After a long absence I’ve decided to give this thing another try. Perhaps I might have something worthwhile to say this time as my job in the industry has changed quite a bit from several years ago.
I work for Polycom now. I am technically in sales, but have many roles within the company.
My current project – help sell our new business media phone that is certified for use in Cisco environments.
Check it out here:
My apologies for the product shill.
Well, given that my eldest son (7) stumbled on some spyware, it’s got to be pretty bad.
To top it all off, EA (Electronic Arts) with the launch of Battlefield 2142 is now bundling spyware in its product. They want to better target advertising. So, if you pay $50 for this game, all of your Internet activity will be monitored by EA, so they can advertise to you more than they already do.
Now, I’ll admit, I’ll play a game every now and again. I own Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2. But if this is the direction EA is taking things, I’m done buying their junk.
I have enough problems keeping my computers running smoothly without someone else messing up my system just so I can get better advertising.
Good job EA, you just lost another customer.
Well, I finally got around to installing spam filters here. Comment spam was just horrendous.
Now I need to actually start writing things again.
Just returned from Networkers in Vegas.
First, I’d rather get punched in the face every time I walk outside, rather than deal with 117 degree heat.
My dislike for extreme temperatures aside, this was by far the most interesting Networkers I’ve been to.
I think the most common discussion I had was people’s now general dislike of John Chambers.
I must admit, I myself have noticed a change in the company. Many of its employees have become elitist, snobbish, and downright hard to deal with. The once great “get it done right now matter what” attitude seems to be gone. The spirit of the company has also become extremely hard-core coporate – and not good corporate either. More like bogged down in crap corporate. Reminds me of the old IBM in a way.
Combine this with things like charging ten times over for memory, and other assorted issues, and you’ve got a bad situation developing.
My personal feeling is that after the crash Chambers kept them together, but never really pulled them into the next era well. Yes they have brought new products out, some of which are great, some of which are not.
Would I buy some other vendor’s switch? Doubtful, but this leads to an interesting point.
If someone brought out a new switch/router/security device that matched Cisco’s device in performance, but it was cheaper, I’d most definitely buy it. Will this happen?
Additionally, Cisco’s partner relationship has been somewhat quirky – they tell someone to make product X, but when Cisco needs more revenue, they will start making that product X and essentially push the partner out of that market. I understand the need for renevue growth, they are a public company.
But these new attitudes are disturbing, and not at all what their customer base deserves.
Cisco has also been having hiring problems. No one wants into that culture now, where before you couldn’t find enough people to get in.
I think it’s time for a new leader, and Chambers should step aside. He’s done well for the company, but he’s lost his leadership edge. New blood, new direction and new spirit are needed – now.
I’m sure I might step in it with this one.
I’ve never been very political.
I voted for Bush, I voted for Clinton.
I support the war, but I seriously question how it was executed.
Could Clinton have spared us much of this by taking Bin Laden when offered?
Does Congress actually do anything besides frivolously spend our hard-earned money?
I digress.
But this latest thing, “net neutrailty” is becoming quite disturbing. Large telco’s want more money. They are paying congress to make it happen.
If they want more f*cking money, why not try provding real service? Like a phone-tech that isn’t rude. Or a phone bill that isn’t riddled with bullshit services. Maybe they’ll actually retain some customers then eh?
At the heart of the matter, the telco’s are claiming that all these web sites are making money off of their networks – without paying for it – so the telcos want to build their “own” Internet. So they can charge the web sites more, or they’ll slow the traffic down. Can anyone say RICO?
Let’s examine this more closely:
I pay my cable company for Internet access ($69.95/month for 8MB down/512k up – Time Warner/RoadRunner premium service).
Web hosters pay for access to large pipes (data centers, co-location facilities, or even direct T3/OCx etc).
How are the telcos not getting paid for their wires?
There are bills in Washington right now. Contact your representatives and senators in Congress and tell them net neutrality is essential, before it is too late.
Please.
First off, I’m not trying to bash SIP, merely explore some of its possible shortcomings.
After having had a very interesting conversation with someone in the VoIP security/resiliency field, I got to thinking more about this.
SIP by its very nature might not be well suited to enhance communications because it isn’t a very stateful protocol. There’s the initial setup, and unless some feature needs to be performed on a call, the RTP stream is about the only thing out there. Because of it’s very transactional nature, this makes it difficult to truly manage, compared to something like SS7.
A more stateful/windowed approach to a protocol might be more practical, something similar to the constant communication Cisco has with its phones when using SCCP (Skinny). This would allow better tracking and capabilities through firewalls, proxies, SBC’s and the like. This better approach may also allow better security simply because the call would be truly “active” (RTP bearer stream and an active control channel). This could facilitate alternate routing such as what SS7 does with its separate paths for call control and bearer traffic. For me it is almost ironic, because I used to frequently bash SS7 as inferior for having split paths. I can admit I was seriously misguided.
