This afternoon I was made aware of a situation that brought to light the complexities of social media with regard to real life situations, and the power we all have to make a difference.

Nearly 18 years ago I gave birth to my youngest child. When David was born we immediately discovered he had something called Pierre Robin Sequence, which essentially meant he had a cleft palate as well as a small mouth and jaw. That created a year and a half of doctor appointments and surgeries which was just the beginning.

When David was 1 1/2 he had his first diagnosed fracture to the tibia in his right leg. He got the cast off a few weeks later only to fracture the tibia in his left leg. When that cast came off he broke the first metatarsal in his foot which led us to a specialist who diagnosed him with a disorder called Ostegenesis Imperfecta. OI is basically brittle bones. Our journey had taken yet another twisted path.

So why is this important and what has it to do with social media? I was reading my twitter stream and one of my pals, @GeorgeDearing posted a link to Chris Pirillo’s site. It was a specific post about a kid named Robert who has Cystic Fibrosis. You can read more about it here.

When I poked around in that thread I realized there was more information and a link to the fundable site for donations to Robert for his future transplant.

Because of my passion for helping those with needs like this, I wanted to make sure I gave this some space on Stardust. There are few things I find more important than helping kids. Please have a look and if you feel compelled, make a donation either to Chris Pirillo or to the fundable site for Robert. We can ALL make a difference. Really!

As an aside, on my facebook profile I started a cause for Osteogenesis Imperfecta and you all are welcome and encouraged to join.

My son David taken just after his first surgery to repair his cleft palate at 9 months of age.

David just before his first trial treatment to help strengthen his bones due to spinal fractures.

David today!

Technorati Tags: David Worley, Chris Pirillo, Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation, Fundable

Interesting story I thought. More thoughts below.

Apple App Store Downloads Often Abandoned

Only about 20% of people who download a free application were using it the next day, a research firm found.
By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

Most people stop using iPhone applications downloaded from Apple’s App Store after the first day, an analytics firm found.

Only about 20% of people who download a free application were using it the next day, Pinch Media found. Paid apps fared slightly better with nearly 30% of people still using the download.

[Read full Information Week Story]

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPod, app store, useless apps, fickle users, Apple

Every now and again I get an opportunity to review a new book in the technology sector. Once in a while I even write a forward or cover blur. Recently I had an opportunity to review the CCNA Voice Exam Cram by David Bateman and William Burton.

I see books of this sort as something absolutely vital to our industry. In the competitive job market today, with the workloads we all carry, getting the combination of time and funding from employers to keep working on the certifications they all want when hiring, is a challenge.

I believe we are all lifelong learners, with responsibility for our own education to stay competitive in the workforce. And given that I’m currently searching for a job, I feel like I know a bit about this need.

This book is particularly timely in the unified communications space. The Cisco CCVA exam is becoming a very hot commodity. It’s something employers are looking for more and more. Like any of the better exam prep works, it does a nice job of setting expectations for exam day with readers.

One thing I particularly appreciate is Part 1 of the book. So many prep books, in particular Cisco certification prep books, focus purely on Cisco products, configuration commands and the like. The first three chapters of this book provide a thorough but concise overview of traditiona telephony. Study these chapters and you’ll understand many of the telecommunications technologies that are the foundations of all voice and data networks today. You’ll learn about the PSTN, signaling and call setup, analog vs. digital, loop start and ground start circuits plus everything you really need to know about T1/E1 circuits.

Part 2 focuses on VoIP as a technology. Fair job on the codecs. Limited to what you’ll see on the test. Nothing compared to what you might see in the real world. It explains the signaling protocols at just the right level for a field engineer.

Nice sections on both connecting your VoIP system to the world via gateways and dial peers and a section on voice VLANs that’s a good review of traffic separation techniques a field engineer will need to know.

Parts 3 & 4 cover the specific Cisco information you’ll need in a way that not only preps for the test, but explains in practical language configuration tasks that you’ll need to know how to do offhand. Nicely done wording and task explanations that are easy to remember.

The book wraps up with two practice exams. The glossary is simply one of those obligatory things we all stick at the back of books like this. Not expansive, but helpful for learning new terms.

The bonus is a CD-ROM included. MeasureUp practice tests that you can take in either study mode or certification mode.

