VoIP Conference and Expo
Thursday and Friday, October 23-24, 2008
Speakers listed alphabetically by affiliation:
Speaker: Koichi Asatani
Title: Trends of NGN and Its Issues
Abstract: Next Generation Networks (NGN) are designed to be capable of QoS management and controls like in traditional telecommunication networks and to support economical, versatile multi-media applications like those on the current Internet. NGN also provides fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) with generalized mobility, and horizontal and vertical roaming as well as improved security.
The concepts and architecture of the Next Generation Networks (NGN) are described, and its implementation in a commercial offer by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) is touched upon. NGN voice and Internet services are attractive from the view points of service flexibility and cost effectiveness and the capability of integrating third-party applications with high dependability and high security.
Issues for the global evolution of NGN are also described, such as global standards and regulations.
Bio: Koichi Asatani received his B.E.E.E., M.E.E.E. and Ph. D degrees from Kyoto University in 1969, 1971 and 1974, respectively. From 1974 to 1997, Dr. Asatani was engaged in R&D on optical fiber communication systems, hi-definition video transmission systems, FTTH, ISDN, B-ISDN, ATM networks, IP networks and their strategic planning in NTT. Currently he is Dean, Department of Computer Science and Communications Engineering, Kogakuin University, and a visiting professor, Graduate School of Global Information and Telecommunication, Waseda University, both in Tokyo, Japan. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of IEICE. He was also appointed as a distinguished lecturer of IEEE Com Soc for 2006-2009.
He is a founder of Communications QoS, Reliability and Performance Modeling series symposium at ICCs and Globecoms. He served as co-chair for this symposium series at ICCs and Globecoms for 2002-2004. He is Ex-Chair and Advisory Board Ex-Chair Emeritus of IEEE Technical Committee on Communication Quality and Reliability (CQR-TC), Feature Editor on Standards (1993-1999), Senior Technical Editor/Technical Editor (1999- ) of IEEE Communications Magazine, and Technical Editor on Broadband Technology of IEEE Communications Survey. From 1988 through 2000, he served as Vice-Chairman of ITU-T SG 13 (formerly CCITT SG XVIII), responsible for digital networks including GII, IP networks and NGN. He serves as Chair for National Committee on Next Generation Networks in Japan.
He has published more than fifty papers, and gave more than seventy talks including keynotes and invited talks at international conferences such as ICCs and Globecoms. He is author or co-author of eighteen books including "Designs of Telecommunication Networks"(IEICE, 1993, in Japanese), "Introductions to ATM Networks and B-ISDN)" (John Wiley and Sons, 1997), "Multimedia Communications Networks - Technologies and Services" (Artech House, 1998), "Multimedia Communications" (Academic Press, 2001), "Information and Communication Technology and Standards" (Denki Tsushin Shinko Kyokai, in Japanese, 2006), "Introduction to Information Networks-Fundamentals of Telecom & Internet Convergence, QoS, VoIP and NGN-" (Corona-sha Publishing, in Japanese, 2007).His current interests are Information Networks and Network Architectures including Broadband networking, Internetworking, IP telephony, NGN and their QoS aspects. [back]
Speaker: Gregory W. Bond, AT&T Labs Research
Title: Converged IP Telecom Services and Mashups
Abstract: Convergence isn't just happening for devices, it's also happening for applications. Application convergence provides a user experience that seamlessly blends hitherto separate application domains. Web services, service-oriented architectures and service mashups are touted as technologies that will enable application convergence but, unfortunately, IP telecommunications applications aren't readily handled by these approaches. On the other hand, integrating IP telecommunications services with web services holds enormous potential for rapidly developing customized telecom applications. In this talk I will discuss the challenges associated with developing converged telecom services and the technologies and standards that are emerging to address these challenges.
Bio: Gregory W. Bond is a principal technical staff member at AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park NJ and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Greg has been researching problems related to IP telecom applications and application servers for 10 years. He was a member of the research team that created the application server and application suite powering AT&T CallVantage, AT&T's national consumer VoIP service offered in 2004. He is the creator of the open source ECharts programming language, a high-level language used to program advanced IP telecom applications and he is the co-developer of the open source ECharts for SIP Servlets development framework, a framework that enables the rapid development of complex SIP servlet applications. Greg is the co-founder of the international IPTComm conference, devoted to the presentation and dissemination of the latest research results in IP telecom applications and security. Greg received his Ph.D. from Carleton University, Ottawa and is a member of the IEEE and the ACM. [back]
Speaker: Brett Brock, Cox Communications
Title:Refining the Next Generation Network
Abstract: Next Generation Network are expected to be future proof and able to seamlessly deliver as yet undefined services, yet the core components are allowed little or no alteration. These are lofty goals, full of promise. What is the basis of this promise? What characteristics of the Next Generation Network separate it from past and present generation networks? The wealth of capabilities present in the more than one hundred SIP related specifications are fertile grounds for intelligence, flexibility and richness in the network layer, the application layer, the access layer and the client that have not yet been realized. Leveraging such capabilities can bring value to the network operator to deploy rich services to the marketplace in ways that are far beyond the capabilities of prior generation networks
Bio: Brett Brock is a Senior Design Engineer for Cox Communications with a primary focus on Next Generation Networks and Next-Generation service development. He delivers architectural recommendations and guidance for Cox Communication's converged services strategy and in 2007, led Cox Communication's IMS evaluation. Brett is also actively involved in Cox's current evaluation of wireless carrier technology solutions, as well as, being the lead developer for operational assistance tools for the CS2K Hybrid VoIP Softswitch.
Brett's communications career began with Nortel in 2000 in their Global Services division as a team member and team leader working in Europe, Asia, and South America performing AIN system installations, commissioning, upgrades, conversions and reconfigurations. Afterwards, he moved into the area of data deployment and integration, deploying Mobile Positioning Centers for T-Mobile, Nextel-Motorola (now Sprint), and Cingular (now AT&T). In addition to MPC deployments Brett also performed Verification Office and Drive Testing support at T-Mobile and Nextel-Motorola. Following the completion of the MPC roll-outs within the US mobile market, Brett began focusing on the Nortel Succession System network deployments and Nortel DMS to CS2K carrier migrations. In 2005, Cox hired him as their Nortel SME and Unified Communications Engineer. [back]
Speaker: Eric Burger, Chairman of the Board, SIP Forum
Title: Making SIP Real: Filling the Gaps
Abstract: The IETF SIP specifications over the last decade have surpassed an astonishing 1,000 pages of text in well over a hundred documents.
Within those documents are many optional protocol elements. From a computer science perspective the number of options results in a combinatorial explosion of option handling code, resulting in complex implementations, as well as a whole industry for "protocol repair." If we have a situation of "too much stuff," what can we do? Basic interoperability testing clearly is a start. This is where one can find out both if one's implementation works, as well as learning from other's experiences. However, further simplifications to the protocol, from a computer science and a practical perspective, can greatly help achieve the goal of better and more robust interoperability. This talk will discuss industry efforts in interoperability testing, approaches for profile and protocol simplification, and experiences with profiles, both good and bad, and how they can lead to better, or worse interoperability.
Bio: Eric Burger is the Chairman of the Board of the SIP Forum, Chair of multiple SIP-related IETF Work Groups, author of numerous SIP-related RFCs, is a contributor to VoIP related technologies such as VoiceXML and CCXML, and holds 12 issued U.S. Patents on VoIP technologies. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Senior Member of the ACM, a Benefactor of the Internet Society, and a Patron of the AAAS. Eric was formerly the Acting General Manager of the Communications Products Division at BEA Systems; the CTO of Cantata Technology, Brooktrout Technology, and SnowShore Networks, where he was also a founder; and he held various engineering management positions at Cable & Wireless and MCI. He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of Sigma Systems, AGNITY, and Mobera Systems, and he served on the adjunct faculty at George Mason University and taught at George Washington University. [back]
Speakers: Eric Cheung and Tom Smith, AT&T Laboratories
Title: Voice-over-IP applications using open standards and open source software - a case study
Abstract: Over the last few years, a number of VoIP open standards aimed towards
the development community have emerged. For example, the Parlay API, JAIN SLEE, the SIP Servlet API, and the media server control API all aim to help developers build VoIP and converged applications more easily. At
the same time, a number of open source application servers, media servers, development tools, libraries and test tools have become available that support these standards. We believe that the availability
of these standards and software have created opportunities to a large developer base who previously was prohibited from developing VoIP applications. The environment is ripe for rapid growth in new
applications and service offerings, especially in the space of third-party applications and communication applications integrated with web sites.
