Subject: Re: the iab & net neutrality

From: David R Oran <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:13:27 -0400

On Mar 29, 2006, at 10:56 AM, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:

> We could ask the IEEE, since the relationship between the WiFi  
> folks and IEEE 802.11 seems to be somewhat similar.
>
> One of the problems I see is that many of the industry associations  
> (SIP Forum, IPv6 forum, to name two I'm somewhat familiar with)  
> tend to focus on service providers, not consumers. But an  
> organization such as the SIP Forum could provide a "VoIP-optimized"  
> label for NAT boxes and maybe even ISPs.
I'm a board member of the SIP Forum, so I'd like to respond to  
Henning. (I'm speaking as an individual here who happens to be on the  
SIP Forum board so these are personal views neither discussed with  
nor agreed to by the rest of the board. Ditto for the IAB.)

The SIP Forum is a creature of our members, which today are almost  
exclusively service providers and equipment vendors. We try to  
respond to the pain points they bring us and add value by bridging  
the gap between protocol standardization through the IETF and needs  
in the market. So far, we've been pretty successful at running  
interoperability testing through the SIPIT program, and coming up  
with deployment and "feature bundling" specifications in areas like  
hooking up SIP-based enterprise VoIP systems to service providers who  
are offering PSTN origination and termination services.

The question of how to help the consumer market segment is one we are  
stumped on, for a number of reasons. First, there is no obvious  
advocate for the needs of consumers among our membership. Second, few  
to none of the vendors who sell consumer gear (e.g. Linksys, Netgear,  
Sony, Apple) are members. Third, much of that market segment is  
driven by offshore manufacturers who have little incentive to lead in  
engineering. Their expertise is in channel and brand management, and  
in minimizing all costs, including engineering (not to mention forum  
memberships...).

That said, a number of us believe that we are having a modest effect.  
For example, in the enterprise interconnect specification, we worked  
very hard to make sure straightforward interconnect worked without  
mandating extra firewall, NAT or B2BUA functionality.

The idea of having the SIP Forum sponsor work to at least partially  
drain the NAT/firewall traversal swamp is a good one. So - seeing as  
this is on the IETF public list, let me offer a plea: if you work  
with or build SIP products for consumers, JOIN THE SIP FORUM and help  
us put together a program in our Technical Working Group to address  
these issues. We are driven by our members. Membership is free for  
individuals and of modest cost for companies.

Cheers, Dave Oran
>
>>> Thus, I think we need a separate organization (or work with a  
>>> separate organization) that does branding and certification. It's  
>>> hard to buy a non-WiFi device in stores today; the equivalent  
>>> consumer assurance needs to be true for core consumer and small- 
>>> business network devices, and possibly services.
>> I don't know how this would work, but if it could be made to work,  
>> that might be very helpful.

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