It’s important to emphasize the value of professional certifications in the unifed communications space once more. We talk about convergence and network integration at business and service levels, but there is no mistaking the complexity of integrating these solutions across multi-vendor platforms. Will the certifications make you an expert? Not a chance! They won’t give you all you need to know. But what they do provide is credibility that an individual is invested in the industry and in the technologies.

We’re all responsible for our own professional education. Those who wait for their employer to offer to send them to training will quickly fall behind those who seize the initiative and leverage resources like this excellent exam prep tool.

I may have the opportunity to do a conference call podcast chat with Bateman and Burton, the authors. Scheduling is a real challenge, but if I can work it out, I’d like to talk with them about the book, their views on unified communications ahead and perhaps share their insights on how to best keep adding skills to the engineer’s toolkit.

Technorati Tags: CCNA, VoIP, voice, Cisco, certification, exam prep, CCNA Voice Exam Cram, David Bateman, William Burton, unified communications

 

This morning I logged into twitter and immediately saw a pal using the @tweetcc. If you’ve been around the web as long as we all have you understand that CC typically means Creative Commons.

Creative Commons basically says, I want to share my work and you can distribute it with these terms. In other words, for those of us who copy web works, at least in some cases we would now legally be ok to do so.

The question has been asked, but what about tweets? Tweets are no larger than 140 character long messages posted to a micro blog called twitter. It’s basically a web based sms, though many use it from their phones, it’s non-threaded conversation that’s surprisingly addictive and easy to follow in spite of itself.

Enter Tweetcc. Tweetcc is a service that makes it possible for a person to agree to make their tweets free for public use and really ends the question about legality. In other words, if I post a tweet and it winds up in a book, if I have a cc license, there is no issue. Here’s what they offer.

Publish & license tweets with Creative Commons

Send a message to tweetcc via Twitter including the words @tweetcc: I license my tweets under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication license

They do have other license options and you can choose what you prefer. One of the nicest things about this opportunity is that they also have a list of people who are using this.

Fair use is good. Let’s just take the guess work out. I believe in Creative Commons licensing. It’s a good thing, and I’m not quoting Martha Stuart. If I get sued, spell my name right and give me credit.

Why this matters.

As a sort of amendment or addition, here is a REALLY good example of why Creative Commons Licensing is so important. Without a CC license, you lose your creative freedoms. New Zealand is facing just such a situation at the end of the month.

Technorati Tags: creative commons, tweetcc, creative freedoms, new zealand

Our good friend Jim Courtney is into something new, and we think it’s going to be a very lively place.

Jim has been a key part of Skype Journal for several years now. His insights and attention to detail in gathering information and news about Skype is a huge value to all of us. Beyond Skype, Jim is also a know Blackberry addict. He’s a pro who’s been at the center of activity in our industry for a long time.

It’s great to seem him launching this new effort. We’ve been talking with him about it and peeking under the covers before he went live. Jim will still be covering Skype in a way that will give categories and tags to ket us really dig into the the things that interest us most.

Jim isn’t going to focus solely on Skype. The industry and his network of resources . Here’s a menu capture to show some of many things Jim will be writing about and exploring.

We wish Jim tons of success with Voice on the Web. We’ll be reading there daily and encourage you to do the same. He’s got some interested new things in the works that will make it a very important place to follow the conversation.

Technorati Tags: Voice on the Web, Skype, VoIP, Jim Courtney

Being out of work changes the lens through which I view many things. Naturally a huge portion of my day is spent in the job search, but it’s also a time to step back and look at where I’ve focused, the industry, and broaden horizons – to look with a wider view in places previously not always watched closely.

Sheryl and I are very focused on the future – the future of communications, of mobility, of conversation. While we are absolutely both geeks who love our gadgets, our real passion lies in the power of engaging. We’ve been looking at a number of conferences that we’ve not participated in before.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to write a guest post on TheNextWeb. It’s one of the thought-leading sites with a team of contributors I really respect and admire. I like the direction they focus in and the topic areas they follow, but for those who’ve never looked, it’s far more than just another team blog site.

I know that a large number of friends and industry colleagues don’t always closely follow what goes on outside the narrower tech sector we’re so deeply entrenched it. Sheryl and I do. It’s one reason I am so outspoken on social media and insist that it is unified communications – that neither can exist without the other.