In this talk, we will discuss our experience with applying open source software to various stages of communication application projects lifecycle. The technologies include:
- ECharts for SIP Servlets for development
- The Distributed Feature Composition Application Router for runtime application selection and composition
- The SailFin SIP servlet container for deployment.
- The KitCAT converged applications test tool for unit and system testing
We believe that the maturity of these technologies and the gentler learning curve have lowered the barrier of entry, and should encourage a large developer base to innovate and bring new ideas in communications
to fruition.
Bio: Eric Cheung has been involved in the telecommunication industry and in particular services over IP for over twelve years. Eric is current a Principal Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs--Research in Florham Park, New Jersey. His research interests include innovative IP services, compositional application development techniques, signaling protocols and media processing. He serves in the Java Community Process Expert Groups for SIP Servlet API and Media Server Control API, and is a frequent contributor to the ECharts for SIP Servlets framework. Eric received a B.A. degree in Engineering from Cambridge University, U.K.
and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London, UK.
Bio: Thomas M. Smith is a Principal Technical Staff Member in the IP Services Research Department of AT&T Labs. Tom joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1984, and for the past dozen years has specialized in developing new forms of communication, ranging from semi-structured email to AIN/IP-based telephony services. He now applies that experience to developing tools, frameworks, and languages that simplify the process of creating communications software. He is the primary developer of ECharts for SIP Servlets (E4SS), an open-source framework for development of VoIP services using state-machine representation of service logic. Tom holds a BSEE from Southern Methodist University and a MSEE from Columbia University.
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Speaker: Alan Clark, Telchemy
Title:
Performance Measurement and Problem Diagnosis for VoIP Services
Widespread adoption of VoIP in Enterprise, Hosted and Residential applications requires a highly distributed approach to performance measurement. Embedded agents in IP phones and gateways measure performance and report using protocols such as RTCP XR and SIP. This talk provides a live demonstration of management software using this approach, summarizes the current state of deployment of distributed performance management, outlines new protocols under development within the IETF and explains how these can be used for problem diagnosis.
Title:
IPTV Performance Analysis
IPTV provides a wide range of challenges for service providers; transmission problems cause a wide range of visually perceptible artifacts and system behavior can be sensitive to video content and hard to predict. This talk provides an overview of a range of factors impacting IPTV performance, outlines factors affecting system behavior and provides a practical demonstration of real-time performance monitoring integrated into an IP set top box.
Bio: Dr. Clark is the Founder and CEO of Telchemy. He was previously CTO of Hayes, Director of Research for Dowty Communications and System Architect with British Telecom. Alan has a Ph.D in Information Theory, has driven the development of the performance management framework for VoIP within IETF and ITU, plays a leading role in the development of IPTV performance management standards, has twelve granted patents and has been actively involved in the development of networking and telecom technology for over 20 years. [back]
Speaker: Lev Deich, 911 Enable
Title:E911 Solutions for IP-PBX Systems – What You Need To Know
Abstract:Organizations today making use of IP-PBX systems require a reliable E911 solution to manage phone locations, ensure accurate emergency call routing, and meet local E911 regulations. Join 911 Enable® for an informative presentation which will address the key factors to consider when selecting an E911 solution. Key topics will include: how do E911 systems work; how to integrate them into your current communications environment; and how to stay on top of state, county and local E911 regulations.
Bio: Lev Deich is co-founder of 911 Enable and currently serves as its Director, responsible for product management and operations of the business. Prior to 911 Enable, Lev had a distinguished career with Ericsson where he held various engineering and management positions in the U.S. and Europe. Lev brings over 10 years of telecommunication experience in research and development and has been involved in several large scale international projects and joint ventures. Lev holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, where he graduated with distinct honors. [back]
Speaker: Carl Ford, CEO, IMHO Consulting
Title: The App Gap
Abstract: Looking at Application developers you learn quickly there is a difference between trial and use. What are the obstacles to become a fully accepted application and what lessons can we learn from the previous decade?
Bio: Carl is a highly respected Community Developer who enabled business development and customer contact between companies. Currently, Carl writes about the industry for Fiercemarkets and and is on the board of the VON Coalition.
His professional career includes 20 years with telecommunications companies such as Telcordia Technologies and Verizon. He has worked in positions including Costs, Operations, Marketing, Regulatory and Product Management. [back]
Speaker: Robin Gareiss, Nemertes Research
Title: The Business Case for VOIP & UC
Abstract: The majority of companies are evaluating and implementing Voice Over IP and quickly moving toward a full unified-communications environment. As they evaluate the vendors, service providers, architectures, and strategies, they also must focus heavily on the business case surrounding these new technologies.
Nemertes Research has conducted extensive research on VOIP and UC for each of the past five years, gathering detailed data from hundreds of IT decision-makers. In this session, Robin Gareiss, executive VP & sr. founding partner of Nemertes Research, will share key research findings and provide recommendations based on real-world data on where companies are spending their budgets and what products, services, and features they expect. The session will address the following questions:
- What are the trends and triggers affecting the movement to VOIP and UC?
- How are economic conditions and changes to IT budgets affecting VOIP and UC plans?
- What are the trends toward using managed or hosted services for VOIP and UC, and what's driving those trends?
- What do companies spend on VOIP deployments (implementation, capital, and operational costs; training and management tools)?
- Is there a return-on-investment for VOIP, and how compelling is it?
- As a result of enterprise trends, where should carriers and vendors invest?
- What are the key recommendations for a successful deployment, based on experiences of those who have already succeeded and failed?
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Speaker: Vijay K. Gurbani, Alcatel-Lucent
Title: ISP Support for P2P Traffic
Abstract: This talk provides a survey of research on the Application Layer Traffic Optimization Problem and the need for layer cooperation. A significant part of the Internet traffic today is generated by peer-to-peer (P2P) applications used traditionally for file- sharing, and more recently for real-time communications and live media streaming. Such applications discover a route to each other through an overlay network with little knowledge of the underlying network topology. As a result, they may choose peers based on measurements and statistics which, in some specific situations, lead to suboptimal choices. We refer to this as the Application Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) problem and present a survey of existing literature. We summarize and compare existing approaches and identify open research issues. Finally, we examine the role of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in standardizing specific protocols for widespread and ubiquitous implementations.
Bio:Vijay K. Gurbani is a distinguished member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, and a M.Sc. and B.Sc., both in Computer Science, from Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. Vijay's current work focuses on security aspects of next generation signaling protocols. His earlier work involved the use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as a canonical protocol for executing services both in the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the Internet. Vijay has co-authored four Internet Engineering Task Force RFCs -- RFC3910, RFC3976, RFC4480, and RFC4904 -- and numerous Internet-Drafts in the SIP area. He is also the author of many journal papers, conference proceedings, and three books. Vijay's research interests are Internet telephony services, security in network protocols, Internet telephony signaling protocols, pervasive computing in the telecommunications domain, distributed systems programming and programming languages. Vijay holds three patent and has five applications pending with the US Patent Office. He is a senior member of the ACM and a member of the IEEE Computer Society. [back]
Speaker: Dr. Phil Hippensteel, Penn State University
Title: A Taxonomy of Video
Abstract: When someone mentions voice over IP, we have a good idea of what the phrase means – human voice carried in IP packets. However, what of video over IP? Does it mean streaming video? Video conferencing? Broadcast video? Security video? These different types have different underlying technologies and widely different impacts on networks. This presentation will give a definition and present the characteristics of each type of video. It will also discuss how each is evolving and being used. Particular attention will be focused on the transport characteristics and troubleshooting issues, especially the current state of test tools that are available to support each type of video. Finally, the presentation will discuss the emergence of collaboration tools and the integration of video into many of those tools.
