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Re: VOIP provider

  • From: Peter Dambier
  • Date: Tue Aug 02 11:28:50 2005 
Shane Owens wrote:

 Not really an operational question, but an engineering question non-the-less.  This may also not be the most suitable
forum, but there is a large brain trust here that can probably answer my questions.


Oh, it does. It probably is the only way you get all those ip-phones distrubuted
all over the globe into working.


We are looking at a business plan to launch a large VOIP carrier globally.  My questions are:

1: Does it make sense to scatter nodes around the globe to limit latency on intraregional calls? If so how many? We were
thinking about 7 placed at strategic points around the globe.

The atlantic ocean is a problem. May be it is because my ISP throws in an artificial
delay of about 80 msec to keep us from P2P or to sell us a more expensive rate.
Maybe it is the delay or the contention around the "ferry ports". My forward from

http://www.ipkall.com/

stopped working as soon as my ip-phone moved from Newyork to Frankfurt.

With traceroute I have seen packets summersalting in London. The third
packed arrived before the first. So you would need a node in London and
another one in Amsterdam.

DTAG.de has routing problems between Amsterdam and Frankfurt or Darmstadt
so you might need another node in Frankfurt. I dont know about the rest
of Europe. Within germany nobody noticed a difference between my ISDN and
my Grandstream ATA-486.

Here my traceroute when it routes:

traceroute to p54a7f56f.dip.t-dialin.net (84.167.245.111), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  gw1.cyberbunker.net (84.22.100.1)  0.949 ms  0.765 ms  0.639 ms
 2  cb-sr1-e0.cb3rob.net (84.22.96.245)  36.322 ms  34.720 ms  37.676 ms
 3  ams-tr2-t0.cb3rob.net (84.22.96.249)  9.817 ms  11.200 ms  13.317 ms
 4  gate1.deltaland.nl (213.201.229.1)  24.710 ms  15.491 ms  14.228 ms
 5  amx-gw2.nl.dtag.de (195.69.145.211)  41.802 ms  12.689 ms  15.209 ms
 6  da-ea1.DA.DE.net.DTAG.DE (62.153.179.54)  22.044 ms  19.521 ms  21.177 ms
 7  217.0.67.97 (217.0.67.97)  20.324 ms  20.462 ms  30.761 ms
 8  p54A7F56F.dip.t-dialin.net (84.167.245.111)  76.950 ms  74.830 ms  73.890 ms

and here when it does not:

traceroute to p54a7f56f.dip.t-dialin.net (84.167.245.111), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  gw1.cyberbunker.net (84.22.100.1)  0.198 ms   0.186 ms   0.158 ms
 2  cb-sr1-e0.cb3rob.net (84.22.96.245)  115.892 ms   117.430 ms   116.859 ms
 3  ams-tr2-t0.cb3rob.net (84.22.96.249)  44.379 ms   42.748 ms   41.447 ms
 4  gate1.deltaland.nl (213.201.229.1)  40.069 ms   38.394 ms   36.923 ms
 5  amx-gw2.nl.dtag.de (195.69.145.211)  37.144 ms   35.848 ms   35.178 ms
 6  da-ea1.DA.DE.net.DTAG.DE (62.153.179.54)  40.176 ms   38.547 ms   39.933 ms
 7  217.0.67.105  54.372 ms   54.171 ms   52.435 ms
 8  * * *

The problem is DTAG.DE using ip addresses from 84.xxx.xxx.xxx and at the same
time believing them to be bogons.


2: Is a softswitch architecture preferred to a proxy server/Media Gateway (Vonage) only type architecture?

3: What protocols should be used for firmware upgrades to ATA devices? We are thinking HTTPS or SFTP, or HTTP if those
aren't available on selected devices.  I am trying to stay away from TFTP for security reasons.

TFTP is no problem with linux people running their own server locally. But
never let it be seen from the outside. There a TFTP servers for windows too

My Grandstream uses TFTP but I have never seen an update.

I guess HTTP to get the software to your customers should do.
HTTPS is fine. Who knows SFTP?


4: Anyone have any vendor recommendations? We currently use Metaswitch for our Softswitch, but I'm not sure it would be
the best choice for a large scale deployment although I am going to research it.


They are very popular in Germany. Dont ask me the other countries:

http://www.avm.de/en/


5: Should I work with large wholesalers (L3, GX, etc) or try to penetrate markets in some other way?


There are a lot of VoIP providers in Germany. Many of them have their networks
interconnected to offer free calls between the networks. Some providers operate
in more than one european countries. It seems like a jungle. Europe is even
more complicated:

There are things like 110 or 112 or some other funny number for emergency calls.

There are geographic phonenumbers that must reflect where your ip-phone is
located.

Do you really want to know :)

DTAG AG wants to move all their pots and isdn phones to VoIP in the long run
and without any benefit for their customers. Maybe you should talk to them.


6: Are there any wholesalers (DID Origination) outside of the US that anyone knows of?


Have a look at them:

http://www.united-internet.com/

Maybe they are not a wholesaler but they are moderately big.
They provide both VoIP and aDSL but they still depend on
the DTAG.DE network mostly.

Sorry to have so many questions. Many of these I already have ideas on the answers however I acknowledge there are far
smarter people than myself in the world. So I figure it's a good idea to ask and get opinions from others before I make
a final decision.


Shane Shaneowens<at>dna-communications.com


Regards,
Peter and Karin Dambier

--
Peter and Karin Dambier
Public-Root
Graeffstrasse 14
D-64646 Heppenheim
+49-6252-671788 (Telekom)
+49-179-108-3978 (O2 Genion)
+49-6252-750308 (VoIP: sipgate.de)
mail: [email protected]
http://iason.site.voila.fr
http://www.kokoom.com/iason