Analysis: New IP-based protocols will change communication

From...

by Sandeep Nayak

(IDG) -- Due to emerging telephony protocols, communication via conventional telephone lines will soon become a thing of the past. Those protocols are IP-based, enabling communication over IP-based networks. Those of you familiar with IP-based protocols understand the immense contribution they have had on what we now call e-commerce.

In addition to changing communication, the new protocols will change the way we do e-commerce. For example, the PC, which is traditionally used to browse the Internet, read emails, and churn out documents, will become our gateway to dialogue with people across the world. The protocols can transform devices traditionally not used for communication, encouraging collaboration and propelling commerce. Soon the market will be propositioned with several similar applications. In all likelihood, the future will be filled with applications for handheld devices and for all lightweight protocols.

Market play

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Because Internet telephony is the current hot area of technology, ISPs and telephone service providers want to leverage the soft phone, which has the capability to make calls and conferences over the Internet. That could have an enormous impact on e-commerce. As it stands, many customers visiting a Website don't make an online purchase, often because they get bogged down by the details and need help. Imagine how helpful it would be if you were browsing for a product and could click on a link to connect you with a sales representative. A sale would be much more likely.

Intelligent telephone

People typically give out multiple phone numbers at which to reach them. For example, if you can't reach them at the office, you can try their cell phone, home phone, and car phone numbers. That can be frustrating both to the callers (who have to remember and try all the numbers) and to the callees (who might hesitate to give business contacts their home numbers).

With emerging protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), you can route calls to all numbers at the same time by dialing just one of the contacts, which could be something similar to an email ID. The user can define who has access to him and at which of his locations. Once identified, calls would be fired to all locations defined, and the call would be connected to the location at which the phone is answered. That is done through server side scripts.

Let's say a CEO is waiting for an important call. With the new protocols, he can allow the caller to reach him at any of his phone numbers without giving out his personal numbers; the call could be forwarded to his office, home, and cell phones at the same time, and whichever the CEO answered first would be where the call is directed.

Another example is a patient in an emergency situation in which the attending doctor needs to consult the patient's regular doctor. In such circumstances, the locating facility can be very useful. The call could be routed to the doctor's residence or cell phone, helping to provide timely care.

Emerging protocols such as SIP will make those scenarios a reality. Sun is already taking steps to make the venture global with its generic API, which will support all the different Internet telephony protocols. Java APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN) is Sun's new venture to provide a common API for integrating networks. JAIN could be what ties the different protocols together.

JAIN talks about an API that, like Java Data Base Connectivity (JDBC), will sit on top of implementations of specific protocols and allow users to disregard the underlying implementations. JAIN defines APIs. If the developers of protocol stacks conform to that, people will be able to write applications based on JAIN that are independent of a vendor, which means they could be usable over multiple vendors, and could resuscitate applications that failed in the marketplace.

Smart cards

The smart card stands to benefit from the emerging protocols as well as JAIN. IP-based telephony protocols (using either TCP or UDP as the transport) can set up a call over the Internet to a server and send data over IP-based networks. The data could be anything: text, images, or audio. Smart card, because of its ability to hold a larger amount of information than the magnetic stripe card, is a good data carrier and enabling tool to carry out the application.

The smart card has a filing system, which can hold and index information like the PC. Let's consider a scenario in which we use a credit card. We swipe the card through a machine, the card is validated, and the transaction falls into place.

There are two factors that make that successful:

Connections to the server, which accepts the user data Authentication of the cardholder

Imagine an IP telephony stack that sits on a smart card chip and that is used to make the call and perform the validation. Also imagine that the same card could be used to make phone calls, and that all calls are charged to one's credit card account. The question becomes: will those cards hold enough memory to contain the code and execute the different operations? The answer lies not in the card but in the card readers, which may be boxes with high-end processors and enough RAM to download the stack (software code), execute the call procedure, and complete the validation.

Now the question arises about how different stacks with different APIs are used on those card readers. That's where Sun comes to the rescue. They're having JAIN APIs defined to be a standard so that all stack providers will write to JAIN. When those APIs are published, we'll have JAIN-compliant containers on the card readers and be able to download and execute those different stacks. Ultimately, which card reader you go to will be irrelevant.

For those who don't understand Java jargon, what we're talking about is just an implementation of a specific protocol. Sun writes an abstraction layer over those implementations, which we use as APIs to make calls to the underlying implementations.

So when the different IP stack vendors hit the market, they'll all have JAIN-compliant versions of their stacks, which will be housed inside JAIN-compliant containers, leaving the calling devices protocol-independent. Such containers level the playing field for the different IP telephony stacks, allowing the end user to decide which features are best suited to his calling needs.

The user could also customize the calling capabilities for him. He could hold a small database in his local computer or, better still, when smart cards improve, store the addresses in the card itself. He simply plugs the card into his card reader and is ready to call.

In the US, the smart card is still in its infancy. In Europe, however, the smart card is used extensively in public places such as airports. With the emerging protocols and JAIN, travelers could use their smart cards to buy snacks and other items at US airports, and to make phone calls. All that needs to be done is setting up the infrastructure and deciding on universal standards.

Security

Security is critical wherever we have data. But with Java APIs for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), certificates, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), those issues are rapidly being resolved. The beauty of adopting Java for those applications is that there's a complete set of APIs that can be bundled together to provide a complete solution. That comes in handy when sending images or critical information over the Web.

The potential applications for IP-based telephony protocols are increasing. I have highlighted only a few of them here. When the protocol stacks hit the market, the resulting applications will change the way people communicate. Converging the IP with the telephony world will lead to a fertile ground for services, expanding new horizons for tomorrow's commerce.

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