Bio: Dr. Phil Hippensteel is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Penn State University. He is an active industry consultant that has worked with major firms across the U.S. and Canada. His clients include manufacturers of test equipment such as Fluke, Agilent and Network Instruments. He has also worked with large multinational firms such as Hershey Foods, Avaya, Cisco and IBM. Over the last two decades he had taught nearly ten thousand students across 27 states. He is a regular presenter at trade shows. Currently he is a frequent contributor to Information Week and AV Technology magazines. [back]
Speaker: Chuck Hunnicutt
Title: Case Study: A Small Company’s Evolution Into SIP for Public Safety
Abstract: 911-Inc. has produced Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) equipment for 20 years. The architecture was based on augmenting a standard PBX with application specific software via an API. However, emergency services network technology is rapidly shifting to SIP enabled networks. 911-Inc. has adopted an evolutionary strategy for meeting the demands concentrating first on SIP signaling with the new network while protecting its investment in call taking software. The PSAP system is being gradually evolved to an all SIP-based system. The speaker will illustrate the evolutionary steps that are being taken leading to a fully compliant next generation PSAP.
Bio: Mr. Hunnicutt is a 30-year veteran of AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies where he worked in the fields of electronic switching systems and cellular communication. Major areas of contribution include designing call processing software for the world’s first cellular system and introducing the 5ESS Electronic Switching System into international applications. In his post-retirement years, he has worked at Motorola and Tellabs. Currently, he is serving as the Senior Next Generation Architect for 911-Inc. Public Safety Answering Position (PSAP) systems, located in Denver, Colorado. [back]
Speaker: Felipe Huici, NEC Lsboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Title: Enabling Distributed, High-Speed and Extensible Real-Time Communications Monitoring
Abstract: The use of the Internet as a medium for real-time communications has grown significantly over the past few years. However, the best-effort model of this network is not particularly well-suited to the demands of real-time communications. If the growth is to continue, monitoring and real time analysis of communication data will be needed in order to ensure good service quality (be it for a VoIP call, IPTV session or others), and should degradation occur, to take corrective action. Writing this type of monitoring application is difficult and time consuming: real-time communications not only tend to use dynamic ports, but their real-time nature, along with the fact that their packets tend to be small, impose non-trivial performance requirements. Worse, a session often consists of several flows that follow dissimilar paths, and so it is not enough to monitor traffic at a single point.
This talk will cover RTC-Mon, the Real-Time Communications Monitoring framework, which provides an extensible platform for the quick development of high-speed, real-time monitoring applications on commodity hardware. In addition, the presentation will introduce a scalable system for aggregating data collected at distributed monitoring points and extensions to IPFIX for exporting SIP and RTP data.
Bio: Felipe Huici joined NEC Europe in May 2008 as a research scientist where he works on real-time communications monitoring, anti-DoS mechanisms for SIP and SIP phone fuzzing. In addition, he is currently writing up his Ph.D thesis from University College London on architectures against large, distributed DoS attacks. Previously Felipe received a B.Sc degree from the University of Virginia and a M.Sc in Data Communications, Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London. His other research interests include network testbeds, high-performance sotfware routers and virtual routers, and peer-to-peer content distribution networks. [back]
Speaker: John F. Kimmins, Executive Director/Fellow, Telcordia Technologies
Title: Securing IP-based Vehicle Telematics
Abstract: There has been an emerging trend to enhance the on-board computing capabilities and multi-media services in vehicles. This has been driven by safety applications, location based services, payment services and vehicle diagnostics. New concerns about security, privacy and integrity have been identified. The difficult challenges of providing secure communications over the Internet are exacerbated in vehicle networks. Security mechanisms need to take into account a large number of mobile nodes, limited over-the-air bandwidth, and unreliable, intermittent network connectivity. In addition, the privacy of vehicles and their operators needs to be preserved while still being able to authenticate them and remove intruders. This presentation will describe a risk management approach for system security, connectivity and service interactions to address the real-world risks. This risk management approach will cover the evolving threats and vulnerabilities and current security research.
Bio: John is the Executive Director of a global practice in Telcordia Technologies that specializes in developing and implementing security for secure use of multi-media networks and the evolution towards next generation networks. He works with the U.S. government, major service providers, suppliers and enterprises to identify vulnerabilities and tactical and strategic approaches to manage these risks. He has pioneered security risk assessment methodologies for VoIP and IPTV. John has published on the vulnerabilities of different aspects of the global telecommunications network and Telcordia’s risk management approach. John has participated in ATIS working groups to establish industry best practices. He was awarded the prestigious Telcordia Fellow for contributions to the security of the public telecommunications infrastructure. He is also a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). [back]
Speaker: Aswath Mohan, Mu Dynamics
Title: Best Practices for Testing the Reliability of Next-Generation ISP Services
Abstract: Voice over IP (VoIP), is increasingly at risk whether in the enterprise or by network providers. To ensure continuous VoIP service revenue and customer satisfaction, all services must deliver a high quality of experience. The reliability, availability and security increasingly complex hardware and software components and accelerated service deployment times are hindering the delivery of high quality of service. Operator consequences are clear -lost productivity and added support costs inside of the enterprise, and customer churn, support costs, service level agreement (SLA) penalties and decreased average revenue per user (ARPU) are among the consequences experienced by network providers.
How can providers of VoIP services proactively eliminate system crashes, distributed denial of service attacks, and response-time latency and CPU utilization spikes?
Aswath Mohan, Director of Product Management for Mu Dynamics will discuss 5 best practices for the service assurance of VoIP services while ensuring that they meet the expected service availability and reliability levels.
Bio: Aswath Mohan is the Director of Product Management for Mu Dynamics, a provider of application and network testing solutions. With over 10-years of experience in the networking, wireless and embedded software space, Aswath has driven the development of new product offerings for a variety of companies including Marvel Semiconductor, Wind River and KLA-Tencor. Aswatch has an MS from the University of Southern California.[back]
Speaker: Gaston Ormazabal
Title: Secure SIP: Scalable DoS Prevention Mechanisms for SIP-based VoIP Systems, and Validation Test Tools
Abstract: This talk presents an overview of VoIP security technologies both at the signaling level for SIP as well as the media (RTP) level, including dynamic filtering techniques and Secure RTP (SRTP). This is followed by an in-depth description of the VoIP Security Alliance (VoIPSA) VoIP Threat Model with special emphasis on VoIP based DoS attacks. The second half of the talk will concentrate on a case study of a research prototype solution that attempts to solve the DoS problem in a scalable manner and hence usable for carrier class deployments. Lastly we will describe a high-powered testbed and test tools using distributed computing used to evaluate DoS protection devices at carrier class rates.
Bio: Gaston Ormazabal is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Verizon Laboratories. He holds a B.A from Harvard University, and M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D.  degrees from Columbia University, all in Physics. While at Columbia he conducted research in particle physics at both the Fermi and Brookhaven National Accelerator Laboratories. After graduation, he went to work at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) where he spent most of his time developing packet switching technology. From Bellcore, he went, as one of the founding members, to NYNEX Science and Technology where he has worked in various projects ranging in areas from speech recognition, video compression, data warehousing and data mining, to Fast Packet, SONET and IP technologies. Most recently, Dr Ormazabal has conceived a research project on VoIP Security at Columbia University Internet Real-Time Laboratory, in the Department of Computer Science, in which a high scalability SIP aware Application Layer Gateway was developed using a highly distributed hardware platform, along with the testing environment to verify its performance at carrier-class traffic rates; the latter based on his patented (Patent 7,076,393) design and methodology.
Dr Ormazabal has previously managed other University Research Programs both at Columbia University (Softswitch Technologies) and at the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (Intelligent Automation Tools for SS7 Quad Interoperability Testing) where he has been a regular featured speaker at the annual CATT Research Day, most recently on “Post 9/11 Security Strategies”. Dr Ormazabal has also been elected to be a member of the prestigious CATT Advisory Board to help manage a grant from the New York State Office of Science Technology and Advanced Research, to research and develop security technologies. He was the recipient of the “CATT 25th Anniversary Technological Impact Award” for his technical contributions to academic-industry research, in November 2007. Dr Ormazabal has been a contributor to ANSI standards committees, and has twelve patents (some pending) on VoIP and Optical technologies. Dr Ormazabal has ample experience as an internationally known presenter and lecturer to both highly technical academic audiences as well as Senior Management of technology companies.[back]
Speaker: Scott Poretsky, Allot Communications
Title: Evolving the VoIP Network to a SoIP Network
Abstract: Service Providers are operating Voice over IP (VoIP) networks today as an initial deployment of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) technologies. Operators, and their subscribers, will realize the value of these networks when SIP and IMS based services can be blended to create innovative services for a rich user experience. SIP/IMS services such as Location, Presence, VoIP and Instant Messaging (IM) can be blended with each other and non-SIP services such as IPTV and Web 2.0. This requires that the IMS network built for VoIP evolve to support multiple services over IP (SoIP). This presentation will address the technical challenges for a multi-service IP network, including network infrastructure design and service interfaces to native and 3rd-party applications.
