IP Telephony Using SIP and Value-add Using PDAs

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Speaker
Thomas Gentles and Guido Schuster
Internet Communications Business Connectivity Group for 3Com Corporation

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

“IP Telephony using SIP” by Thomas Gentles

In the past, telephony service, especially local telephony service, was the domain of the local exchange carriers (LECs). This environment is similar in many respects to the data networking environment in the US before the advent of the Internet. The Internet, world wide web and HTTP protocol collectively revolutionized the way end users gained access to data services. The collective Internet has led to a gradual stratification of data networking services into at least three distinct classes. Access providers, transport providers and applications service providers have become distinct entities, resulting in a sometimes confusing mix of options for end users, but, more importantly, to greater competition and a plethora of services.

The telephony space, while slow to follow, is now beginning to evolve in a similar direction, thanks in large to the advent of IP-based telecommunication protocols. Most recently, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) promises to do for the telephony world what HTTP has done for the data world.

“Value-add Using PDAs” by Guido Schuster

In this talk, I will point out the value-add a personal digital assistant (PDA) can bring to the traditional telephony system and the emerging Internet telephony world. The Human Computer Interface of the Public Switched Network (PSTN) is notoriously bad. For example, there are about 100 services which can be invoked via the 12 button interface of a traditional phone, but the standard user knows only two, placing and receiving a call. Anything more advanced, such as three way calling, is so unintuitive to use, that it is basically never used. On the other hand, all carriers agree, that in the near future a major part of their revenue must come from enhanced services, since basic telephony is getting cheaper and cheaper.

With the rise of the (wireless) PDA, a much richer user interface is always available, as long as the PDA can interact with the telephony network. Much of this talk is focused on the interaction between the DA and an Internet telephony system based on SIP. In addition to the more powerful user interface, all PDAs also have an address and appointment book. These two databases together hold much of the information needed to make intelligent call routing decisions and SIP itself is very well suited to take advantage of such knowledge. For example, if an incoming caller is in my address book, it is probably not from a telemarketer. So my PDA could decide that the call should be accepted. It might also check my appointment book and see that I am currently giving a lecture, hence it will route the incoming call to my voicemail, without ever ringing my phone.

Speaker's Bio

Thomas Gentles is director of engineering for the Internet Communications business within 3Com Corporation’s Business Connectivity Group. He is responsible for research and product development of IP telephony systems and related technologies.

With nearly twenty years in the high-tech industry, Gentles is an expert on issues including IP telephony, digital signal processing, telecommunications systems, networking and security for voice over IP. He holds one patent and has several other patents pending in the areas of remote testing, distributed processing protocols, secure Internet Telephony improvements and jitter compensation. Previously, Gentles was a manager in 3Com’s digital signal processing technology group, where he was involved in the development of a H.323 voice over IP gateway, audio codec, echo cancellation and signaling innovations. He has also worked for Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T in a range of technical, engineering and development roles. Gentles has a B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Missouri and an M.S.E.E. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Guido Schuster is a co-founder, chief technology officer and senior director of the Internet Communications business of 3Com Corporation. He is driving the development of new Internet telephony applications based on the IETF Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Previously, Schuster was the associate director of the advanced technologies research centre at 3Com, where he played a key role in the development of many of 3Com’s leading edge technologies, such as packet based forward error correction, Internet telephony and video and audio coding for the Internet. He has over fifty patents awarded and/or pending and is the recent co-winner of the 3Com’s Innovator of the Year 1999 Award. He also has published a book (Rate Distortion Based Video Coding, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997) and over 30 academic papers on topics pertaining to operational rate distortion theory and networked multimedia.

Schuster is also an adjunct professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Northwestern University in Illinois, where he gives lectures and advises students in their research efforts. He holds a degree in engineering (Ing HTL, Elektronik, Mess- und Regeltechnik) from the Neu Technikum Buchs College in Switzerland, a masters degree and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Northwestern University in Illinois.

Host
Brad Myers