A long SIP at VON 2000: Protocol gains fans, powers live MCI WorldCom demo

One of the most innovative showpieces to be seen at this year's Voice on the Net show in San Jose couldn't really be seen. It was running in the background of demos from multiple vendors: a live IP network from MCI WorldCom, which the company said constituted the largest live interoperability test of packet telephony ever attempted.

The demonstration ran enhanced IP phone services between an IP network, using session initiation protocol (SIP) and media gateway control protocol (MGCP), to the public network, using SS7. It combined equipment from 13 vendors, ranging from a class-independent switch from Salix; a Cisco Systems access server; and a softswitch from telecom technologies on the public-switched side, to Internet PBXs from Nortel Networks and Netergy; SIP clients from Netspeak and Vovida; and SIP phones from 3Com, Pingtel and Cisco on the end-user side.

"We've been there every time a network has evolved and added new capabilities," said Frank Nigro, director of marketing for Internet carrier products with MCI WorldCom. "This is another step in the natural evolution of networks that can enable customers right to the desktop for the kind of things they need to do. This is, in effect, the network that we would use in a public offering."

Forces are converging to make this a timely moment to deploy an interoperable IP network, Nigro said. "First, the desktop is evolving, and users at the desktop are becoming empowered to drive new applications. Second, [voice over IP] is no longer about arbitrage and saving money, it's about enhanced services and doing business differently. Third, the vendors are well-capitalized and well-prepared to begin developing the things we need at the desktop." According to Nigro, the network needs intelligence in two locations: in the network and at the desktop.

Corporate call centers, for example, have grown up using the telephone, but the new rules of e-commerce mean they must contend with e-mail, voice chat, multimedia and fax. "I've got to do skills-based routing, not just of my most important customers to my best agents, but I've got to take these new touch points and route them to the agents with the skill sets actually to handle them. This network enables that; the public switched network of today never could," Nigro said.

The MCI WorldCom demo - or network prototype as Nigro called it - depends heavily on SIP, which is being constructed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Other vendors agreed that SIP was the networking protocol with which to contend.

Service creation is the real strength of SIP, said Jonathan Rosenberg, speaking from a meeting of the IETF's SIP working group in Adelaide, Australia. "It has the flexibility to deliver an array of services, particularly those which integrate with Web, e-mail, presence and instant messaging," he said. "Those are going to be the killer applications for Internet telephony."

That's not to imply that competing technologies such as H.323 will fade. Rather, the two will have to coexist because SIP puts a premium on interoperability, scalability, performance as a platform for creating new applications and seamless integration with the Web - three values important to the spread of IP voice.

"The protocol war is over - at least for now," said Jeff Pulver, CEO of Pulver.com, which sponsors the semi-annual VON conferences. "No one lost and everybody wins. One day we may fight again, but there's no way of avoiding a multiprotocol future."