Bio:Scott Poretsky has been leading implementation and delivery of innovative networking products to tier-1 carriers for 12 years.Currently, as Director of Solutions Architecture at Allot, Scott collaborates with network operators to develop bandwidth management solutions to deliver revenue-generating services. Prior to Allot, Scott was Director of Carrier Network Engineering at NextPoint Networks where he led carrier deployment of its product for FMC, IMS, and NGN networks. Scott was also Manager of Development Testat Avici Systems, where he validated BGP and MPLS solutions fordeployment in high availability core networks. Scott is aparticipant on IEEE ComSoc's committee for Communications Quality andReliability (CQR) and is a former Technical Chair of the IMS Forum. Heis active in the standardization activities of the IETF's benchmarkingmethodology working group (BMWG) and is the author of numerous RFCs.Scott is regularly invited to speak and chair sessions at serviceprovider conferences. Scott has an MSEE from Worcester PolytechnicInstitute and BSEE from the University of Vermont and has been awarded apatent for networking technology.[back]
Speaker: John Poust, Rauland-Borg Corporation
Title: Cutting the cord – Will the desktop phone disappear?
Abstract: The desktop phone, along with a coffee mug and a stapler, has come to be standard equipment in every office, but new trends may retire this familiar friend. This talk will discuss some of these trends starting with the IEEE 802.n wireless standard, which may make companies want to shift their last Ethernet “Hop” to a desk from being a being a cable to a wireless connection. Next, the talk will cover how it is possible to have secure voice connections over a wireless link and how connections can overcome radio interference. Finally, there will be a discussion of the economics of wireless desktop connections as well as a review of some of the new capabilities that this technology offers.
Bio: John Poust is presently a Senior Software Engineer for Rauland-Borg Corporation, a manufacturer of medical and industrial communications equipment, and he develops a range of products including embedded SIP compatible telephony equipment. He has participated in the IEEE 1073 workgroup to develop communications standards for bedside medical devices and the IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering. Mr. Poust has presented papers on Design for Debugging and selection of Real time Operating Systems to the Embedded Systems Conference. He has presented seminars on 802.11 security, SIP firewalls, embedded development using a SIP Stack He holds a BSEE from Southern Methodist University, an MBA from Columbia University, and is member Tau Beta Pi. Additionally, he is presently the Chair of the IEEE Communications Society / Chicago Section. [back]
Speaker: Peter Rung, IDRank
Title: Securing Your Voice, Text and Beyond in VoIP
Abstract: Protecting the security and identity of your voice and chat in an age of high volumes of identity theft occurring from within the United States, from overseas sources, and sourced from internal espionage occurring within organizations is a daunting task. At stake is regulatory compliance in various industry protecting the privacy and identify of clients and patience, the business and reputation risk associated with data breaches, and the cost associated to the management of a data breach. In recent years, organizations have spent large dollar amounts managing of a breach, and in some cases direct business impact of a breach.
VoIP has provided cost savings and increased utilization of voice integration into unified communications and implementation into vertical solutions providing organizations business competitive advantage. Balancing this with the issues around VoIP security is one of he next risk challenges for organizations to address.
Mr. Peter Rung will present the industry issues I.D. Rank Security sees in the overall data leak prevention industry, with a specific emphasis on VoIP security issues, mitigation techniques and industry products addressing the issues. He will provide a demonstration of the product in use by the U.S. military in war theater, show how the product is being used in action, and how it provides a high level of security for voice, chat and file transfer.
Bio: Peter Rung is the CEO of I.D. Rank Security, Inc. Rank Security. I.D. Rank Security is a three year old firm with patented solutions in the areas of Data Leak Prevention and Secure and Private Communications. myKryptofon is the marquee product for their Secure and Private Communications business. Their core customer base for myKryptofon is the U.S. government, specifically the department of defense.
Previous to has extensive management and business “start up” consulting and technology experience in large and small companies focusing on security, operations, and finance. Clients have included NASD, Alltel, BMW, Phillip Morris, Banco Provincia de la Buenos Aires, Bank of Ireland and Swiss Bank Corporation. He has held security and technology positions at Perot Systems, KPMG Peat Marwick, Swiss Bank Corporation, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. Mr. Rung has held the position of founder/President of Adaptive Business Consulting, Executive Vice-President at Perot Systems, and Director at both KPMG and Swiss Bank Corporation.
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Speaker: Paul R. Sand, Salare Security LLC.
Title: The Gap in Reality and Investment in VoIP Security
Abstract: Enterprises continue to consistently under spend on security for VoIP networks, though industry leaders readily admit to new, significant VoIP vulnerabilities. The talk presents a taxonomy of VoIP Security products and links those to the economic drivers that support their existence. This talk with explore the affordable investment levels for VoIP security, what currently investment levels look like, and why there is a significant gap between present investment and historic affordability levels.
Bio: Paul is currently the President and CEO at Salare Security. He is a highly experienced executive in high-tech industries with over 20 years of successful experience. His expertise ranges from managing small start-ups to business within very large corporations. He has worked at Bell Laboratories, AT&T Network Systems, Lucent Technologies and the mVerify Corporation. As an avid inventor, Paul is responsible for inventing and co-inventing 42 inventions that have resulted in 21 US patents to date. Paul is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the Chicago Chapter of the ISSA. [back]
Speaker: Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University
Title: Peer-to-peer VoIP: revolution or better plumbing?
Abstract: A wide variety of peer-to-peer systems are now dominating Internet traffic and discussions, from BitTorrent to Skype. While most of these efforts are based on proprietary and application-specific technology, the IETF is standardizing a new protocol in the P2PSIP working group that is meant to support VoIP call setup and voice mail, but is generic enough to provide a generic peer-based data lookup function.
We discuss the motivation behind the use of peer-to-peer systems, the different flavors and the trade-offs with more traditional client- server approaches. While peer-to-peer systems are likely to be quite useful in ad-hoc and small-enterprise deployments, it is less clear that they are all that helpful for large-scale systems, particularly as energy consumption becomes a more important consideration and mobile devices start to dominate.
Speaker: Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University
Title: VoIP Beyond Calling Grandma – Current Research
Speaker: Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University
Abstract: We usually associate VoIP with traditional telephony, replacing older circuit-switched systems. However, due to its flexibility, many embedded voice and video systems can also be replaced by standards- compliant systems that leverage off-the-shelf technology. At Columbia University, we have developed two such systems, namely an all-IP system for supporting emergency calling ("next-generation 9-1-1") and a training system that is used by the Federal Aviation Administration to train future air traffic controllers in radio communication skills.
Bio: Henning Schulzrinne received his undergraduate degree in economics and electrical engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, his MSEE degree as a Fulbright scholar from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill and an associate department head at GMD-Fokus (Berlin), before joining the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments at Columbia University, New York. His research interests encompass real-time, multimedia network services in the Internet and modeling and performance evaluation. He is a division editor of the "Journal of Communications and Networks", and an editor of the "IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking" and former editor of the "IEEE Internet Computing Magazine" and "IEEE Transactions on Image Processing". He is member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society and the ACM SIGCOMM Executive Committee, former chair of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committees on Computer Communications and the Internet and has been technical program chair of Global Internet, Infocom, NOSSDAV and IPtel. He also was a member of the IAB (Internet Architecture Board). Protocols co-developed by him are now Internet standards, used by almost all Internet telephony and multimedia applications. His research interests include Internet multimedia systems, quality of service, and performance evaluation. [back]
Speaker: Henry Sinnreich, Adobe
Title: Blending SIP with Rich Internet Applications
Abstract: Many applications such as terminal access, file transfer, email, calendar, slideshows, rich multimedia and network measurements are running in the browser besides the ‘usual’ web pages.
