Voice on the Internet
Say Good-Bye to Circuit Switching
Industry luminary Nick Lippis delves into the details of the
"second-generation" Internet
Circuit switching is dead. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not even the day after. But 10
years from now the technology will be on its last legs. In 15 years it will be a quaint
anachronism. And the same goes for today's circuit-switched public network.
In its place will be a packet-switched infrastructure that can field voice, video, and
data. And IP will be the transport of choice for both. In fact, voice over IP will be a
global phenomenon.
Sound like science fiction? It's already happening. The Internet is a crude indicator of
the shape of things to come. A second-generation 'Net is in the offing-one that will
ultimately deploy a mix of multigigabit and terabit routers and ATM (asynchronous
transfer mode) and Sonet (Synchronous Optical Network) switches, along with
high-speed access schemes like xDSL (digital subscriber line) and cable modems.
The carriers and RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) know what's coming (at
least the smart ones). Some have started to invest in packet-switched backbones.
The ISPs (Internet service providers) know it. In fact, voice over IP and other
enhanced offerings are key to their economic survival.
The IP equipment suppliers are counting on this paradigm shift to create a market for
voice over IP gateways. Sure, some of these devices come from startups like
E-Fusion Inc. (Portland, Ore.), Inter-Tel Netsolutions Inc. (Chandler, Ariz.),
Netspeak Corp. (Boca Raton, Fla.), and Vocaltec Inc. (Northvale, N.J.). And some of
these newcomers may not survive; others could end up billion-dollar players. But
internetworking giants like Bay Networks Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), Cisco Systems
Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), and 3Com Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) are taking voice over IP
very seriously. The same goes for other heavyweights like Lucent Technologies Inc.
(Murray Hill, N.J.), Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.), Northern Telecom Ltd.
Mississauga, Ontario), and Siemens AG (Munich, Germany).
There's even a Voice over IP Forum. That's no guarantee of the technology's
success, of course, but the 100 vendors that have already signed on represent a
united front and a common purpose.
Most important of all, though, are the economic drivers. Voice over IP and packet
switching will win out in the end because they can deliver services far more
cost-efficiently than today's circuit-switched technology. |