Recently there was a conversation around the blogosphere about the importance of conferences in the unified communications space. There was TMCnet’s recent ITExpo. Our good friend Jeff Pulver kicked off the first of what we expect to be many SocComm conferences. FastForward 09 was just held in Las Vegas. eComm is coming next month in San Francisco. There’s the UCExpo in London too (more to follow on this one in another post). All important events.

There’s another major conference that is vital to the conversation about what’s coming in our future that’s important to us – The Next Web.

The Next Web 2009 is the fourth edition of the conference that began in 2006. 900+ Internet  professionals gather for 3 days to enjoy Amsterdam, the conference and to do business.

The Conference is organized by Boris, Arjen, Nicolas and Patrick. We’re looking forward to meet you at The Next Web 2009 for inspiring days and a lot of fun as well.

The Next Web conference is known as one of the best networking events in Europe. We’ll welcome a blend of decision makers from the European & American Internet scene, technology entrepreneurs, start-ups, innovators, along with venture capitalists, industry journalist, bloggers, and senior level executives. We’ll see you at The Next Web 2009.

We have no idea if we’ll be able to make it to Amsterdam in April, but if it becomes possible, we’ll absolutely be at this conference. They’re still looking for speakers and I absolutely love the Pecha Kucha presentation approach (20 slides, 20 seconds each – total presentation 400 seconds). As the only totally hyperconnected couple we know of, we would love to do a short talk on hyperconnectivity in the next web. If the stars align, perhaps we will.

In the meantime, I think it’s important that we all think bigger. I’ve written about VoIP being dead and Telco 2.0 as a flawed paradigm. I was pushing to stimulate conversation about the future farther down the road that we talk about it our daily conversation.

There’s an old native American proverb about how important it is to consider the impact of what we do on the next seven generations. I’d like to flip that around and consider what the next seven generations of technology evolution might be and the impact they’ll have on us. On our lives, education, family, work, and society as a whole. Seven generations of technology will take as little as seven years to pass, based on many different factors. The speed of the net, the speed of evolution is increasing, not slowing.

We’ve added a link to the registration for The Next Web over in our sidebar. We think it’s an important event that thought leaders and innovators should all be part of.

Technorati Tags: The Next Web, conference, social media, communications

Our Pal Alec Saunders has been burning the midnight oil lately dealing with all the attention and growth iotum’s great new Calliflower service has been getting. So much attention that 48 seconds in to Social Media Rap (Online for Hours) it gains a mention in this entertaining social media rap.

Technorati Tags: Calliflower, social media, rap

Our digital biographer and good friend David Petherick asked me the other day about writing a guest post on The Next Web. He and I share a passion for what Google’s Latitude and the potential it hols, so that seemed a great topic to explore further. My guest post is online now, and David and I both hope the conversation about Latitude will continue to grow.

Giving Google a bit of Latitude

Written on February 12, 2009 – 4:30 pm
Ken Camp, Contributing Opinion Writer, USA

This post is designed to bring a slightly different perspective to Ten Reasons why Google Latitude will succeed from last week. That post touches on some great reasons why Google will succeed with this latest hot entry into Location Based Services (LBS).

If you haven’t looked at it yet, Latitude isn’t really anything specific you have to download or install. Think of it as social networking among your Google friends coupled with Google Maps. It’s simply part of the latest version of Google Maps, and supported on a number of platforms. Here’s a screenshot from my Blackberry.

[Read my full post on The Next Web]

Technorati Tags: David Petherick, Digital Biographer, The Next Web, Google, Latitude, location based services

I can’t even count how many times in the last few years I’ve heard the bogus statement that Content is King. Urban myth or out and out lie, this phrase has always been most widely espoused by those who were either hanging onto the content distribution mechanisms of the past (read mainstream media) or wanted to move into some monetization of content for the future.

I’ve always had trouble with the whole idea since content is simply fodder. Nothing more. Our world is filled with fodder. Libraries, magazines, newspapers – these represent analog fodder. I remember many years ago touring the Los Angeles Times data warehouse of the era. The ultimate fodder, it wasn’t a data warehouse, but rather a microfiche data tomb. Even at the time, it was a place data went to die and never be used again. But, there was content there – lots and lots of content.

This morning I saw this on Twitter and it made me consider the topic again.

It might not seem like much at a glance, but think about this. Chris Pirillo is pretty well known on the web. He gets thousand of visitors every day. His life is online via video constantly. If there were ever a candidate to really capitalize on the Amazon affiliate program, it’s Chris. But he’s not seeing revenue from it any more. He’s absolutely on the mark.