The next logical step is to include SIP based real time communications into the browser as well.
The result will be the emergence of new usages for presence, IM, voice and video. The metrics and business model are no longer the call duration or roaming charges, but the convenience of communicating and sharing for both productivity and entertainment alike. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications will thus enable new types of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) where voice is just one ingredient of many and is often not even the central application. The browser becomes the platform for applications and communications on any type of networked device.
SIP applications in the browser solves also some non-trivial SIP problems, such as the configuration of the SIP user agent. SIP in the browser can work both in client-server and in peer-to-peer application layer networks.Using SIP only as a rendezvous and session setup protocol enables RIA and SIP applications in the endpoints. This is an alternative to the ‘intelligent network’ model of legacy telephony and also more recent network based services such as IMS. SIP in the browser can however support existing VoIP services and the already deployed VoIP infrastructure, including IMS if so desired.
Speaker: Henry Sinnreich, Adobe
Title: Flash – Running Rich Applications and Communications in the Browser
Abstract: Server side processing may slow down applications and adds undesirable client-server traffic load. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) in the browser can run by contrast in the client only, without server side application processing. Combined with the client side desktop run time, rich applications as experienced on the web can also run locally on the user device without requiring network always connectivity.
Freely available software development kits (SDK) or the integrated development environments (IDE) enable developers to build high performance RIA without dependency on network services except adequate broadband and real network transparency. Internet service providers, enterprise network administrators and various other organizations can thus provide their users access to the full power of the Internet.
We will show some demos of RIA using Adobe Flash and the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) as well as examples of SIP applications in the browser.
The Open Screen initiative embraced by over 30 industry partners will extend such capabilities to mobile and fixed devices of any size, from small hand held mobile devices to computers with large screen displays.
Bio: Dr.Sinnreich works on Internet communications at Adobe Systems, Inc. and has previously been CTO at Pulver.Com in 2005-2006. Up to 2005, Dr. Sinnreich has been an MCI Fellow where he has held various engineering and executive positions working over a period of 24 years on lightwave systems, broadband switching, telephony switch systems, lab testing for product evaluation and integration testing.
Dr.Sinnreich has worked on various Internet projects at MCI such as Gigabit IP networks, RSVP validation for the IETF, Internet multimedia and SIP based communications. The MCI Connection service in 2000 based on SIP, started by Dr. Sinnreich has been the flagship VoIP product of the company and was the world’s first major carrier SIP based VoIP service.
Dr.Sinnreich is an active contributor the various IETF SIP-related working groups and is the main author of RFC 4504 on SIP Telephony Devices. Dr. Sinnreich was a founding member on the board of directors of the International SIP Forum and has been with the SIP Forum Board of Directors in 2000-2004.
Dr.Sinnreich is a frequent speaker at various conferences and his book "Internet Communications Using SIP" co-authored with Alan B. Johnston has been published by John Wiley in the Network Council series. Now in 2nd edition, the book is considered a reference on Internet communications. This book has also been translated into Japanese.
The book on "SIP Beyond VoIP" co-authored with A. Johnston and R. Sparks extends the understanding of SIP for presence, instant messaging, multimedia, mobility and integration with applications.
Dr.Sinnreich has been featured on the cover page of the VON Magazine as the ‘Godfather of SIP’ and has been featured elsewhere as well. Dr. Sinnreich has received the award of Pioneer in Telephony at the VON Europe 2000 conference in Stockholm. [back]
Speaker: John Waclawsky, Motorola
Title: The Revolution at the Edge of the Network
Abstract: The technology world is expanding from its focus on technology-specific businesses such as PCs, cell phones, set top boxes, providing Telecom services, etc. to increasingly leveraging the expanding connectivity at the edge of the network. Ubiquitous edge connectivity choices are enticing innovators to provide solutions directly to end-users that facilitate the business of Human Interaction. The human perspective is clear when we look from the edge of the network in, not from the inside of the network out. The outside, or edge, perspective reveals the way people use their technology while the inside perspective is a restricted view of what a network anticipates or how it allows attached devices to behave.
Today the view at the network edge reveals a communications world in the midst of a multi-decade transformation from Plain Old Telephony Service
(POTS) to a multi-dimensional gadget-filled future surrounding each individual, beginning with ubiquitous network(s) access via Personal Area NetworkS (PANS) using Pretty Amazing New Stuff (PANS2) at the edge of the network.
The journey from POTS to PANS2, driven by Moore, Gilder and Metcalf's laws, is also about the evolutionary communication industry melding (or
colliding) with revolutionary Internet thinking. The result is that fundamental human patterns of behavior are changing as individuals interact with the world through the new devices they carry. These devices are facilitating access to all the information end users need for daily activities, no matter what their professions, as well as being able to have all their social interactions become automatic and routine.
For the industry, the critical question is what must it do to keep its customers at the edge of the network happy? The answer is and always has been about "end user value."
Title: Titan against Titan ...who's technology will win?
Speakers: John Waclawsky
Abstract: This presentation will discuss innovation and technology trends that are driving the world from one of heavily centralized control to an increasing decentralized world via Internet and Web technology. The future will be shaped by a highly competitive Internet market augmented by innovative new technology, new devices, new applications and "open"
spectrum. These powerful distributed devices will interact between themselves or in unison with traditional network servers. As a result, the market will steadily move away from the structured slow model of a few strong standards bodies and monopoly players, instead following the more flexible and fluid model of a 'de facto' or 'free market.'
Because of this decentralized shift, companies are lucky if the Internet is not just disrupting their activities, because in most cases the Internet through decentralized communications is re-defining markets and becoming a key part of the fabric of business. Artifacts of centralized core networking environments will be discussed, compared and contrasted to the technology emerging in the decentralized Internet and World Wide Web environment. This distributed trend is discernable today in new technologies such as mash-ups, traffic scattering, network coding along with applications rooted in web services, social networking and gaming, and is most apparent in the peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace where competition is increasing the diversity of solutions. [back]
Speaker: Wilhelm Wimmreuter, InCharge Systems
Title: Is there a Life after Phone Call Charges?
Abstract: This session discusses the transition of telephony towards a utility service on the Internet. This area still has many challenges and opportunities for all participants. ENUM, SIP security and upcoming integration of VoIP with presence, collaboration and community
services provide a wide range of new fields where traditional phone operators as well as enterprises and end-users need to adapt their systems and behavior. Recently, various bodies and organizations have emphasized that the multitude of untrusted identities for these services, are the big issue that remains to be solved. This opens a wide range of business opportunities for asserted- identities, authentication, authorization, user self management and service control for upcoming offerings.
Bio: Wilhelm Wimmreuter acts as the Vice President for International Operations at
InCharge Systems Inc. He is the founder of "Systems Consulting in Communication Technology" (SCCT). His professional career also includes various positions with the Communication Group of Siemens AG, software suppliers and network operation companies. His present activities are in the area of Internet based architecture, network- and business
design for VoIP and related services. This includes network convergence and the development and verification of sustainable business cases that evolve with the ongoing migration and shift of
paradigm. [back]
Speaker: Swapna S. Gokhale (Univ. of Connecticut)
Speaker: Veena B. Mendiratta (Alcatel-Lucent)
Title: Reliability Analysis of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
Abstract: Our growing dependence on the services offered by the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) mandates that these services be offered with exceptional reliability. An important step in ensuring reliable operation of the IMS is a systematic analysis of its reliability. Such analysis should consider customer usage patterns, the reliabilities of the IMS components, IMS architecture, and the deployment of the IMS servers across hardware hosts. While the analysis should undoubtedly provide an estimate of IMS reliability, the primary objective of such analysis should be to facilitate an assessment of the sensitivity of the IMS reliability to the component reliabilities, the IMS architecture configuration, and the identification of components that are important from a reliability perspective. These components could then be targeted for reliability enhancement so that the desired IMS reliability can be achieved in a cost-effective manner.
