While much attention has been paid to the potential of IP networks to evolve the industry, for the foreseeable future the primary purpose of IP interconnects will still be to carry traditional voice calls. The same fundamentals that drive TDM interconnects will continue to drive IP interconnects as well.

By and large, service providers look for wholesale carriers to provide either aggressively-priced services at acceptable quality, or very high quality services at an acceptable price. Carriers need to pay attention to the core capabilities, such as sophisticated routing, reliable and redundant suppliers, and proactive troubleshooting and support, that will be just as important in an IP world as in a TDM world.

However, IP-based customers and suppliers currently display a much more varied range of business models, technical frameworks (such as protocols and codecs) and value-added services than traditional fixed-line or mobile providers. These customers and partners also look for wholesale providers with the flexibility to meet their special requirements, expanding the range of partners with whom they can do business.

New converging world would have several applications use a common infrastructure to transport from a point to point or point to multi-point. Applications like Video download, Video Share, Instant messaging, financial transactions from a mobile phone and many such would compete with traditional voice transport link using a common IP infrastructure.

In order to ensure a high level of service for all users, service providers engage in management strategies that go beyond pure bandwidth provision.

Traffic shaping ensures that network resources are used most efficiently, and helps avoid congestion that offers a fair share of throughput and integrity determined by nature of applications or commercial sensitivity of the application,

In One IP world, intelligent transport is a function of End user determination of priority of services, Carriers bandwidth management to provide tailor made Quality of Services to each type of applications.

VoIP suffers from a lingering perception that it is a lower-quality service when compared to more traditional TDM, but adopting a few simple precautions, providers can avoid the most common issues that cause the perception of poor quality.

Defining high VoIP quality is challenged by the fact that it is ultimately the perception of the end users having a conversation that determines quality. User perception can be shaped by factors that may not be within the service provider’s ability to control, such as higher or lower expectations of acceptable quality, or issues with end-user equipment, which nevertheless may still be perceived as network problems.

While providers have some ability to shape user expectations, the two most important factors over which providers do have control are IP transit quality and call routing.

Monitoring and QoS-enabled network routing can both be important tools in delivering high voice quality, but neither can fix problems caused by inadequate transport capacity. Just like a congested road, a congested network affects the quality of every user, not just the last people to enter.

Fortunately, the technologies to ensure efficient network call routing and appropriate network sizing are well established and easy to deploy. Bandwidth costs are falling and IP speeds rising in many markets, suggesting that there remain few, if any, barriers to delivering high-quality VoIP calls.

VoIP bilaterals have been on the radar screen for quite awhile, for the promised benefits of quick and easy routing, and an elastic connection that can scale to handle any number of calls or minutes required.

Currently, VoIP interconnects tend to require more tailored solutions to interoperability and security issues than a straightforward PSTN connection, but the reduced cost to connect, the lowered barriers to connecting geographically separated endpoints, and the shortened rollout timeframes all act to expand the number of companies with which a carrier can interconnect.

However, this flexibility also brings with it the promise of complexity. Maintaining bilaterals with dozens – let alone hundreds – of carriers is difficult. The management and maintenance requirements quickly become burdensome, and the routing intelligence required to support a roster of bilaterals is complex.

The VoIP migration will likely be accompanied by an increase in bilaterals due to lower costs to connect, but this increase will most likely find a ceiling as service providers find the right point to maximize savings while minimizing complexity.

It is a now a fact that VoIP is not only the future of voice transit, but is starting to take the lead over TDM as the preferred interconnect method for voice carriers. The i3 Forum came together as large wholesale voice carriers began to think about how they can migrate the legacy TDM bilateral connections to VoIP interface and to ensure that the same level of quality and availability is going to be present.

The VoIP interconnects are going to be a challenge as carriers need to settle on the voice codecs, signaling protocols and other standards that are going to be used. This is where the i3 Forum can lead assistance to the industry as it is producing a set of guidelines for VoIP interconnects that can be used by two carriers for their bilateral voice traffic. These guidelines cover the ideal methods for linking of the IP backbone, VoIP protocol standards such as SIP and SIP-I as well as recommended codec’s.

The true success criteria of the bilateral migration is the tipping point when the VoIP interconnect becomes the primary route choice for traffic exchange and the legacy TDM connections can be removed.

One of the challenges to systematizing VoIP interconnects is the complexity of the existing standards landscape that has developed over the past decade, as compared to the TDM world. As a result, the SIP standard has added layers of complexity as it has evolved to meet the needs of carriers, VoIP providers, enterprises and Internet Telephony operators.

Some of this comes from the increased complexity inherent in IP-based voice services. The number of parameters that need to be examined multiplies in an IP world. Speech quality, MoS value, delay, packet loss – all require acceptable levels to be defined in order to enable seamless traffic exchange.

