SIP is Dead was a provocative headline after VON Canada, sparking a minor packet storm of blog commentary. The bits have been flowing …
- It all started with Niklas Zennstrom’s report on exponential Skype growth at VON Canada, prompting Jeff Pulver to say Shift Happens and call Skype the iPod of Communications
- Martin Geddes writes that “
SIP is history as far as the future of voice is concerned” (shameless out-of-context quote) in an essay title The Telecom Earthquake - Richard Stastny and Aswath Rao traded self-referential blog postings — Requiem for SIP, no it’s not a requiem, and clarification
- The backlash begins and Martin then writes a balancing viewpoint here about things that Skype doesn’t address well
- Jeff then steps in and writes that SIP really isn’t Dead, but that Skype is making huge impact and once current projects to bake it into silicon and 3G handsets are realized that there may be no turning back. He also posted a thoughtful piece by Timothy Jasionowski who says Skype benefits by having sole accountability to make protocols work wheras SIP is slowed by IETF and competing implementations.
I had a long chat with a smart colleague on this topic. We felt that the viewpoint of a SIP vs. Skype shootout is the wrong way of looking at things. SIP and Skype solve different problems, there’s a place for both of them, and they complement each other nicely.
SIP + RTP are protocols that are well suited for performing IP telephony within and between enterprises and carriers. These protocols are clear about how to set up and tear down voice media streams when you know the IP address of the other sides proxy and you yourself can configure and maintain a URI. This is great for, say, an service provider to interface with the PSTN via a carrier like Level(3). Or for an enterprise PBX that supports remote branch offices. Or an enterprise interfacing to a carrier. These are huge fractions of worldwide voice communications. The protocols are mature, debugged, well supported, and have industry momentum.
What they’re not good at is being run on a home machine behind random, generic NATs, firwalls, and NetNanny filters. The ATA is a kludge, and it’s problematic in that we’re asking the average consumer to install and configure a home router in order to make a VoIP call. And your average user has no idea how to set a sip:user@host URI. They don’t and usually can’t exist in the web namespace, nor do they want to. Thus we have the hack of using PSTN 10 digit phone numbers to call IP endpoints. If you think I’m overstating the complexity of these problems, I would ask whether or not you’ve ever tried to configure your xten softphone to talk to your residential VoIP carrier. Or tried to write an Asterisk dial plan …
Enter Skype. 1) they’re not trying to interface to your analog phone, they give you an ability to use your PC, the one thing for sure that you have connected to the braodband even if you don’t own a router. 2) the Skype protocol is flexible and was designed (with lessons learned from the p2p community) to escalate through a variety of interconnection mechanisms until eventually finding one that works. It’s simple, it works, and that explains it’s growth. I can’t tell you how many people I have introduced to Skype, that now have virally brought their peers online. It also scales well and performs well because of it’s peer-to-peer nature.
But, try to use Skype as an enterprise PBX. No go. Their exotic encrypted peer to peer directory and authentication system lives in the cloud, is closed, is aimed at consumers only, and you simply can’t do it. Try to take off-the-shelf Skype APIs and build a large scale IVR . Try to use Skype in a call center. Ooops, no. Try to use Skype protocols as a enterprise to carrier or enterprise to enterprise handoff. Umm, nope.
Skype has got C to C nailed, don’t even try to compete. Skype doesn’t address B2C, C2B, or B2B. For those, there’s SIP. Martin makes some similar points here.
Long live SIP, Long live Skype.
Have you heard of a company called Damaka (www.damaka.com). They are developing a single hop sip based P2p application that can do encrpted instant message, chat, voice calls, voice conference, voice mail, send short text message etc. with your laptop.
I think its a much better technology than Skype.
Have you guys heard of this new SIP P2P company called Damaka (www.damaka.com)
Hi. I’m a computer illiterate. But I’m very interested in this voip technology. Can I use Skype or Damaka to contact my customers? I heard that Skype can take up some of my computer processing speed and bandwidth. How safe is my computer if I were to use Skype or Damaka? Can I use Damaka to dial fixed phones?
Thanks
Excellent post Steve. Great insight.
I could not agree with you more… Skype does have C to C nailed and they can’t get into B2C, C2B, or B2B easily. Enterprises will not even talk to companies that don’t use standards they can’t understand.
I read the comments posted by Dennis and started thinking about the possibilities of damaka being used for enterprise to carrier or enterprise to enterprise handoff. Since they talk SIP and are completely standards based (as they claim), I think a huge market exists for them to explore.
damaka can be the skype of enterprise world.
So far, from whatever I have seen, damaka does look promising. Lets see if they can capitalize on this opportunity and monetize the enterprise market.
~ swoods
Alexius,
I’d like to answer some of your questions if Steve doesn’t mind:
>> Can I use Skype or Damaka to contact my customers?
Depends on what you mean by contacting. If you just want to use Presence and IM, damaka is better. It’s IM is way better, specially the spell-check feature is very required when chatting with your customers.
>> I heard that Skype can take up some of my computer processing
>> speed and bandwidth.
You heard right - skype does use your computer processing power and bandwidth to route its traffic.
>> How safe is my computer if I were to use Skype or Damaka?
If you read the privacy policies and eulas of both companies, you’d know which one is safer and I prefer you do that. Damaka uses direct-peering technology which means that they don’t re-route your traffic (IM conversations and phone calls) through other damaka users’ resources.
Damaka is extremely safe as compared to Skype.
Can I use Damaka to dial fixed phones?
Not yet! I am also waiting for this feature. You can call PC-2-PC free and the audio quality is way better. Since the ebay-skype deal I have seen a remarkable drop in skype’s audio quality.
Give them a try ! (http://www.damaka.com)
~swanky.voiper
…a little bit of competition doesn’t hurt