In the past two years, we’ve seen blogs like this one shift toward microblogs like Twitter (where I saw Chris’ comment) because content simply isn’t king. Content is fodder. What matters is engagement. Is it too reminiscent of the 60’s and 70’s to say power to the people?

That’s where the power of the web lies. It’s a recurring theme I see everywhere I turn, and it’s gaining momentum. The power of people. The power of our networks. The power of conversation. Shades of Cluetrain almost ten years later. Then again, not many people have said Doc, David and Chris weren’t right on target. I’ve had a lot of interaction with them in the past ten years personally, and while we don’t always agree on everything, the power of conversation remains.

As humans, we’re social creatures. We came together in caves for safety and survival. We band together as nomads, enclaves and villages. In large numbers we build metropolitan masses of humanity. We’re social because our very nature is to band together and engage one another.

Power, real power isn’t in technology. And it isn’t in content.

Technorati Tags: content, conversation, engagement, society, power to the people, Chris Pirillo

Got word of this from our friend David Petherick early this morning. It’s been in the works for some time. I read it with a bit of mixed feelings. Calliflower has been the conferencing and collaboration piece for Facebook since before it was Calliflower, but doesn’t provide the LinkedIn capability. I suspect that’s in the works.

Huddle integration brings in a different value add to a degree because of the project management aspect, but all the documentation sharing does exist in Calliflower as well.

I like seeing competition in the field. This is a very hot segment right now.

Little Huddle achieves global reach with InterCall partnership
Huddle of Bermondsey, London, has announced a partnership with InterCall headquartered in Chicago, the world’s largest conferencing and collaboration services provider, aiming to “deliver the world’s first unified collaboration, communication and social networking platform for the enterprise“.

The deal means that InterCall conferencing customers can schedule phone and web meetings in Huddle (and its applications within LinkedIn and Facebook) and share dial-in details, documents and meeting minutes. They can also use Huddle’s range of project management & collaboration tools, such as discussions, whiteboards, tasks, document versioning, and audit.

By the same token, Huddle customers will be introduced to InterCall’s services, with events like teleconferences and web meetings created, scheduled and managed from within the Huddle environment.

[Read full post]

This is a great bit of news. It opens up some competition between the two and adds another choice to the mix. I’ll be watching both. Maybe we should do a blow-by-blow bakeoff comparison.

Technorati Tags: Huddle, InterCall, Calliflower, conferencing, collaboration

Our pal Alec Saunders has really been working hard on Calliflower the past few months. The truth is that everyone at iotum has been neck deep in producing a fantastic piece of work.

It’s one of the best conference call collaboration tools we’ve seen and we use it all the time. For us, the ability to record conference calls and easily make the MP3 available is a real benefit, but Calliflower has benefits at every turn.

Here’s a video on how you too can have hassle free online meetings & free conference calls.

Technorati Tags: Calliflower, iotum, Alec Saunders, video, unified communications

My recent post, Dominate Unified Communcations by Thinking Small, has garnered a couple of thoughtful responses I want to touch on.

When the thought behind that post hit me, Sheryl and I were talking with Dean Elwood. He’s added another facet that never crossed my mind in Unified Communications as a Jigsaw Puzzle. I like the jigsaw puzzle analogy, and that’s spun me off into a side alley – the recognition that for each of us, the puzzle looks a little bit different. We each have our own unique nuances of what we want from our services.

Dean points out the need to unified billing, and it’s a great point. When we were talking, we got into the idea of a value-added aggregator who pulled the pieces together from the small players. I think there’s also a need for an aggregated billing brokerage service. Have to think some more about that. Brokerage house billing could be a very viable model if the industry would embrace it.

Alec Saunders asks What did I miss, Ken? Since Alec rarely misses anything, I immediately went to read. His core premise and question is this:

From a business perspective, however, it seems intuitive that the big players could choose to adopt the same architectural principles and thus eliminate Ken’s objection. After all, content delivery networks like Akamai exist solely for the purpose of distributing network content to avoid bandwidth costs and single points of failure. Moreover, it’s well known that Google has multiple data centers globally, and that Microsoft is in the process of emulating Google’s approach.

Did I miss something, Ken?

