H.323: IP telephony's panacea or Pandora's box?: The market demands it while vendors debate its content

Few doubt the need for a single standard that will allow different vendors' Internet protocol telephony gateways to communicate. Getting to that point, however, is proving far more difficult as several standards are emerging from different quarters. Making the situation more pressing are next generation telcos, which are forcing vendors to develop a single standard before they make volume purchases.

Leading the pack in the standards race is the International Telecom-munication Union's H.323 standard, which has become so synonymous with Internet protocol telephony interoperability that it's becoming a marketing chant.

"For one reason or another, the market has decided that H.323 is the panacea," said Jim Udall, vice president of technology for Vienna Systems Corp. "From a market perspective, everyone has to play the game, and we do as well. For some time we've been telling a story, and now the pressure is on. It's really market-driven."

Indeed, it's difficult to find an IP telephony vendor that doesn't claim its latest product is in compliance with H.323. VocalTec, the current market leader in gateways, is throwing its support behind the standard and has taken on a flag-bearing role, attempting to convince other vendors that the standard will work.

"H.323 is really what's going to make IP telephony ready for prime time," said Gur Kimchi, a project team leader with VocalTec.

Originally designed as a standard for videoconferencing over local area networks, version two of H.323 provides a specific set of protocols that allows IP voice gateways to communicate with gatekeepers and with each other. Gatekeepers perform most of the intelligent routing, billing and security functions in IP telephony networks. Additionally, version two standardizes the method that lets gateways forward IP calls to phones on the public network.

"It does everything [but] the end-to-end call such as handling all the pre-call setup," said Kimchi.

Adding volume to the rallying cry for H.323 is carriers' insistence that vendors develop a standard soon. If IP telephony carriers are to provide any credible competition to traditional carriers, they must operate in a standards-based environment by the end of this year, said Mary Evslin, vice president of marketing for ITXC Corp.

However, not everyone is on the same page with H.323. Its detractors, of whom there are many, claim the standard is a poor substitute because of its heritage in the LAN environment. Vendors also are interpreting the standard differently, essentially developing gateways that claim H.323 compliance but can't communicate with other vendors' equipment.

"We wrestle with it every day," said Udall, adding that Vienna does not support the standard in its current product line. "When we hear customers say H.323, what do they mean? We don't have a definitive answer."

Some vendors also are hesitant to adopt the standard because it requires paying a licensing fee to DataBeam Corp. or Lucent Technologies.

"The idea of H.323 is a good one, but to get gateways to talk to each other takes a willingness by vendors to cooperate," said James Shen, chief executive officer of NeTrue Communications. And while he ex-pressed his support for the standard, Shen said H.323 is becoming too complicated for its purpose. "It was designed for videoconferencing, but now it's turning into this telco thing and adding some unnecessary elements," he said.

As an alternative to H.323, some vendors are pushing session initiation protocol (SIP). SIP is significantly less complex than H.323 but still contains the necessary protocols that allow end systems and proxy servers to provide telephony services. Currently SIP is being studied by the Internet Engineering Task Force and is far from standardization, which may be its downfall, according to some observers.

Like many technology standards battles, H.323 may have established itself as the de facto standard simply because it was first to market. "There's enough momentum behind it that they'll make it work," said Udall.

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