Unlike most of the bloggers here on No Jitter, I'm not going to be posting a VoiceCon wrap up. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to VoiceCon this time, because it conflicted with another major event for the technical side of the voice community, namely IETF. Instead I've put together a quick blog post and let folks know a bit about what the IETF is and does, and a bit about what the interesting topics at IETF were this time.So first, what is the IETF? The IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force, a standards organization that defines the details of the protocols that allow Internet applications to communicate with each other. Without interoperable protocols, a Mac user wouldn't be able to send email to a PC user, and you likely couldn't view a webpage from a UNIX webserver. In the case of communications, calls between various vendors wouldn't work. (I know, I know, that still doesn't always work, but we try!) The IETF standardizes protocols for everything from low level networking to high-level applications including VoIP. The SIP, SIMPLE, and XMPP protocols are just a few of those that the IETF developed or now documents as standards.
At the IETF, participants participate as individuals, and don't represent a particular vendor (at least in theory), an outgrowth of the IETF's roots in academia/government research. The academic and government communities continue to be heavily involved, giving IETF a different feel from more corporate-oriented standards organizations. The IETF meets at different locations around the world three times annually. The most recent meeting (IETF 77) was in Anaheim, CA, USA, and drew 1,248 attendees.
The standards at the IETF begin their life as Internet Drafts, or IDs. An ID generally describes a new proposed protocol, a new feature or extension to an existing protocol, or how to use a protocol for a particular task. Drafts related to a particular application or protocol are handled by a corresponding Working Group (WG), and will undergo many review and iteration cycles. If there is ultimately enough interest the draft can advance to become an RFC, or "request for comment", documenting how that protocol or feature works. The goal is that by the time a draft becomes an RFC, it contains enough detail that developers from different vendors are able to produce two interoperable implementations. If you are curious to learn more about the IETF, you can read the "Tao of the IETF" online.
What were the hot topics at IETF on the communications front at this IETF? I'm a SIP guy, more specifically a P2PSIP guy, so my emphasis was on SIP and P2P applications, but a number of the most talked about topics included:
* A new WG was formed called "MARTINI", for Multiple AoR rechabiTy InformatioN Indication (the SIP theme has been taken a bit too far in recent years...). The basic idea of this group is to standardize how authoritative owners of a particular SIP device can register that address with a service provider. SIP allows users to be reached by a SIP URI, which looks like an email address: [email protected] In practice, however, conventional phone numbers are used, and routing between companies using SIP is often via the PSTN. MARTINI is an effort to establish better-defined standards allowing SIP service providers and the companies they serve to work together and route intra-company calls using SIP.
* The SIPREC WG had its initial meeting. SIPREC is focusing on a standard to support the recording of calls for business purposes, e.g. quality control at call centers. The major tasks of this group include ensuring that the media is properly delivered to the recording box, that there is a clearly understood protocol for controlling the recording of the call, and notifying the parties involved in the call that recording is taking place.
* In a bit of a change for the IETF, the eponymously named CODEC WG has been formed to develop (or standardize an existing) an audio communications codec. Unlike a protocol, which is an agreed set of rules for exchanging messages between two computers, a codec defines how to encode media, in this case, audio, in digital form. While this distinction may seem minor, this is something the IETF has never done before. Other organizations have standardized codecs before (most notably the ITU-T's g.7xx series), but the IETF community felt too many were encumbered by patents and licensing fees. Codec's goal is to deliver a single, freely available codec standard for voice.
* Finally, on the P2P side, a new group was formed to standardize live streaming of video, called the PPSP WG. While the group is primarily focused on things like video on demand and set-top box delivery of video in a standardized way, this technology may one day find its way into enterprise communications. Applications might include large-scale videoconferences, such as an annual speech from the company CEO, or delivery of training videos.
Many existing groups met as well, further refining the specifications for SIP, XMPP, P2PSIP, and many of the IETF's other protocols. Despite the best efforts of the attendees, something is always underspecified, lacking a feature, or just broken in existing protocols, and the face-to-face meetings are an opportunity to iron out the wrinkles.
Hopefully this gave you a bit of a glimpse into the very technical sausage-making that goes on behind the scenes to allow the pieces of your IT infrastructure to work together. I'll try to provide periodic updates on what is new on the standards side.
