Ask the EXPERT: How Important is H.323 for Video Telephony versus SIP?

In our “hidden challenges in developing HD video telephony products” webinar there was a really active Q&A session. As I promised after the webinar, I will be covering a few of the questions that were asked here at a bit more length. The first group of questions I want to tackle are those concerning H.323 and SIP: How important is H.323 for video telephony vs. SIP? Which one should I use? Using SIP and H.323 is a (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  July 28th, 2010  |  Filed under Standardization
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VoIP Clients Should Have Multi-Platform Support

We’ve just officially announced our BEE client framework solutions, a broad family of multi-protocol, multi-platform VoIP products. While we have advocated in the past for multi-protocol clients, I think we’ve taken it a step further. Not only do we offer multi-protocol support, we now offer it over multiple platforms in quite a unique manner. Last week, I had 2 meetings back-to-back, in the middle of the night (at least here in Israel, as both were with the west coast) about (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  June 8th, 2010  |  Filed under Clients
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What I Learned From the IMTC 2025 Virtual Event

[Laurie Berg wrote here first just before the IMTC 2025 event. When I heard her speaking after the event about how much she has learned from assisting in its organization, I asked her to provide some inputs here - who knows, after reading what she has to say about it, you might find yourself wanting to host such a virtual event sooner than you think...] Well, IMTC 2025 Virtual Forum has come to an end. What an event. I’ve done (read more...)

By guest  |  April 12th, 2010  |  Filed under Technology
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Where in the World is H.323?

Earlier this week I’ve outlined what the SIP parity group at the IMTC is all about, but then again – a question does arise – where in the world is H.323 these days? Does Carmen Sandiego know where H.323 is? (image by ~5ir3ntropy) I’ve heard people announce the death of H.323 a lot of times. I guess the first time was about 8 years ago. Funny thing is, it’s still going strong – we actually have new customers (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  February 18th, 2010  |  Filed under Standardization
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Time For Visual Communications With SIP

Two weeks ago, the IMTC has publicly announced its progress in the work of defining SIP video. People here may ask why SIP Video needs any defining work. After all, SIP had the ability to deal with video channels for ages. And the answer is that while it may have that ability, it doesn’t really interoperate with that well. RADVISION has taken part in the work done at this IMTC activity group, and I’ve been silently monitoring it from (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  February 15th, 2010  |  Filed under Standardization
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Forward Error Correction Done Right

There’s a trend these days to employ Forward Error Correction (FEC) as a means to improve media quality in voice and video calls. It is also something that RADVISION has been actively pushing at the ITU-T – and will probably be added in one of the next ITU-T meetings as H.323 Annex I. When we started working on our SVC solution, and had to decide where to place the error correction data, we debated on a very basic question: (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  December 17th, 2009  |  Filed under Technology
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Server Side Interworking Sucks

If I had only known how much noise my Google Jingle/SIP post would make, I would have written it sooner. But then again, you can never really know which posts will get people talking. I had multiple discussions about this subject the day the post was published – on my blog as well as on Twitter. It seems to me that there is something that I missed and I feel it’s necessary to say here: Server-side interworking SUCKS. Interworking? Interworking (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  December 7th, 2009  |  Filed under Standardization, Technology
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As XMPP is Growing Up, People Don’t Think It’s Perfect Anymore

It’s funny how things work out. I remember a few years ago, while working on our H.323 stack, that SIP was starting to make some noise. Cool people started talking about it as if it was the best thing out there – way better than that old and clucky H.323 thingy. The sad truth of the evolution of protocols The Dark Ages Well, guess what? Both protocols started at about the same time, which some people regard as “the (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  November 26th, 2009  |  Filed under Standardization
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One Protocol? We Wish!

It seems like everywhere you go, checking for standards, there are at least two for the price of one: PAL and NTSC, DVD-HD and Blu-ray. H.323 and SIP. SIMPLE and XMPP. Why can’t we just get along and decide on a single protocol for each task? One ring to rule them all? They used to call it “convergence”. In the distant past, when people were looking for a nicer word for “VoIP”. It meant all types of devices talking (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  October 1st, 2009  |  Filed under Standardization
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IPv6 and HD Voice: No need to link them together

In the past few months, a call for HD Voice to replace our dusty old phone systems has initiated. It originated by Jeff Pulver and has been gaining momentum with the creation of the HD Connect project. Jeff Pulver explains about HD Communications Summit While I am a strong supporter of HD Voice, a post on the HD Connect blog has struck me as a bit odd – Doug Mohney suggested the coupling of HD Voice with IPv6: Since (read more...)

By Tsahi Levent-Levi  |  September 10th, 2009  |  Filed under Technology
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