The objective of this tutorial is to present a methodology to analyze the reliability of the IMS architecture and services. The methodology is hierarchical and uses a two-step approach to analyze the reliability of the IMS architecture. In the first step, the reliability of a service offered by the IMS is obtained by composing the reliabilities of its components within the context of its architecture. Service reliability will also consider the co-location and deployment configurations of the IMS servers. In the second step, the reliability of a single IMS session is obtained by composing the service reliabilities obtained from the first step in conjunction with the customer usage patterns and service distributions. The methodology thus considers the impact of several diverse aspects that influence IMS reliability namely, component failures, component interactions, deployment configurations, and customer usage scenarios in an integrated manner. In developing this methodology, we draw and build upon our extensive recent work in the area of architecture-based software reliability analysis. Through an example, we illustrate how the methodology could offer insights into the influence of different parameters on the IMS reliability.
[back]
Speaker: Tony Vo
Presentation Title: Voice QoS and How/What to Test for in IMS
Abstract: The convergence of PSTN, VoIP over Fixed and Wireless Broadband, and Mobile networks to an all IP infrastructure enables service providers to roll out new services quicker and more cost efficient. SIP protocol has been chosen by industry experts for device intercommunication between users and server network elements to deliver voice and video services. Delivering voice service with Next Generation Network must have the same quality as today’s traditional land line. Legacy land line voice services have been in service for over 100 years. With Next Generation Network, customers who are accustomed to high quality of service with land line services will expect the same quality voice service regardless of the network. This presentation will go over the technology and the standards of Voice quality measurements. Also, the presentation will discuss IMS and SIP server testing and what are the issues and challenges Service Providers face before deploying IMS network.
Bio: Tony Vo is a working telecom professional for the past 10 years mostly in the test and measurements industry. He brings his expertise in testing Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) networks to VoIP network as a Senior Product Manager from Spirent Communication in Sunnyvale. He is currently leading the effort in Spirent to develop the Next Generation test solution for IMS. In his career at Zarak and Spirent, Tony successfully helped launch three generations of Spirent Abacus, a converged voice test solution combining PSTN and VoIP interfaces in one platform. Tony’s Telecom expertise comes mostly from working with Bellcore and China’s RITT (Research Institute of Telecommunications Transmission) certification testing programs of network elements. He holds a bachelor degree in Chemical and Material Science Engineering with emphasis in semiconductor from University of California at Davis. [back]
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
SMB, Enterprise and VoIP
Panel discussion: Premise Based vs. Hosted IP Solution: Which is right for my business?
Moderator: Robert Montgomery, Account Director, Level 3
Speaker: Robert Harney, Independent Consultant, RHS Telecom
Speaker: Lars Nohling, IPiphany, Hosted IP Solutions
Speaker: Anup Manchanda, Teleprime, Premise Based Solutions
VoIP use by small and midsized businesses (SMBs) is growing, but according to research released by telecom consulting firm Savatar, VoIP is still a confusing area for many SMB telecom decision makers. Many SMBs examining VoIP find buying the technology a difficult process, but the study found that despite the difficulty, many SMBs are still enthusiastic about VoIP and the possibilities it introduces. Seventy percent of SMB decision makers are still unclear where to turn for the best VoIP options, the survey found. One hindrance, the study found that, VoIP providers have not connected with buyers in an effective manner.
A panel of leading solution providers in the Chicago area addresses some of the challenges and shares their experiences deploying VoIP solutions. They will share their views of issues critical to the SMB’s: Costs associated with deployment and improving the time to achieve ROI; removing the need for physical space; drivers to consider a change in your telephony system; ease of inclusion of additional users; unique service offerings; evaluating the merits of the premise vs. hosted solutions for the SMB’s.[back]
Bio: Robert Montgomery, Account Director, Level 3, Moderator
With over 20 years experience in the telecommunications industry, Robert Montgomery, as Account Director at Level 3, expertly directs his team in delivering complex new products and services to highly visible and strategically important customers. Robert most recently headed the M5 Networks, Chicago office, was instrumental in building a team of over 8 sales and operational staff in less than 90 days. M5 was named to the INC 500 as one of the fastest growing companies in the country. During this time, he successfully led the team in generating revenue opportunities in excess of $3.6M. Prior to M5 Robert led project and sales management teams at GE ResCom, Teligent, Premiere Global Services. At ResCom he was responsible for deploying more than 150 Nortel systems across the U.S. Starting off as a line technician for Nortel, he quickly graduated to the position of a switch technician, one of the youngest to achieve that distinction in the Western United States.[back]
Robert Harney, Independent Consultant, RHS Telecom
The RHS Group is a telecommunications and data services consulting and brokerage firm representing over 50 LECs CLECs including AT&T, XO, Level 3 and others provides the best of breed telecommunication and data solution for its clients. Robert has successfully negotiated contracts for his clients and saved them in excess of 20%. A firm believer in building long-term relationships with their clients and the community, RHS is committed to giving back a percentage of their profits to the community via their affiliate program at www.supportmynonprofit.com Robert got his start at Ameritech Business Services and had stints at New Path, and NEC Business Communications. [back]
Anup Manchanda, Teleprime
Anup has successfully led teams in migration and implementations of premise based IP-PBX'es for over 100 clients in the SMB environment, worldwide. With successful implementations done not only in the US, but also internationally, Anup brings a unique worldwide knowledge about customers to the table. A frequent speaker, panelist, moderator and Chair on VoIP Seminars and Conferences; and as a member of the PAC(Project Advisory Council) at IIT, he has sponsored various studies with the VoIP lab at IIT on VoIP services and VoIP equipment on their reliability and interoperability. For the last few years has been instrumental in developing programs, new products and services, and ideas and setting up alliances with industry leaders in VoIP: such as IIT, Epygi, Cbeyond,Cisco and others. He is also certified and trained to sell next generation IP solutions for the SMB space from Cisco, Micro Soft, snom, Polycom, Aastra, Cbeyond and others.
Anup is an active member of various local business chambers (MEF, MITEF, TIE) and networking groups (BNC, LinkedIn Chicago) and has served on the Tech 101 Committee at the Greater-O’hare Association of Industry and Commerce. [back]
Title: SIP Trunking: The stepping stone for higher productivity for the SMB
Bob Blair-Smith, Cbeyond
Gandhi M. Ramsaroop, Voxitas
A recent survey by Computer Technology Industry Association found that 60 percent of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) plan to increase their use of converged voice and data communication solutions during the next year. One reason for the growth in converged communications is the advent of SIP-trunking, the benefits of which include: elimination or reduction of costs associated with purchase and on-going maintenance costs of media gateways; reduction of recurring costs of separate PSTN and data circuits; improvement in call quality; utilization of DID’s that allow each employee to have their own phone line. SIP trunking can also serve as starting point for the entire breadth of real time communication possible with the protocol, including IM and application sharing.
This panel discussion includes representatives of two service providers, Cbeyond and Voxitas. They will describe their experiences deploying SIP Trunks, including architectures, deployment considerations, methods for providing Quality of Service, security considerations, features and services and future directions.
Bob Blair-Smith: Bob Blair-Smith is Cbeyond’s Senior Design Engineer in Chicago. Bob has been with Cbeyond since the Company’s Chicago market launch in 2004, where he conducts a free SIPconnect Vendor training at Cbeyond’s Oak Brook office each month. Bob’s 15 years in the Telecommunications and Managed IP services sector includes network engineering positions with Metro Fiber Systems, UUNET and WorldCom and MCI from 1994-2002. In recent years Bob has served as Technology Commissioner for the Village of Downers Grove, IL. He earned his Bachelors of Arts degree in Political Science from Lake Forest College in 1992.[back]
Gandhi Ramsaroop is a Channel Account Manager for Voxitas – a Nationwide SIP trunking and T1 provider, based in St. Louis, MO. His role within Voxitas is to help grow the sales channel through a VAR and reseller channel. Gandhi has been involved with forward thinking telecommunication providers for the past decade, and has been on the front lines – helping companies take advantage of the VoIP evolution by implementing converged voice and data solutions. Prior to Voxitas, his telecom career spans over 10 years and includes working at companies such as XO Communications, NuVox, McLeod, Winstar, and co-founding St. Louis Telecom.
