RIM ties in corporate drones with VoIP over Wi-Fi Along with a new handset, RIM yesterday announced Mobile Voice System 5, which brings VoIP calling over Wi-Fi for enterprise users, with number mapping courtesy of Cisco. The new Mobile Voice System integrates with Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager and can map a Wi-Fi-connected Blackberry to a desktop phone number. Thus …
Asterisk in its default code branch does not do sRTP and TLS so your credentials are open to a MIM and your traffic can be listened to by anyone. I was just recently helping someone who had the credentials to one of their extensions stolen and a 500£ bill clocked on it. The most likely culprit ended up a corrupt (or throughly hacked) ISP where all traffic on port 5060 was being hijacked for later cracking and MIM attacks.
So while using asterisk for VOIP over WiFi in the office is quite common, I would not use it over hotspots, especially for business conversations. There a solution in the form of asterisks security branch, but that is definitely not an asterisk/trixbox at home job. It is more of a DIY/pain at home.
This brings an interesting facet to this. The best laugh is the one who laughs last. UMA which shovelled all traffic down a single tunnel and invested an immense amount of effort in emulating mobile over WiFi is practically dead. The alternative solution of doing "sod all" about legacy compatibility with mobile and using pure VOIP (with some security enhancements) is thriving and this is yet another BIG batch of users added to it. So much for all the insistence of many mobile (and fixed for that matter) operators that the feature set of UMA is the MUST HAVE and there is no way users would live without it.
Well this was workable 3 years ago on RIM handsets, BUT funnily enough alot of telco's didn't like it as they would lose revenue - see how that played out. Nowadays RIM as a brand is alot more estabilished at the consumer level as well as business level and teclo's do alright on reselling the whole RIM expreience. This and market pressure has made this option alot more viable as in telco's have to be competative, so certain funky features ain't disabled by the telco's be it diabled or bastardised branded OS's for there phones.
Still this option will drain your battery alot faster as you will still have your email routed via GSM/CDMA/3g/POOPUPPY(last ones a joke but hey, might catchon:) etc so using another wirless signal - well do the maths.
Bottom line, its what I calla bonus feature as in if you buy the product just for this feature then your buying the wrong product, but its sure nice to have the option in the consumers hands instead of being dictated by some telco looking to wallet shaft you all the way to there bank.
ANON becasue it dont matter were the facts come from as long as there facts }->
Coward Says..."Anyone with an Asterisk/trixbox at home has been able to do this for years !" Yeah like a major corporate would announce this breakthrough using a flaky 'home' based solution.
I Install this Cisco kit, its built for Corp. sized networks with SRST, designed in such a way as to provide a rock solid VoIP foundation to take over from traditional PBX's.
'Home' solutions are designed for and priced and just reliable enough for 'home' users which in no way reaches the required standards, design and reliability and the money to do it all with of a business solution. The protocols are the same, the code the hardware the design is not. You home users, your just not that important enough.. lol
a home users VoIP and a Corps VoIP has more to do with the much higher price the Corps pay to the service providers for guaranteed bandwidth and QoS (quality of service).
Although, the hardware providers would certainly like you to believe that it is all about the hardware they want to sell you to help implement the solution.
"Corps pay to the service providers for guaranteed bandwidth and QoS (quality of service)."
Only on private virtual circuits within the same SP's MPLS network, on the big old public internet NO ONE can guarantee any kind of quality of service, its best endeavourers. ISP's have yet to agree to work together on this.
It really IS about the hardware and software and the addition complexity of redundant networks, servers and the configuration, which alone can take whole teams and days/weeks/months to implement. A stark contrast to your single box 'home' solution.
There is a Cisco add-on for the Nokia E and N series phones which facilitates some proprietary features available under Cisco Unified Communications - I guess RIM have now got something similar.
Of course, the RIM offering is only of use if the local telco has not disabled the WLAN interface of the Blackberry to increase traffic through their network and therefore, their own revenue. In this situation, it might be better to get a Nokia phone and use the available Blackberry client instead.
This sounds great, esp. for some of our users who spend a lot of time in different countries.
As long as they stay in wi-fi reach this will enable us to cut their cellphone costs by a factor 10 .
And if we could then also get skype on the bberry we could reduce phone costs even more
Heck, even the price of a 2-hour wifi connection at a major international airport would then earn itself back
Anonymous Coward writes: 'So while using asterisk for VOIP over WiFi in the office is quite common, I would not use it over hotspots, especially for business conversations.'
You'll find that this doesn't apply to WPA Enterprise-enabled hotspots. I'll grant you that end-to-end VoIP security would be better, but WPA Enterprise at least puts hotspots in the same league with office Wi-Fi in terms of security. And unlike with open hotspots, there's no pesky login page to contend with anymore.
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