tim's blog

I was listening to the radio this afternoon and the topic being discussed was how to save gasoline. There were plenty of suggestions; practical ones like keeping your tires properly inflated and driving at the speed limit, and bad ones; like driving in the slip stream of big rigs! But the suggestion that made most sense to me was work from home at least one day a week.

By working from home one or two days a week you can save 20% or more on gas, reduce travel congestion and lower green house gases. A win-win situation. I work out of my home office as often as possible and cutting out the trip to downtown Chicago saves me more than gas money. I am able to be more customer focused, be less stressed, and get to spend more time with my family.

Being connected to the office via my VoIP phone means I can fully participate in all the work calls. Customers need never know that they have reached me at my home office and I can easily participate in conference calls or transfer callers to remote colleagues.

Working smarter saves me time and money and makes me a more productive employee.

edgeBOX is the most recent hardware device we have successfully tested with our PSTN Gateway service. The edgeBOX is a fully integrated all-in-one device that includes a router, firewall, web server, email server and VoIP Gateway.

Setup and configuration was fast using SIP. IAX has not been tested. edgeBOX supports all the standard codecs; G711u, G711 a, G729, G726 and GSM.

So far it has only been tested using the X-Lite softphone with good voice results.

We have full configuration screen caps available in our Knowledgebase.

I was luck enough to be sent a test OQO pocket PC computer today by my good friend Huan Le. The OQO model 02 is a full Windows Vista PC shrunk down to minute proportions. The OQO is tiny, 6" by 3" by 1" yet it has a full slide-out keyboard and a big bright touch screen (via digital pen).

Setting up Counterpath X-lite took a few seconds and wireless registration of my OnSIP hosted account via my WLAN was painless (the OQO also has Bluetooth and built in Sprint and Verizon broadband wireless). I was making and receiving calls with my USB headset while walking around the house and garden (very cold right now in Chicago!). Call quality was clear and using X-lite with a touch screen and pen was very easy.

For people wanting a very mobile OnSIP device, and a full Windows Vista computer, the OQO model 02 and X-lite works wonderfully well right out of the box.

Yesterday (01/15/08) Apple introduced its MacBook Air at MacWorld in San Francisco. This slim, (supposedly the thinest laptop ever) is determinedly wireless. It doesn't have an Ethernet port (or an optical drive) so the only way for it to communicate with the outside world is via its built in WiFi or Bluetooth. I wonder how well softphone clients like X-lite and Eyebeam will work wirelessly with the Leopard OS. Does Apple use the Broadcom wireless chipset? Assuming you can get a SIP softphone to work on the MacBook Air then this goes to the top of my wish list for must have hardware purchases!

Speaking of MacWorld there was another major hardware show recently. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas finished a week ago. SIP (and VoIP) seemed to be a little unrepresented this year. Skype with everything seemed to be a main feature. The Play Station Portable Skype application got the most attention. There are some "homebrew" SIP stacks already available for PSP, no word yet whether anyone has used us to make a call with it!

SIP stands for session initiation protocol and its adoption as an open-source communications standard is revolutionizing communications. Within the Junction Networks universe SIP addresses control everything. Each username, extension, voice mail box or auto-attendant is an alias for a unique SIP address.

I know you are wondering “this is very interesting but why should I care? As long as when I pick up my phone and get a dial-tone, and my voice mail works, I am good to go.” This is true, but a SIP address can also be used as a powerful communications tool. My email address is tim@junctionnetworks.com. It is also my SIP address. If you have a SIP phone you can dial that address and call me...for free. You can be anywhere in the world. I can be anywhere in the world. With the next generation of WiFi enabled smart phones supporting SIP addresses I can be sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop in London and you can call me from a Starbucks in Sydney. For free.

Now entering SIP addresses into phones is a little complicated (but no harder than entering in an email address) but when you sync up your phone with Outlook or Thunderbird you can transfer all your contacts information easily enough. Junction Networks offers phone number click-to-call through the Firefox web browser, an ongoing open-source project called Cockatoo (http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/ui.html) is doing the same thing for the Thunderbird email program.

Most Junction Networks users have a SIP address in the following format tim@acme.onsip.com. However with a few simple changes to your domain names SRV records you can easily have your SIP address match your email address. Junction Networks is working with several leading cell phone manufactures to test various smart phones for true SIP capabilities. We will be adding reviews and updating our progress on the blog. These are really exciting times for the phone industry and SIP is playing a leading role.