Culture Clash— IMS vs. Peer-to-Peer TMIA 2006 Annual Meeting February 28, 2006

Proprietary and Confidential

Culture Clash—IMS vs. Peer-to-Peer

TMIA 2006 Annual MeetingFebruary 28, 2006

James RaffertySr Product Manager

[email protected]

Proprietary and Confidential. Property of Cantata Technology, Inc. 2

Agenda

Background Directions in Voice over IP IMS Peer-to-Peer War, Compromise or other? What Does it Mean?

– Business Side– Technical Side

Summary


Background

After some false starts, Voice over IP is hitting the mainstream

Data points: – Skype has 60 Million registered VoIP users

and was bought for $2.6B by E-Bay– Vonage has over 1 million paying customers– In the US, both incumbent Telcos and Cable

MSOs are starting their VoIP rollouts


Directions in Voice over IP

SIP has become the protocol of choice, with just a few exceptions

Fixed price packages for unlimited calling and common services are generally available

Prices for “minutes” continue to go down Strong interest from carriers in rolling out

value-added services to augment vanilla phone revenues

Traditional voice carriers now have some very “untraditional” competition


VoIP Architectural Models

VoIP began as “replacement” telephone service, with VoIP gateways bypassing Class 4 switches

This evolved to the Softswitch model, which decomposed operations into multiple network elements

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) began as Peer-to-Peer, but has evolved to have more complexity

Skype borrowed peer-to-peer concepts from file sharing services using a proprietary protocol

3GPP standards group proposed the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for next gen IP wireless services– Now strong interest from wireline providers such as BT

Where is this all going?


Two Prevailing Models

Two very different models are gaining the most traction today for VoIP– IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)– Peer-to-Peer

Let’s review the drivers for these two directions


IMS

IMS is the latest attempt by the big telecom players to create a rich service creation environment

Previous efforts like the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) had limited success

So, what’s different about IMS? 1. Based on Voice over IP technology, which is replacing

legacy switched technology used in AIN

2. Based on SIP, which already has a growing community of application developers and equipment vendors

3. Strong interest from both wireless and wireline carriers


PSTN

Top Level IMS Picture

Application Server

Service Layer

Control Layer

ConnectivityLayer

Media GW

CSCF (SIP)

MRFHSS

Other Elements

IP /MPLS

Wifi/WiMax

Application Server


Rich Media Services in the IMS

SIPMSCML

RTP

SIP

SnowShore IP Media ServerMRF

IP MSC

MGW

SIP

SIPSIP w/ VoiceXMLSIP w/ MSCML

SIP

SIPVoiceXML

NFS

HTTP

FTP

NetworkStorage

Web Content

mp3QuickTime™

Text

MPEG-4

IMG

IMG

SIP Routing Cloud

3G

2.5G

PSTN

Cable

IPPhones

Video Ringback

VideoConferencing

Gaming

IPCall Center

Conferencing

Video MailAnnouncements

Pre-Paid Voice Mail

UnifiedMessaging

CMTS

S-CSCF/SCIM


Peer-to-Peer

Heritage of Peer-to-Peer (PTP) quite different Massive Popularity of PTP file sharing services Founders of Skype took “lessons learned” from

Kazaa and created PTP VoIP– Featuring:

• Free on-net calling model• Viral marketing approach• APIs to encourage affiliates• Proprietary technology to get past NATs and firewalls• Built in buddy groups, instant messaging and presence • Low Charges for offnet PSTN connections


Peer-to-Peer VoIP Example

Internet

Caller

Supernode

Caller Caller

Caller


Other Peer-to-Peer Players

Yahoo has added voice to its Yahoo Messenger Google has created a chat service which includes

voice– Google also exploring other VoIP related services

Microsoft has voice add-ons for their IM service Lesser known companies such as Voiceglo also

have PTP VoIP services


Current State of PTP VoIP

Skype/Ebay still by far the biggest player– Skype has a very aggressive affilitiate program

Other PTP services are mostly based on SIP PTP VoIP services are currently VoIP islands

– No interconnection except via PSTN– Early interest in VoIP peering to resolve

To date, Skype services are all “in the software” at the end point– For example, conferencing typically tops out at 5 users

Exploration of larger scale services which use servers – For example, conferencing vendor Vapps now

advertising 500 person conferences for Skype AND PSTN users


War, Compromise or Other?

Make no mistake, IMS and PTP are VERY different technical and business models

Market forces are driving both models forward IMS is very comfortable model for traditional Telcos

and likely for MSOs too– Uses Internet technology in a “walled” garden– Lots of room for innovative services using server

based technogy PTP is more revolutionary approach

– Has much more in common with Instant Messaging– Driving end user costs to very low levels, but relies

on solid IP infrastructure– Most services are at the application level and in the

end point


What Does it Mean?

Business Side IMS and PTP both need innovative applications

– IMS much more hospitable for application server and media server vendors

• Looks to be a good fit for offering services to enterprises

– Still, PTP needs innovation too, but fees may be at the “micro-cents” level

Telcos and MSOs control the pipes in US– Issues about charges for 3rd party applications to gain access

to the network– Concept of 2-tier Internet being tested

• Carriers would like to charge extra for better performance• Could result in degraded PTP voice quality


What Does it Mean?

Technical Side SIP continues to be the big winner on the technical side IMS makes substantial use of SIP for various types of

service elements– Also makes limited use of Megaco/H.248

IMS also leverages lots of energy in areas such as XML-based service development

Skype has avoided SIP so far, but will likely use SIP peering mechnisms to talk with SIP VoIP networks in the future

In meantime, Skype developers write to a proprietary Skype API


Summary

IMS and Peer-to-Peer are rival models for next gen VoIP Services

IMS has greater traction among established telco players

PTP has greater “buzz” and fast growing subscriber bases– Backed by the big Internet players such as

Google and Ebay

Both IMS and PTP need innovation at the Application level, creating business opportunities

Culture Clash— IMS vs. Peer-to-Peer TMIA 2006 Annual Meeting February 28, 2006

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