* NGN panelists discuss upcoming challenges for VoIP
At last week’s Next Generation Networks conference held in Washington, D.C. we had the chance to attend several interesting panel discussions but none more interesting than the discussion about upcoming challenges for VoIP. In fact, most of the buzz at NGN was about VoIP, convergence and IP Multimedia Subsystem.
The VoIP panel discussion, entitled “VoIP’s Next Challenges,” included panelists Larry O’Pella director of strategic solutions at Alcatel, Chris Miller distinguished member of consulting staff for Lucent Worldwide Services, and Mike Hluchyj founder and CTO of Sonus Networks.
Hluchyj noted that the issues discussed were VoIP’s next steps rather than challenges. Among those steps is the deployment of VoIP in endpoint broadband access devices, said Hluchyj. He also highlighted the deployment of VoIP over mobile EV-DO Rev A networks, noting that mobile operators can get more than 50% of increased spectrum efficiency using Rev A, as opposed to the previous 1XRTT EV-DO versions. He predicted that VoIP’s acceptance would proceed even more quickly for mobile operators than for wireline operators due to the mobile carriers’ rapid deployment of broadband access.
He also commented about the need for VoIP packet peering. Although he correctly pointed out that peering architecture can open the network to security threats, the use of “network border switching” (a.k.a. session border controllers) can counter VoIP packet peers by surrounding and protecting the individual networks.
Hluchyj also noted that additional work on security is needed, especially in the areas of traffic policing, authentication, encryption and trust.
Next time, we’ll highlight Lucent’s Chris Miller’s comments. Do you agree or disagree with Hluchyj’s observations? Please feel free to e-mail us with your thoughts.