Miniconference on E911 and VoIP
Panel I: National View and the DOT Trials
Moderator: Renee Graves, T-Mobile
Rick Jones, NENA
Mark Grady, INdigital
Ken Lowden, State of Indiana
Rick Jones, NENA: Rick Jones is Operations Issues Director for the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). As part of his staff responsibilities since 2002, he actively participates in various telecommunications industry standards development organizations and other related groups. He continues to be extensively involved in the USDOT NG9-1-1 Project initiative, a two-year project in which NENA is a subcontractor. His project role has included involvement this summer in proof of concept testing in MN, MT and TX, and since early 2007 in detailed operational and technical requirement and architecture design along with human-machine interface development. As a NENA staff member, he assists regarding identifying issues and providing staff guidance for the NENA operations leadership (various operations committee chairs). Previously, he spent 25 years in public safety/emergency communications, including 12 years as a 9-1-1 call center supervisor/manager in northern Illinois. He has been actively involved, representing 9-1-1 and public safety, in development work for several telecom technical issues, such as number portability/pooling, since 1996. [back]
Mark Grady, INdigital Telecom: Mark Grady is the founder and President of INdigital Telecom, a diversified network provider based in Fort Wayne, Indiana. INdigital focuses on technology development for the real world that creates new service platforms to advance E 9-1-1 and public safety. With his co-workers at INdigital, they are building a statewide IP based public safety network for the Indiana Enhanced 911 Wireless Advisory Board, which is chaired by state of Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock. The INdigital network processes and routes calls from eleven (11) competitive wireless service providers and delivers the voice, location and other information to 911 PSAP centers statewide. [back]
Mark’s unique position on the IIT Conference agenda focuses in the technical capabilities involved in improving wireless call completion to the PSAPs in the state. He will describe the network architecture and signaling. Mark can also address the unique capabilities involved with emerging IPhones and other new end user technologies over the network. He has metrics and visuals to share and is a great asset to the IIT Conference. Mark has over 26 years of experience with a highly diversified independent telephone company. His education is in Radio Engineering. [back]
Kenneth D. Lowden, ENP: Kenneth D. Lowden is the Executive Director of the Indiana Wireless Enhanced 911 Board. Mr. Lowden has over 20 years experience working with 911. Mr. Lowden served over 17 years as the Director of Steuben County Indiana Communications. Mr. Lowden was one of the original members of the Indiana Wireless Board and helped draft the Indiana Wireless 911 legislation. Today he serves as the Executive Director of the Indiana Enhanced Wireless 911 Board. Mr. Lowden has received many local, state and national awards for his work in landline and wireless 911 including being named a “Distinguished Hoosier” by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and being named a “Kentucky Colonel” by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear for his work in 911. Ken Lowden obtained his ENP (Emergency Number Professional) designation through the National Emergency Number Association and served as the President of Indiana NENA from 1996-1997. Mr. Lowden is a member of NENA, (National Emergency Number Association, NASNA (National Association of state 911 Administrators, APCO ( The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials – International) along with several Local, State and National fraternal organizations. [back]
Panel II: Vendors - Network architectures and solutions enabling NG 911
Moderator: Paul Stoffels, AT&T
Robert Sherry, Intrado, Inc.
Chuck Hunnicutt, Nine-One-One, Inc.
Lev Deich, 911 Enable
Bio: Paul R. Stoffels, ENP, Area Manager – Customer Service
AT&T, 9-1-1 Operations: Mr. Stoffels is AT&T’s Area Manager – 9-1-1 Operations – Illinois and Indiana. His staff manages the installation and support of over 325 Public Safety Answering Points across Illinois and Indiana, as well as managing the implementation of hundreds of Private Switch customer loads into the E9-1-1 database annually. Over his 27 year telecommunications career, he has directly managed 9-1-1 services through various engineering, planning, customer service, technical support, and supervision assignments since 1986. This includes the design and deployment of the first E9-1-1 and Wireless 9-1-1 systems in Illinois. Paul is actively involved in the 9-1-1 industry and standards development bodies, including assisting in the design and deployment of VoIP 9-1-1 systems. Paul is serving as the leader and overall moderator of Panel III at the IIT Conference on October 23. He is also an expert advisor to IIT in matters related to 911.
Paul holds a Bachelor of Science degree in General Engineering (BS-GE) from the University of Illinois - Champaign-Urbana, and an MBA degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also holds an Emergency Number Professional certificate (ENP) through the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and a Professional Engineering certificate with the state of Illinois. [back]
Robert Sherry, Intrado, Inc.
Robert Sherry is a Senior Systems Engineer with Intrado, Inc. His work entails planning and strategy development for the evolution of emergency service networks to a next generation architecture. Robert works closely with communication service providers, municipalities and government agencies to evaluate and assess the needs for the efficient and timely delivery of wireline, VoIP and wireless emergency service calls.
He has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and has held both management and technical positions in fields varying from product development to strategic planning to product planning. Prior the his current position at Intrado, Inc., Mr. Sherry held a management position in AT&T’s Local Service Division planning and implementing strategies for AT&T to enter the local competitive market in the U.S.
Mr. Sherry holds undergraduate degrees in Electronics and Math and a Masters in Computer Science. He is the holder of four patents in the E9-1-1 field associated with service acquisition and emergency call delivery. He has been listed in International Who’s Who in the field of Information Technology. [back]
Panel III: Small PSAPs - Serving the Last Mile
Moderator: David Staub, NESS
BobKosin, Barrington Hills Village Administrator
Michael Murphy, Police Chief, Village of Barrington Hills
James Arie, Fire Chief, Countryside Fire Protection District
Dean Walker, Fire Inspector, Village of Grayslake [back]
Panel IV: Large PSAPs
Moderator: Patrick Kenny, AT&T
Clifton Ballard, AT&T 9-1-1 Resolution Center
David Beering, Morgan Franklin
Jim Argiropoulos, City of Chicago PSAP
Jim Argiropoulos, City of Chicago PSAP: Jim Argiropoulos was appointed First Deputy of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) on September 16, 2007. Shortly after his appointment, he was named Communications Co-Chair for the Illinois Terrorism Task Force. He has also served as interim Executive Director during a six-month shift in Administration.
Prior to his appointment, Argiropoulos served as Director of Information Systems for OEMC and implemented the functional requirements and database table layout for the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system currently used in Chicago for 9-1-1 and Homeland Security systems.
Argiropoulos has been involved with the ongoing technical development of the OEMC since February 1995.
In 1994, Argiropoulos served in the Chicago Police Department Communications section. The facility was in the early stages of developing criteria to migrate all police and fire communications to a brand new shared facility. This is where he began development of the City’s current Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD).
In 1991, Argiropoulos was the Watch Manager for the Southwest Central 9-1-1 Dispatch in Palos Heights, Illinois. Argiropoulos was one of two managers responsible for the operations of the Computer Aided Dispatch system, Mobile Data Terminals, microwave and Enhanced 9-1-1. This multi-jurisdictional dispatch system served 23 police and fire agencies.
From 1987 until 1991, Argiropoulos served as Director of Emergency Management for Whitley County. Argiropoulos was credited for the development and implementation of the County’s Enhanced 9-1-1 system. In addition, he developed the County’s first central dispatch system for all law enforcement, fire agencies, Emergency Management and Emergency Medical Services. He also helped coordinate a massive countywide readdressing campaign that was more conducive to Enhanced 9-1-1 operations.
During his tenure, Argiropoulos was in charge of one of the largest rescue/recovery operations in Kentucky when a teenager from Gary, Indiana fell over Cumberland Falls (second largest natural waterfall in U.S.). During the 23-day operation, he coordinated several agencies on both a state and local level. [back]
Bio: Clifton Ballard, AT&T
Mr. Ballard is AT&T’s: Area Manager for the 9-1-1 Resolution Center in Chicago. The 9-1-1 Resolution Center is responsible for maintaining the reliability of the Public Safety network and assisting Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP's) in resolving critical service issues. The Center is the single point of contact for the PSAP community and manages provisioning, maintenance, and surveillance for the five state AT&T Midwest region. In his 22 year career with AT&T, he has held several diverse positions. These include Installation and Repair , Account Executive as well as Trunk Provisioning Manager. He entered the world of 9-1-1 in 1997 as a Maintenance Manager at the 9-1-1 Resolution Center where in time he was promoted to the position of Area Manager. Today his duties include providing the leadership, training and tools his team requires in order to properly address the needs of the PSAP community. He also acts as liaison to several AT&T departments to ensure that network changes or enhancements don’t negatively impact the 9-1-1 network.