SS7 delivery also presents a challenge for the industry when setting up IP-based interconnects. Plain SIP doesn’t support the inheritance of SS7 parameters, and SIP I and SIP T have been slow to take hold within the industry.

To further complicate the standards picture, while H.323 is declining in popularity as a protocol, there are still a number of deployments on H.323, and H.323 interconnects are still being requested, so ways to map interconnects that move between protocols need to be defined.

The first solution proposed to solve these standards challenges was IMS, but that has not yet taken hold within the industry. As a result, resolving standards and best practices for interconnects will be a topic for discussion within the industry for some time to come.

USA-Canada World Championship hockey games never fail to elicit great excitement. In the IPv6 adoption world league however, the US seems to have a convincing lead over their northern neighbour but the game is not over yet, here come the Canucks.

Internet evolution, and IPv6 in particular, were the major themes at the ISACC (ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada) Plenary meeting in Ottawa mid April. Presentation of the Government of Canada IPv6 transition Strategy, including timelines, was undoubtedly the highlight of the day. Leveraging the Australian Government IPv6 transition model, the Canadian Federal Government envisages three phases in the transition; preparation (jan 2009- dec 2010), transition (jan 2011-dec 2013) and implementation (January 2014-dec 2015).

Surprising? Not really. In its quiet ways, Canada has pioneered IPv6 since its early days. Canarie, Canada’s national Research and Education Network, co-funded the Chicago 6TAP while the Canadian freenet6 tunneling service has provided more than 150,000 IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels and was, for a while, the world’s premier IPv6 transit point. The first intercontinental native IPv6 connectivity was tried out between the CRC in Ottawa and Berkom in Berlin, Germany, back in 1998. Teleglobe, now part of Tata Communications, became founding member of the IPv6 Forum in 1999 and has been offering commercial IPv6 connectivity since 2004.

The Government’s IPv6 mettle will likely be tested in the upcoming GENS Government Enterprise Network Services calls for tender. The goal is ambitious with the consolidation and convergence of the Government’s current 124 separate networks. Some laggards on the network and equipment supply side will likely lobby to say that IPv6 is not that urgent and that they will support it in the future anyways while some consultants will see, in many years of transition, many years of contracts.

Some of us, in the discussion period at the Ottawa ISACC plenary, emphasized the need for some early measurable deliverables such as IPv6 accessibility of selected public Government websites. Interesting to note that ARIN’s most recent letter, to ISP CEO’s, also considers publicly accessible resources such as external web servers and e-mail servers a logical place to start.

The IPv6 puck rebounds, is passed from behind the internet, he shoots, he…

This post originally appeared on CircleID.

For many carriers, voice over private IP is emerging as the focal point for industry efforts to define standards and best practices. Large wholesale carriers, many of whom own and operate global IP backbones, are examining private IP for its advantages in quality, control and security.

By using their own equipment, carriers have much more control over important IP quality metrics, such as latency, which in turn leads to better voice quality. Carriers can roll out cross-connects that are dedicated to voice, enabling further optimization.

Private networks also offer higher levels of security than the public Internet, which has the potential for hackers to listen in to or steal phone calls are caller ID information. By interconnecting into each others IP backbone they can be assured of protection from outside access that the Internet cannot provide.

However, regional carriers or other service providers may find that the ease and ubiquity of the public Internet outweigh some of the benefits of private networks, while most wholesale carriers also make voice over Internet part of their strategy.

The success factor for service providers is to identify what needs and goals should be served through a transition to IP, and identify a model – public or private – that aligns.

One of the questions currently being debated within the industry is whether voice traffic should be carried over the public Internet or via private IP networks. This entry and the next will highlight some of the advantages of each approach.

Voice over the public Internet is a proven model. It’s been in use in the industry for over a decade, and many suppliers and customers interconnect with carriers via public IP. The Internet has a level of redundancy and dynamic route changing that allows for high availability.

The cost and reach of IP has been evolving quickly recently. Just a few years ago many parts of the world had only satellite IP connections. Now, fiber transmission and undersea cable networks are continually growing, with the result that many more regions are gaining access to Tier-1 IP backbones, which in turn opens their options for interconnect.

For voice providers, the trickle-down effect has been both higher quality and a more favorable cost structure, which together increase the attractiveness of the Internet model.

However, the challenge of the public Internet is still in finding the right ISP who is peering with the right providers. The ISP choice will affect latency, jitter and packet loss, all of which will in turn affect voice quality.

Many carriers, particularly those with a global IP backbone, are looking instead at private IP networks at their voice transport of choice – my next entry will look at some of the advantages that private IP offers.