I’m not sure Alec missed anything, but one point – the big provider can adopt the mindset, and they can absolutely deploy the distributed architecture in their technology. But any one single provider is still a single point of failure in theory. I’m not talking about distribution of the technology. I’m talking distribution and diversity of business services.

When you’re a behemoth enterprise business, single vendor selection may be wise. You’ve got the clout to get special pricing. You may represent enough revenue to the service provider to warrant special attention. You can get SLAs that guarantee levels of service (although I’ve never seen a single SLA that hit every parameter every day all the time). Remember an SLA is a contract tool that has nothing to do with actual service.

I’d argue that any service provider, delivering any kind of service, or all services, is a point of failure. Google has failed me many times. So has Comcast. And AT&T. If we unify communications to the point all our UC services come from any single provider, the business of delivering our service reprensents a single point of failure. Technology aside, no matter how resilient Google’s network is, for example, if they deliver all my UC services (there’s that monopolistic thing again), they become the greatest risk as well.

I’ve never been a proponent of single vendor network service architectures. I’ve been bitten too many time, even in that “big customer who gets special attention” role. In unified communications, I think aggregation of many small services from small providers is far more resilient and powerful than anything a large dominant provider can ever deliver.

It really is a jigsaw puzzle. I’d rather risk a piece of the puzzle and compensate when it’s lost than lose the whole puzzle. That puzzle – or picture – of my complete unified communications services is a mission critical business resource. I’ll do everything I can to ensure mine is fully operational to keep my business alive.

Technorati Tags: unified communications, Dean Elwood, Alec Saunders

Most of you know Andy Abramson as a PR Guru, a fantastic future predictor for companies and if you’re one of the companies Andy has agreed to work with, your future is secure.

For us, Andy is something else altogether. Andy is a friend in the most real sense of the word. He has not only shared with us amazing dinners and fabulous wine, but he has been there for momentous occasions. He has shown his TRUE colors and proved what an honorable man he truly is.

All I can say is Thank You. Andy your presence in our lives is a blessing in more ways than you can possibly know. We will not forget. Neither of us.

And if any of you reading this are wondering why I have just written this to Andy, here is why and I believe you can do nothing but agree. You see, with us… Andy makes nothing except staunch supporters, and lifelong friends. He has nothing to gain by supporting us. Just a friendship that goes deep, even when we can’t be together or see each other with regularity.

Again I say, Thank You.

Technorati Tags: Andy Abramson

Sheryl and I were talking with our pal Dean Elwood the other day about unified communications, what it really means, and who the winners and losers will be. During our conversation, I had an idea come to mind about what’s really going on in communications that I’d like to expand on a bit. Settle in for a bit and follow along. I’ve got some stories to tell and some things for you to consider.

In part, this is an expansion of some ideas I expressed recently in The Flawed Delusion of Telco 2.0 and then again in More on the Death of the Telco Paradigm. And while those posts didn’t generate the conversation I’d hoped, it’s not a topic I want to let go of, but perhaps I can find a better way to make my point.

Our conversation got around to the question of who’s going to win in the unified communcations space. Dean asked if I thought the ultimate winner was going to be someone like Google or Microsoft, a large dominant player. In short, we speculated whether a return to some pseudo-monoply environment is the destination unified communications is headed for, or whether standards, APIs and interoperability are the real means to an end.

NOTE: Any and all company names used herein are purely for example and name recognition. I am neither disparaging nor promoting any company in particular by use of their name or logo.

I said that I think Google, Microsoft, Cisco and the like are unequivocally the most at risk of complete failure and implosion in the unified communications evolutionary path, and I’ll explain why. I promised stories, so let’s begin.

Back in the heyday of the PSTN, there was a major milestone event. In the early 1960s, a militia group blew up four microwave towers in Utah. This event cut off communications in the western United States. The circuit switched PSTN was a part of our daily lives, and we realized it was vulnerable. At the time Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) had been discussing the Intergalactic Computer Network concept published by J.C.R. Licklider. This dialogue and research work led to Licklider being appointed to a new role at ARPA. One of the primary goals was to study packet-switched networks vs. circuit-switched networks. We had a problem with single points of failure in the telecommunications infrastructure.

ARPANET stared operation in 1969 with four nodes. Since then, it’s grown into what we call the Internet today.

