IMS
Unified
Messaging
Announcements
Video Mail
Video
Conferencing
IP
Call Center
Pre-Paid
Voice Mail
Conferencing
Video Ringback
Gaming
3G
SIP
MSCML
SIP
SIP
SIP
VoiceXML
IMG
2.5G
S-CSCF/
SCIM
IP MSC
IMG
PSTN
SIP
RTP
MGW
SIP Routing Cloud
QuickTime™
mp3
SIP
SIP
SIP
w/ VoiceXML
w/ MSCML
HTTP
Web Content
Text
FTP
Cable
CMTS
MPEG-4
NFS
IP
Phones
SnowShore IP Media Server
Network
Storage
MRF
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Peer-to-Peer
 Heritage of Peer-to-Peer (PTP) quite different
 Massive Popularity of PTP file sharing services
 Founders of Skype took “lessons learned” from
Kazaa and created PTP VoIP
– Featuring:
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Free on-net calling model
Viral marketing approach
APIs to encourage affiliates
Proprietary technology to get past NATs and firewalls
Built in buddy groups, instant messaging and presence
Low Charges for offnet PSTN connections
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Peer-to-Peer VoIP Example
Caller
Caller
Internet
Caller
Caller
Supernode
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Other Peer-to-Peer Players
 Yahoo has added voice to its Yahoo Messenger
 Google has created a chat service which includes
voice
– Google also exploring other VoIP related services
 Microsoft has voice add-ons for their IM service
 Lesser known companies such as Voiceglo also
have PTP VoIP services
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Current State of PTP VoIP
 Skype/Ebay still by far the biggest player
– Skype has a very aggressive affilitiate program
 Other PTP services are mostly based on SIP
 PTP VoIP services are currently VoIP islands
– No interconnection except via PSTN
– Early interest in VoIP peering to resolve
 To date, Skype services are all “in the software”
at the end point
– For example, conferencing typically tops out at 5 users
 Exploration of larger scale services which use
servers
– For example, conferencing vendor Vapps now
advertising 500 person conferences for Skype
AND PSTN users
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War, Compromise or Other?
 Make no mistake, IMS and PTP are VERY different
technical and business models
 Market forces are driving both models forward
 IMS is very comfortable model for traditional Telcos
and likely for MSOs too
– Uses Internet technology in a “walled” garden
– Lots of room for innovative services using server
based technogy
 PTP is more revolutionary approach
– Has much more in common with Instant Messaging
– Driving end user costs to very low levels, but relies
on solid IP infrastructure
– Most services are at the application level and in the
end point
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What Does it Mean?
Business Side
 IMS and PTP both need innovative applications
– IMS much more hospitable for application server and
media server vendors
• Looks to be a good fit for offering services to enterprises
– Still, PTP needs innovation too, but fees may be at the
“micro-cents” level
 Telcos and MSOs control the pipes in US
– Issues about charges for 3rd party applications to gain
access to the network
– Concept of 2-tier Internet being tested
• Carriers would like to charge extra for better performance
• Could result in degraded PTP voice quality
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What Does it Mean?
Technical Side
 SIP continues to be the big winner on the technical side
 IMS makes substantial use of SIP for various types of
service elements
– Also makes limited use of Megaco/H.248
 IMS also leverages lots of energy in areas such as
XML-based service development
 Skype has avoided SIP so far, but will likely use SIP
peering mechnisms to talk with SIP VoIP networks in
the future
 In meantime, Skype developers write to a proprietary
Skype API
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Summary
 IMS and Peer-to-Peer are rival models
for next gen VoIP Services
 IMS has greater traction among established
telco players
 PTP has greater “buzz” and fast growing
subscriber bases
– Backed by the big Internet players such as
Google and Ebay
 Both IMS and PTP need innovation at
the Application level, creating business
opportunities
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