SIP in higher education

[(Dennis Baron)]

SIP.edu Conference Call November 17, 2005

*Attendees*

Dennis Baron, MIT
Joel Dunn, UNC Chapel Hill
Candace Holman, Harvard
Jerry Keith, UC Riverside
Jeff Kuure, Internet2
Ben Teitelbaum, Internet 2
Mike Van Norman, UCLA
Garrett Yoshimi, Hawaii
Dave Zimmerman, Berkely

*Discussion*

Today's call begins with a new participant, Joel Dunn, talking about
UNC Chapel Hill's recent VOIP initiative. They are not currently SIP.edu
participants, but he would like to stay involved in SIP discussion for
possible future participation.

Dennis follows this by asking about the continuing ISN caller ID
debate. John Todd sent information to the email list regarding
his discussions with Alan Johnson, but there hasn't been much
commentary. Dennis feels that the caller ID issue should be a lower
priority right now, as he is unsure of a way to pursue this without
defining new protocols and struggling to get them implemented. Ben
mentions that this is currently the one area of the ISN cookbook that
he is least comfortable with, as he is not sure where to go with it.

In deployment updates, MIT recently tried to set up their PBX for ISN
dialing using ** as an access code, followed by the ISN subscriber
number, another *, and finally the ISN domain number. As it turns out
the Lucent 5ESS only allows * as the first digit, which came as a
surprise. In the meantime, they have assigned a 3-digit dialing code
for dialing out to SIP. The # has the same restriction and therefore
is not a possible solution.

Garrett asks if MIT has seen an increase in WiFi SIP access due to the
recent campus-wide WiFi initiative. Dennis has been experimenting with
this for three years now, but was unable to find satisfactory hardware
in the past. Recently they had been using the Hitachi Cable phone,
model IP5000, which following a recent software update has been working
well. This has lead to an increase in WiFi SIP access on campus.

Dave Zimmerman asks if anyone knows of a decent Palm SIP client. In
the past Dennis has tried to use an Ipaq for this, but had very little
success. The signaling was fine, but there were consistently problems with
the audio. He had used the Xten and SoftJoys clients, both of which had
problems. He also mentions that Ben had sent email to another list about
the Nokia 770, which is a Linux based, 802.11 equipped tablet, apparently
aimed at web and media access. Ben says that it's an interesting device,
which comes bundled with an Opera web browser, mp3 player, and video
player. It's a low-end device, approximately $350, and could be an
interesting device to experiment with.  Gaim has been ported for this
device, and there are two SIP clients that are being tested. They may
not be available for purchase yet, however.

Dennis mentions that ISN dialing from Free World Dialup seems to have
stopped working, and he has contacted Ed Guy about this.

The remainder of the call focuses on the direction of future
conference calls. Dennis feels that he is in a rut, and is interested
in what people think should be on the agenda for future conference
calls - what would be valuable for participants, and what would be
useful for drawing in additional people. He is working setting up a
call with Cullin Jennings from Cisco for joint SIP.edu and PIC working
group discussions regarding identity and IETF work.

Suggestions from call participants include more tutorials, such as
the Cisco gateway tutorial from earlier this year, discussion of NAT
traversal and other NAT related issues like ICE, guest speakers, and
peering arrangement discussion. There have not been a lot of SIP.edu
deployments lately, but discussion of problems and solutions encountered
by organizations seem to be of interest. Candace mentions a presentation
or discussion on cases for going forward with a SIP.edu deployment,
which would be beneficial for organizations looking to do so. She also
mentions that she would like to see reports on SIP interoperability and
testing, particularly product reports.

Finally, Ben asks people to think about doing something at Joint Techs
in Albuquerque early next year.

The next call will be on December 1st.