Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 36Looking back at the starting point (1995)
These contents translated a serialization article carried by ITPro IP telephony ONLINE published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Jump to the original (Japanese).
Shinji Usuba
General Manager
eSound Venture Unit
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd
In this episode, prior to the last, I will introduce my thoughts that became the roots for developing IP telephony. It all began on January 17, 1995 when the Kobe earthquake struck.
This series titled "Before the Dawn of IP Telephony" that I have been allowed to continue will finally come to end since its start in February 2004. I firmly believe that IP telephony is a groundbreaking communication tool that will repaint the history of telephone since its invention 130 years ago by Graham Bell. We who have been involved in the development of VoIP since incunabula have always believed and continue to pursue the possibilities of IP telephony. Through the series, I have introduced the activities that we have been involved in, as well as our thoughts and beliefs concerning the possibilities that we have been chasing after. In the coming last episode, I plan on introducing our idea concerning the "dawn of IP telephony."
But before I get into that, I want to take a look back when the development of VoIP all started. It goes back to 1995, when we started the development of VoIP gateway. Although I have been refraining from writing this in the past, I want to introduce our view at the time concerning the "values" of VoIP, which can be said the starting point of development.
Origin of VoIP development: voice communication as a life line
The Kobe earthquake, which struck on January 17, 1995, caused a tremendous disaster beyond imagination. My prayer goes out to those who have fallen victim to this tragedy.
In reality, lessons of this earthquake play a major role in the concept of "BS1100-VOICEHUB," the first VoIP gateway we developed.
After the earthquake, people in disaster areas had great difficulty in getting calls to go through. The telephone network is rigorously designed to guarantee absolute quality as a telephone, which is a social infrastructure. Latency is guaranteed to a specific value and there are no losses. When a connection is made, the quality is guaranteed until the communicating party disconnects. The telephone network is rigorously designed in such way. However, this also means there is the possibility that a call will not go through unless a communication route that can guarantee the quality is established.
When a major disaster strikes, communication devices are also damaged. On the contrary, there will obviously be an increase in the number of calls to check the safety of loved ones, etc. As a result, calls are restricted automatically through what is called a "congestion process." A congestion process applies restriction on call connections to avoid communication devices to operate unstably when exceeding the processing limit. In other words, the state of "line available when connected" occurs to guarantee communication quality by reducing the number of calls in order to prevent communication becoming unstable and deteriorated in quality. Although the complete shutdown of the telephone network can be avoided, connections will be heavily restricted. As a result, the state of not being able to get calls through will worsen during a disaster due to the restriction of communication devices.
What was the state of Internet at that time? I heard that data communication networks using Internet protocol (IP) were connected. Or more precisely, the possibility of getting a connection was not zero, and communications were actually made.
Network communication utilizing IP is a best-effort type communication and thus the quality is not guaranteed. On other hand, it is a self-sustainable network that attempts to connect and reconnect as much as possible given that a routing is available. In other words, there is always the possibility of getting "connected" with IP as long as you have network access. There may be major latency and data loss, but the possibility for getting connected will always remain. To put it differently, the possibility of establishing connection will never be zero even if the network falls into a destructive state. This is the major advantage of best-effort type packet communication.
Which is effective as a method of communication when a major disaster occurs, regardless of whether a natural disaster or human disaster: communication with the possibility of getting connected although the quality is not guaranteed, or communication that guarantees quality of communication when connected although there is very little possibility of getting connected.
IP telephony resistant to disasters
The development concept of the first VoIP gateway "BS1100-VOICEHUB" that we developed was to "establish the maximum voice quality on an IP network capable of connecting without guaranteeing quality" (see "Before the Dawn of IP Telephony," part 6).
Let's guarantee continuity of voice even when it is delivered via multiple routers so that it can be heard clearly. Let's connect together data and play it back as voice even if communication falls to the level of transceivers so that data is never lost. Let's realize voice communication as a life line over IP networks that leaves the possibility of establishing connection even when a major disaster occurs, destroying the telephone network rather than complete connection or no connection at all. These are the values of VoIP we aimed for.
This set of values is the basic idea we have been inheriting up to "eSound," which we are working on at the moment. The functions are also embedded in our "eSound engine." We position this value as an origin that can never be forgotten, and expect to carry this on as our basic philosophy, no matter how IP networks evolve or how fast it becomes.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Hiroshi Mizushima at the National Cancer Center, who, at that time, focused attention on the disaster-resistance of IP networks from a user standpoint, and who gave us his opinion on commercialization of the product.
... To be continued