We can reinforce the single point of failure dilemma with another story:

On May 9, 1988, an electrical fault started a fire in the Hinsdale, IL central office operated by Illinois Bell. Early during the fire, telephone services failed. The fire department didn’t arrive on site for 45 minutes. Because of the dense, black smoke, firefighters had difficulty entering the building and locating the source of the fire. Emergency power was automatically provided by generators and batteries and could not be shut off easily. Neither standard dry chemical nor halon extinguishers were effective against the fire. Water had to be used, which exposed the firefighters to electrical shock danger. It took firefighters more than two hours to shut down power, enabling them to control and extinguish the fire. It was over six hours after the first fire crews had arrived on the scene that the fire was declared under control.

This fire was confined to an area roughly 30 feet by 40 feet on the ground floor. Cables were burned to various degrees and smoke residue covered most of the ground and parts of the first floor. The most severe damage away from the fire was caused, not by flames, but by corrosive gases in the smoke. These corrosives damaged the equipment that survived the fire. While the existing equipment was cleaned and used to provide interim service, it was deemed unreliable. This equipment all had to be replaced over time after the fire.

This was another debilitating example of single point of failure in the PSTN. Any technologist will tell you single points of failure are bad. As network technologies have matured and become part of our language, we also view single points of failure in businesses or industries as something we should eliminate.

And if we think of this in terms of unified communications and the Telco 2.0 mindset, our network evolves. It’s important to think not of the PSTN vs. the Internet. That’s an irrelevant comparison. Rather we need to think right now purely in terms of major single points of failure. And yes, I know I’m simplifying this, but bear with me. It will really all make sense.

What’s different? I’m going to say nothing. In terms of single points of failure we still have major single infracture components that potentially impact the network in huge ways. If we settle on these three examples as the major providers of unified communications, we’re putting too many eggs into one basket from a unified communications business perspective.

If we think about the business, or suite of services we call unified communications, we must avoid a service business that relies too heavily on this type of infrastructure. It’s as basic as the difference between circuit switched-networks and packet-switched networks. For those who might not have a background in switching technologies, here’s an excerpt from IP Telephony Demystified:

Circuit Switching
As the name implies, circuit switching is a technique whereby the switches establish a dedicated electrical (or optical) path between devices. The important point here is that a path or circuit is established for the duration of the call and is dedicated to the call. These resources in the network cannot be used for other calls or by any other user until the call is completed and the resources are released and available. In the telephone network, the circuits are set up before the call is connected, then released after the parties hang up the telephone.

Because networks cannot be designed to support every possible telephone call at the same time, the switches are designed as “blocking” switches. This means that when all available resources are in use, callers will experience queueing delay or blockage until resources become available.

The delay through the network once a connection is minimal. Most of the telephone network has been designed to provide about 55 milliseconds of delay over the circuits that are established.

The two most common circuit switched networks in use today are the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the circuit switched public data network (CSPDN). In the United States, services referred to as “Switched 56” would be an example of the latter. With the advances of optical networking technology in the past few years, there is also considerable speculation that switching optical circuits may become a common practice.

Circuit switching can be implemented in several different ways. Space, time and frequency each might provide the dedicated resource used in providing the path. Space division multiplexing is the oldest form used and provides a spatially unique path through the central office switch. In their earliest implementations, these switches were manual switchboards used in telephone offices. Operators manually plugged in cords to provide the necessary circuit connections. Step-by-step and crossbar switches are also space division switching techniques. And newer switches use computer programs to control electronic components.

Time division switching dedicates a time slot to the parties involved in a call. The two parties are guaranteed a time slot, or all of the bandwidth for a guaranteed portion of the time. In this method, the equipment used at each end knows what time slot to use and both ends communicate during the assigned time slot. Since these time slots may occur several thousand times per second, the human ear cannot detect the underlying technology. A more complex variation of this approach is used in many central office switches and PBX systems today.

Cellular telephone networks and cable modem systems use another approach called frequency division switching. In this approach, communicating parties are assigned a dedicated slice of the passband within the total bandwidth available in the communications channel.

The key to each of these approaches is that something is dedicated to the call for the duration of the call. This dedicated resource cannot be used by any other user on the network until the call completes and the resources is returned to a pool of available resources.

Because circuit switching guarantees a dedicated path that cannot be shared, it requires a significant engineering effort to locate, reserve and connect the necessary resources through the network. This drive the cost of a connection up and causes some delay in the setup process. As a result, circuit switching is more economical for connections of a longer duration like a voice telephone call where parties may talk for three or four minutes. It works best when network utilization of the network is high, providing a usage level that keeps the resources busy, but not overloaded.

