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The Net Tomorrow

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VoicenData Bureau
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Krishna G Murti,




vice-president, technology for Elemedia, Bell Labs.
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Over the last several years,

Internet has undergone a dramatic change. What started in the late Sixties as a research

tool for government and academia, and later a means to exchange E-mail and files, has

grown to become a major force in people’s lives. Now the Net is used for an amazing

variety of applications ranging from advertising, call centres, and help desks, to

entertainment, education, electronic commerce, and even telephony.

The range of applications is currently

limited by technology, both in the "backbone", or core part of the network, and

in the end-points. These limitations are rapidly being overcome and soon we can expect an

even richer set of capabilities. Of all the new and evolving uses for the Net, the most

promising long-term opportunity is interactive multimedia communication. Much of the

recent interest in Internet, particularly from the service providers, is its potential for

offering rich and diverse communication services.

The IP network today is an excellent

medium for delivering non-realtime data such as E-mail, data files, and even fax. With

little change, except for increased capacity, the current network would continue to serve

us well for traditional applications. However, emerging applications are placing

significant demands on both the network backbone and the periphery (access networks as

well as endpoints). Improvements are required in multiple areas.

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Standards bodies such as the IETF, ITU,

IMTC, and ETSI are addressing issues such as interoperability, efficiency, Quality of

Service (QoS), security, and increased functionality through their work on IPv6, H.323,

IPsec, and related protocols. Service providers are addressing backbone capacity, access

bandwidth, and interworking with traditional networks (e.g., PSTN, wireless, ISDN) through

the deployment of high-speed routers, gateways, and new access networks supporting

technologies such as V.90, xDSL, and cable modems. In addition, equipment providers and

application developers are addressing issues such as complexity, cost, and ease-of-use.

face="Times New Roman">The IP network today is an excellent medium for delivering

non-realtime data such as E-mail, data files, and even fax.

The first Internet Protocol (IP)-based

telephony application emerged a couple of years ago and literally started a new industry.

The initial product was difficult to use and required co-ordination or advanced scheduling

since both parties in the conversation had to have their PCs on, connected to the Net, and

running the same application. Nevertheless, it did support voice communications over the

Net, albeit with poor voice quality and inconvenient call set-up.

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IP telephony has since moved from the

realm of hobbyists to something that is revolutionizing the telecom industry. This

revolution is being fueled by many of the items cited above—interoperability through

standards, improved network performance, improved performance of applications, and

interworking with traditional devices such as telephones through the use of gateways. The

latter capability is perhaps the most significant in terms of accelerating the growth and

interest in IP telephony. IP telephony gateways provide instant connectivity to the

millions of installed telephones in the PSTN.

Other services will include

videoconferencing and white-boarding. The combination of these new services will enable

the true driving force behind IP telephony—richer services and true multimedia

communication.

IP telephony will continue to evolve,

becoming more reliable, cheaper, and providing more flexibility than the current PSTN. The

gateway functionality will gradually be integrated into a wide range of devices such as

PBXes, switches, routers, mobile systems, and remote access servers. This migration will

be facilitated by today’s movement of intelligence from the Gateways into other

network entities, network management systems, and operation support systems.

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However, the adoption of standards and

resultant interoperability are critical for this evolution to occur.

The window of opportunity for new

innovative services is opening up. It will be easier, faster, and cheaper to offer

innovative services in the IP telephony environment than in the traditional

circuit-switched environment. New services will arise from the innovation that is

traditionally associated with Internet. Customers will benefit because the new services

will not only be richer but can more easily be tailored to their particular needs.

In the not too distant

future, the range of applications will be limited only by our imagination rather than

technologist’s ability to deliver. The Net will evolve to be the universal

communications medium. 
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