Mr. Ballard spent 8 years in the United States Naval Reserve and holds a BS degree in Communication Information Systems from Devry University. [back]
Bio: David Beering, Morgan Franklin: David Beering is the Managing Director of Advanced Networks for McLean, VA-based MorganFranklin Corporation. His group’s work focuses on the design, integration, and deployment of large-scale, high-performance satellite networks for clients including NASA, the US Navy, the Missile Defense Agency, and various state and local public safety agencies including the City of Chicago. Beering led the development of the City of Chicago’s Unified Command System, which utilizes a dedicated satellite system and a standards-based IP architecture to provide backup for 92 simultaneous channels of 911 traffic. The system also gives the City uninterruptible access to data networks, CDMA cellular, Land Mobile Radio systems, and production-quality video broadcast. In 2008 the Advanced Networks team expanded the Unified Command System to include support for three command vehicles operated by the Chicago Fire Department.
Prior to his current position, Beering was Principal and Founder of Infinite Global Infrastructures, a network engineering/integration firm based in West Chicago, IL. During the nine-year history of IGI, the firm delivered more than 50 operational satellite communications systems to clients on five continents, supporting applications to platforms ranging from land mobile vehicles, to ships, aircraft, and spacecraft. During 2001 and 2002 Beering also served as the Chief Engineer on NASA’s $3.5 Billion Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC). In that role he directed systems engineering, technology insertion, and prototyping efforts supporting NASA’s global network of satellite ground stations and control centers supporting communications and telemetry delivery for Geostationary, Low Earth Orbit, and Deep Space assets.
Prior to his tenure at IGI, Beering worked seven years for Amoco Corporation in Chicago, IL, serving as the lead for advanced technology in Amoco’s Corporate Telecommunications department. During his early tenure at Amoco he was responsible for designing and implementing numerous fiber optic networks for oil refineries and chemical plants, including the second largest oil refinery in the United States – Amoco’s Texas City refinery. In 1993 Beering was selected by the Amoco Corporate Technology Board to lead an advanced network project linking four of Amoco’s key sites across the US, and a supercomputer center at the University of Minnesota. The project was called the ATM Research & Industrial Enterprise Study, or ARIES. After one year of leading the ARIES project for Amoco, the American Petroleum Institute invited Beering and Amoco to take the project to the national stage. As a result, during 1995 and 1996 he led the national implementation of ARIES, growing the project to include more than 34 participants from industries ranging from Petroleum to Telecommunications and Health Care. Three NASA centers and four Department of Energy National Laboratories were also directly connected to the ARIES network.
Prior to his tenure at Amoco Corporation Beering spent five years with AT&T Communications in Chicago. In his role as a network engineering supervisor he served as a liaison between AT&T and the (recently divested) Bell Operating Companies, directing the re-engineering of thousands of telephone and data circuits that were in need of upgrading and/or replacement following the breakup of the Bell System.
Beering is a member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Meteorological Society. He also serves on the board of the Space Enterprise Council of US Chamber of Commerce. Beering holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Purdue University. [back]
Bio: Patrick Kenny, AT&T: Patrick Kenny is the Area Manager for Switch Capacity Planning for the Midwest area of AT&T. His teams ensures that switching equipment is available for the PSTN by focusing on capacity trends and forecasts, managing challenges of a changing network and the move of traffic from traditional land lines to VoIP and wireless. Patrick’s team works closely to fill the traffic needs for the US government including the Great Lakes Navy base and Scotts Air force to insure service feature and capacity are available for the customers.
Patrick’s past responsibilities include being Area Manager Network Sales Support (NSS) and Trunk Planning and Engineering (TP&E). As NSS Manager Patrick’s team was responsible for costing, design and installation of dedicated customer transport for the Midwest AT&T region. His team managed the installations of services ranging from DWDM MON rings to diverse T1s serving customers such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and British Petroleum. Patrick’s teams were required to manage installations on time and within budget to insure customer satisfaction. As the TP&E manger Patrick managed trunking requirements during the TA96 transition and the opening up of the Telco’s network, answering the challenge of insuring connectivity to competing companies as well as handling the traffic requirement of the start of the internet on the PSTN.
Patrick will serve as a moderator at the IIT Conference on 911. His strong background in telecom and transition to VoIP provides him the clear vision for the requirements for reliable 911 services to be migrated successfully to the VoIP networks of the future without compromise for public safety.
Patrick received his Bachelors Degree from Rutgers University. Patrick resides in Barrington IL moving from NJ after working 7 years in the tunneling industry before starting his 14 year career in Telecom. [back]
VoIP Challenges and Next Generation Networks
Moderator: Dennis Roberson, IIT
Permashwar Ramanathan, University of Wisconsin
Heidi Baker, Sprint
Mario DeRango, Motorola
Mark Hogenboom, Motorola
Koichi Asatani, Kogakuin University
Abstract: This panel addresses criteria for success for VoIP services on mobile and nomadic networks. It explores the issues and challenges that face these networks as we require them to support carrier grade voice and video services. Quality of service, hand-over, latency and the business case itself will all be addressed by this panel that includes representatives from the service provider, manufacturer and research communities. Questions to be addressed include:
-What is the business context for VoIP's success? If recreating voice services is not sufficient, is integration with other services the key?
-What is the cost of roaming, hand-over and latency as media and signaling traverse different networks?
-3G defines four classes of service. In what time frame will they be deployed?
-The WiMAX specification includes Voice Activity Detection, but some cellular specifications do not. How will interworking issues such as this be resolved?
-Are the cellular and wireless networks mature enough to support VoIP in all its dimensions, including IPv6, VAD, codecs? [back]
Permashwar Ramanathan, University of Wisconsin: Dr. Permashwar Ramanathan is a Professor and Chairperson of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the prestigious University of Wisconsin, Madison. His current research focuses on design and analysis of techniques for real time communication in computer networks especially in the areas of quality of service and scheduling. He has contributed to integrated real time and non real time communication in distributed computing systems. He has also published extensively on the area of fault tolerant computing. He is the recipient of several research grants from federal agencies like National Science Foundation and industries like AT&T and Chrysler Motor Corporation. Dr. Ramanathan obtained his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. [back]
Heidi Baker, Sprint: Heidi Baker is Director –Midwest Sales of 4G mobile broadband for Sprint Nextel. She previously held many area sales leadership roles for Sprint’s Fortune 1000 customers. Prior to joining Sprint Nextel in 1998, she served as Vice President for business development in Telamon Corporation. While there she led the launch effort for national ISDN and DSL consumer and small business deployments for all Regional Bell Operating Companies. She earned her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Indiana University – Bloomington, Indiana.[back]
Mario DeRango, Motorola: Mario DeRango joined Motorola in 1982 and is currently a Vice President and Chief Architect within their Government and Public Safety business. He architected many industry “firsts”, including the first digital land mobile radio communication  systems used by police, fire and federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and globally, as well as, in the late 90’s, the first mobile wireless communication systems to use fully Internet Protocol based infrastructures. This architecture pioneered IP Multicast innovations to support mission critical voice over IP for both individual and group-oriented dispatch call services within the core infrastructure. Mr. DeRango also proposed and influenced the FCC to open up the 4.9GHz band for Public Safety for deployment of advanced Wi-Fi and mesh networking architectures. He is currently developing a next generation system architecture that will enable global public safety and government agencies to gain collaborative SIP-based multimedia and interoperability services over public and private 4G broadband networks. In addition to other industry committees on which he participates, he was a member of the FCC’s NRIC committee that helped author their two year report on architectures and issues for next generation U.S. public safety communications. Mario is a Motorola Fellow with 17 issued patents, including two Motorola patents of the year, and holds a BSEE from the Illinois Institute of Technology. [back]
Bio: Mark Hogenboom, Motorola: Mark Hogenboom is Director of Product Management for VoIP Core, Network Management, and End to End Systems Solutions for Motorola’s Wireless Broadband Access business. In this role, Mark and his team define and drive the architecture and ecosystem for Motorola’s End to End WiMAX and LTE Solutions. Mark is an 18 year Motorolan, and has also held various leadership positions in CDMA and OSS Engineering organizations. Mark holds a BSEE from Lafayette College and an MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology. [back]
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