Packet (Store-and-Forward) Switching
There are many ways to provide switching without the use of dedicated facilities. One example of a store-and-forward switching network is the subway system in New York. Passengers can travel between any of the subway stations along the route. The topology of this network is referred to as a “hub and spoke “ topology. The subway has many switching points or nodes. To get from one location to another, users might have to transfer from one line to another at one of these nodes. At the hub nodes, passengers (the traffic) might have to wait in a buffer (be stored) until the next available train arrives so that they can move (be forwarded) on to their destination. Just as passengers encounter delays in waiting for a train to arrive, and sometimes queuing delays when the trains are fully loaded, a store-and-forward type network provides service that has very different characteristics from a circuit switched network, which would be more similar to a New York taxi; dedicated to a passenger for the duration of the trip

In a data network, even the links between the switches are shared on demand. Switches perform routing calculations to determine which link to send the data onto, then the data is placed in queue for that link. Resources are allocated on a first come, first served basis, and there are no guarantees that the next leg of the path will be available upon arrival. Delays in queuing can cause data to sit in buffers. In a data network, this means that the delay through the network can be sporadic and unpredictable.

Because of this unpredictability, large blocks of information aren’t well suited to this type of network. Large blocks in information have to be broken into smaller chunks in order to not degrade performance of the network. When we think of a four-minute telephone call, we are really thinking of a very large block of data.

In a store and forward network, each block of data has to carry some form of addressing information that the switches can use to determine where the final destination is. Without this, the information can never be delivered to the recipient.

Data applications are often described as being “bursty in nature,” meaning that there may be lapses or pauses between transmissions. Unlike a voice call, which is a real time interaction between two people, a data connection is often an interaction between two computers without a person directly involved. Since store-and-forward, or packet networks use statistical multiplexing, or first in, first out (FIFO) methods, this type of network is better suited to a bursty type of traffic, like data.

Packet switching is the most common form of store-and-forward switching in use today, with routers being a perfect example of a store-and-forward switch. Packet switching breaks blocks of information into a pre-defined size or size range. This process of packetization does create some overhead, as each packet must have addressing information. Error checking can be performed on a per-packet basis, and if errors occur, only the corrupted packet needs to be retransmitted. This gains some efficiency in the network, as long messages do not need to be repeated entirely if an error occurs.

Connectionless vs. Connection-oriented Networks

The circuit switched network is clearly a connection-oriented network. The connection is the call setup process that establishes the circuit.

Packet networks can be either connection-oriented or connectionless. In a connectionless network, no setup is required. Each packet carries sufficient addressing or routing information to allow it to be passed from node to node through the network. Since there are no guarantees, because there are no dedicated network resources, these networks are referred to as “best efforts” networks, and performance may be unpredictable. In cases of network congestion, these networks will often discard packets to alleviate congestion or crowded buffers.

Connectionless networks also do not guarantee that packets will be delivered in the order they were transmitted, Packet might take different paths through the network and arrive at different times. This means that the device at the recipient must have resources to store the packets until enough have arrived to reassemble the message for delivery.

The postal network is a good analogy of a packet network with no guarantees. You could receive this book in many packets, each containing a page. The envelopes would be the packets containing the message. At the receiver’s end, the pages would have to be stored until all were received, then the book could be assembled. If a packet were damaged along the way, only the damaged page would require retransmission, not the entire book.

As you can see, packet networks provide a good technology for delivering short or bursty messages that don’t require the overhead of call setup. Transaction processes, like ATM machines or credit card verification terminals generate short messages that are ideally suited to this type of network.

So at the end of the day, both have strengths and weaknesses. The same applies to connectionless and connection-oriented networks. Each serves a purpose, and each has value…in its place and in its time. One thing we’ve learned as the Internet grew is that routing protocols today are resilient and route around failures.

In 2003 there was a major power failure on the east coast. It took power out to several major cities in the US, including New York, Detroit and even parts of Canada. Certainly user traffic on the Internet decreased during the outage. Millions of homes and business were without electricity. But the Internet – the service network – simply routed traffic around the affected areas. Users outside the directly affected geography were not impacted by the outage.