Don’t get me wrong, I think SIP is a great thing. It promotes open-source applications, a great developer community, and (at least for now) some decent vendor interoperability. SIP has brought us things like Vonage and Skype which have facilitated communication far beyond what some people twenty years ago might never have thought possible.
I simply think we need to take a closer look at what we want from our networks going forward.
We need security.
We need reliability (gobs more).
We need functionality.
We need to be able to monitor it all, no matter where it is.
Is this too much to ask?
Anyone else noticed a significant lack of SE’s lately?
I have, and so have several folks I’ve spoken to.
In my eyes, I’m seeing, and feeling a lack of support from Cisco.
Yes, TAC is still there, however, not all TAC centers are created equal. From the discussions I have had with numerous people, almost everyone’s TAC experience has gone down the drain. Couple this with the lack of SE’s we seem to be seeing, and one must wonder what’s going on inside Cisco.
One individual I spoke with theorizes that Cisco is becoming a more sales oriented company. I couldn’t argue with that statement. If this is the direction Cisco is going, that is to say moving away from it’s fantastic support model in the 90’s, this is going to become a problem. One that will eventually hurt the sales it is so desperately seeking.
I can understand the need to grow revenue, but not at the expense of the customer base. How about rebuilding that fantastic support system it had? A recent discussion I had with a Cisco partner (they were also an HP partner, MS partner and part of several other vendor programs) yielded an interesting bit of info.
The person I was speaking to told me of a discussion that he had when the Cisco account team came in. Apparently the Cisco team wasn’t happy this partner was still selling HP switches. This partner’s response was – the HP switches fill a need, they are cheaper and have a lifetime warranty. They fit in many situations where any Cisco switch with similar capacity was siginificantly more expensive. Cisco apparently yelled at them, got upset, and stopped short of major threats. That is not the Cisco I know.
The Cisco I know of years past would have found a way to compete, not bully. They would have offered better support. Perhaps if Cisco tried the “lowering taxes brings in more money trick” with its products, it might get the sales it wants. In other words, lower prices, put a better warranty on a product (I think Cat6509’s have a whopping 90 day warranty), and you’d sell more.
I am by no means scientific in my analysis of what might be going on. But one has to wonder what really is going on.
Oh was this a fun one to hunt down.
Build something that uses IPIVR/IPQM on the CRS system.
Build a call flow that transfers some callers from the CRS/IPIVR/IPQM to an external IVR.
Have those transfers cross a QSIG trunk.
If a “connected number” display IE comes back in response to one of those transfers, your CTI ports on the CRS system will eventually permanently die. You won’t get them back until you reset the CRS engine.
Sound bad? Well it’s true. Turn off connected number display from the far side of the QSIG link and all will be fine.
Bug ID forthrcoming soon.
Quality of Service on today’s network is almost a must, whether you have VoIP or not.
During recent visit to a client of mine (they were having some major voice issues), I discovered some minor QoS configuration issues. I also found hardware QoS issues.
One of the problems came down to a 10/100 blade in a Cat6500. It was one of the original 10/100 blades created, and only had 2 output queues, with 2 thresholds each. After reviewing the system, I noted that the queue designated for voice was seeing drops.
Normally, most places could run in this situation without issue. Here however, they have hard core data users that truly use their network. This created numerous situations of high bursts in traffic. These high bursts were causing the output buffers to fill almost completely on the switch. This in turn caused voice problems, since their voice gateways are also their WAN routers.
The eventual solution was to move the routers to a blade that has a dedicated priority queue, where voice traffic essentially cannot be dropped (it’s possible, you just need a LOT of traffic to hit that queue). This appeared to smooth things out quite a bit.
In Cisco lingo, the old blade had 2q2t (two queues, two thresholds per queue). Almost all newer blades have 1p2q2t (1 proiority queue + 2q2t) or 1p1q8t.
Moving forward, it’s a good thing to remember that if you’re seeing voice problems, it CAN be the network, no matter how much it is over-built.
QoS is critical. In my opinion, more companies should be building at least basic QoS now, if not for voice, for their critical applications.
We’ve all been seeing this crap coming from the telcos about charging everyone for using their wires.
Truth of the matter is, they are already extremely profitable (I don’t normally bash large companies, but I’ll make an exception here).
Do they have a responsbility to the shareholders? Sure.
But don’t get cheap trying to make money. They already charge for DSL. They charge for phone service. They also charge large amounts for Internet service and the pipe itself. Ever hear of a local loop charge?
Their real problem is the proliferation of VoIP/Video technologies. I myself have switched to Time Warner’s Broadband voice service. Flat fee no matter where or how often I call. My old SBC bill used to float around $85 a month. I now pay $44.95 for unlimited service.
All these new services threaten their monopoly, and ability to make money. However, instead of trying to compete, they are trying to kill the competition.
History tells us that the dinosaurs, which couldn’t adapt to their ever changing world, became extinct. Seems to me that our current set of legacy telcos are a bit large, and can’t adapt. How soon will they be fossilized?
Bad Behavior has blocked 111 access attempts in the last 7 days.