I think we’re leading up to the same approach for sustainable unified communications. Go look at Internet maps and you find many pictures that look like this.

The Internet is an intricate mesh that simply routes around problems as they occur. Isn’t that what we really want of unified communications?

So which is more powerful?

• A network of some major players representing potentially large single points of failure?
• A mesh of small players all connected and intelligently routing around failures?

For me the answer is crystal clear. The power is in the mesh.

If the major players represent the equivalent of a Class 5 telco switch in the traditional PSTN, the innovators represent a single router in the Internet. There’s a direct correlation in this analogy when we think about the loss of a single node.

I want my nodes to be resilient, and I want my unified communications service to automatically route around or compensate for failures. That cannot be achieved by a monopolistic view. The market dominance of any single entity carries an unacceptable level of risk. Consider denial of service (DOS) or sercurity breach. Even a simple code revision on a major network can create immeasurable user impact. Anyone who’s done development work will admit that sometimes a project can scale so large that it can’t be effectively simulated in a lab environment. I’d posit that Google can’t, in practical terms, test every change they make to a degree of certainty about user impact. At some point, the law of diminishing returns takes over and changes get rolled out into production networks. They have to in order to keep the wheels of progress turning.

A monopolistic approach is still behind the Telco 2.o mindset, and that simply cannot sustain our communications growth. The philosophy behind communications services must become the same philosophy that has let Internet technology succeed.

The winners in the race to unified communications are inevitably the small innovators, and they are legion. I won’t hyperlink, but let me toss a few names your way – Voxeo, Abbynet, iotum, Truphone, Jaduka, SightSpeed, Vidtel, MaxROAM, Solegy, Sangoma, Digium, MOBIVOX, Jott, Twitter, Gist, Salesforce.com, Jajah, Phweet, Jive Software, Dialogic, Acme Packet, fring, NetQoS, Fonolo, SpinVox, QIK, Covergence, Cubic Telecom, Facebook, Audiocodes, Sipera Systems, TelEvolution and many more.

The losers? That’s easy. The 800 pound gorillas are the losers. They have to be. It’s natural selection. The path they’ve selected has ensured they’ll be the losers. You can name names yourself. But just because they’re the losers doesn’t mean they won’t be profitable, good investments, and even grow. Losers can be profitable too.

I often refer to technology as plumbing, and it bothers me that so many of my colleagues take that as a negative statement. Plumbing is a profitable, sound business to be in. And the infrastructure of our water network is vital to our civilization. The same applies to the communications plumbers out there. They support and maintain a vital part of our information plumbing.

Whether you’re a winner or a loser, a plumber or not, being profitable in a sustaining industry delivering service isn’t a bad place to be.

Technorati Tags: unified communications, packet switching, circuit switching, networks, sustanable, profitable, service, delivery, winners, losers

A friend of ours sent Sheryl a link to Bill Gates: How I’m trying to change the world now from the recent TED Conference, They don’t provide embed code so you’ll have to go watch the video yourself.

The first problem Gates addresses, malaria, is an interesting topic, and well worth watching. The second raises a really compelling series of thoughts. It’s framed around a simple question and asks the question “how do you make a teacher great?“

Listen closely because it’s a call to arms that will make or break our society in the next generation. It’s that important.

We’ve talked a lot about engagement lately. We talk about it in terms of business, personal relationships and social media interaction. There is zero value in the technology. I’ll repeat that, because as a lifelong technology maven, some of you may think you misread me – there is zero value in the technology. None. Value is in engagement.

It doesn’t matter if it’s blog comments, Twitter, Facebook, school, work, family time at home, engaging with those around us is absolutely vital.

The other key factor to our success is accountability. So in the US, we deal with accountability by bailouts, and then tell the CEOs of the failures that because they’ve failed so miserably their companies require rescue that they must deal with a salary cap and a paltry half-million dollars. I know what you’re thinking. Never has the price of failure been so severe. (Note tongue in cheek) Cluetards. We reward failure and cluetards who manipulate the system, yet we punish our children.

Our educational system in the US is a shameful disgrace of wrong incentives, rewarding mediocrity and failure and general apathy toward our children’s future.

That malaise toward educating our children carries forward into our lives for entire generations. We create and sustain am atmosphere of mediocrity by our actions every day.

Lots to think about. Do go watch at least the second segment of Gates video.

Technorati Tags: Bill Gates, TED, education, engagement, accountability