Where is my handset?!

Mobility is a feature, but it can also be a problem. Where did I put the handset? Because the handset does not have a cord to the base station, it is easy to displace it. The m9 has a couple of features to locate the handset.

The first one you might have seen in the web interface. There is a button called “locate handsets”. What this button does it to call all registered handsets. So if still both of your ears work properly, you will be able to figure out where your handsets are (an amazing feature of the brain to locate audio sources in the room).The problem with this procedure is that it is quite disturbing, especially at night. If you belong to those who use the m9 at home, you want another way to locate your handset in the dark.

The answer is that the handsets shortly turns the handset key backlight on, so that you can see it.

This can be disturbing. The answer to that problem is to just put you handset down with the keyboard to the table, and then the visual disturbance should be minimized. You can also turn the blinking off from the handset menu. I believe there was a bug in the old versions; hopefully it was fixed in the meantime.

It is debatable what should be the default. Apart from the visual disturbance, it actually does suck battery power. Right now the default is to it on. I assume that is a kind of feature advertisement. For those who don’t need it, it is probably a good idea to turn it off.

The other way to locate your specific handset is to just call it from another phone.

What’s a link-local URL?!

IPv6 is still pretty much unknown in the IT world. When m9 customers log into the web interface and navigate on the status screen, they are stumbling upon a thing called the “IPv6 Link-Local URL”.

Generally speaking, link-local means that the address is only visible on the link, which means something like “interface” or “LAN”. For example, if your device would have to Ethernet ports, you could have two links, and you could actually have the same link local address on each of the links. It would not generate an IP address conflict, because the LAN will not route packets that are link local. While you usually have different MAC addresses for each physical interface, this case will be rather improbable. However, when VLANs are coming into the game, it is actual quiet probably that you will have the same link-local address twice on the device—one time for the regular LAN and another time for the VLAN. Hint: This will still not happen with the m9, because when a VLAN is used, the whole device will move into that VLAN.

Link-local addresses can actually also happen on IPv4. Those addresses use those 169.254.x.x addresses that you might have found on your computer when the DHCP server was not responding. They are not as popular as they are on IPv6. In IPv6 you actually need link-local addresses to get a “real” IPv6 address. DHCPv6 uses the link-local address in order to grab more IPv6 addresses.

We put the link-local IPv6 address on the status screen for two reasons. First of all, we want to let everybody know, that the device has an IPv6 address and they can try this out just by clicking on the link. The other thing is that this address does not change—it depends on the MAC address, so it is pretty constant. That means if you store the link, you can always log into the device without having to know what the IPv4 address is or even without having an IPv4 address. We even wanted to print the link-local URL on the label on the bottom of the base station, so that people can just enter that link to access the device.

Generally speaking, in IPv6 it is absolutely normal to have more than one IP address. Apart from the link local addresses, IPv6 routers may send advertisements around (called RA—router advertisements) which announce subnets. The device may grab an address in the subnet and use it, without the involvement of a central server like a DHCP server. This is called stateless configuration. The problem with the stateless configuration is that is does not include a DNS server, which is also pretty important in IPv6 (who wants to enter those long IP addresses). That’s when the m9 sends out the DNS requests to a special DNS multicast address, called “all link local DNS servers”. Then when someone answers, it tries to stick to it.

The m9 always tries to grab another IP address from a DHCPv6 server. As stated before, DHCPv6 is quite different from DHCPv4, especially the fact that is was designed for multiple (redundant) DHCPv6 servers in the local link (this should make sure that the network is very robust when server should go down). At the end of the DHCPv6 process, there is still an IP address—an IPv6 address.

If you have IPv6 RA or DHCPv6, you would find the additional addresses also on the status screen right below the link local address. If you want to get more information about the IPv6 configuration on your m9, you can still use the Diagnostics screen, for example to probe the /proc/net/if_inet6 file.

The M9R

Soon the m9r will hit the market. This is not just a regular internal product update, which is quite common in the IT industry and usually invisible to the user, the letter “r” suggests that it is more than that.

First of all, the letter probably stands for “range”. The m9 handset uses a new chip set which has an improved antenna performance. That means the range will be improved. Though the majority of customers will not really need this, it addresses those who are on the edge.

The other thing is that it will support the “repeater”. Even with the improved range, you can still double the distance by using a repeater in large offices and warehouses. Though I honestly think that the good old m9 also supports the router. Maybe the m9r is because the router is so close, we can already smell it.

Then there is more memory (which also has the “r” in it). More memory is always good to have, though the software does not need it at this point. But you never know what future software updates bring, and it never hurts to have more memory. Especially the handset has more memory; we were always very tight with memory there. Try to program something with a color display if all you have is 64 KB RAM. I believe now it is 128, still not the same of what you have on your smart phone, but at least twice as much as before. And also the base has now 32 MB RAM, so that we can probably take it easier with adding memory hungry features.

The other reason for the letting is the improved speaker (the letter at the end). This results in a better handsfree mode and a better playback for the ring tone.

Another thing that was changed is that the combo now has only one handset. This is sad because most people won’t realize they can register more than one handset per station. I guess the overall marketing rationale behind it was to get the overall price down. People can be very short-sighted when comparing prices.

The m9r continues exactly from where the m9 was. Regarding the maturity of the product this time it means there will be no big surprises. So the bottom line is that the m9r is a hardware upgrade, not a software upgrade.

Hosted plug and play

Today I have a business idea.

When I bought a Kindle from Amazon, I was pleasantly surprised that I did not have to set anything up. The only thing I needed to tell the device was the password for my Wi-Fi access point (it would have been scary if that step was also not necessary any more). But apart from that, take it out of the box, it was already charged, and as soon as the Wi-Fi password was on the device, I was ready to do my first purchase. Okay, go figure why this device cost only 199 USD.

Anyway, why don’t we do the same thing with the m9? Broadband is available widely, and all it would take would be someone who gets access to snom Active and sell the m9 on Amazon. After scanning the MAC address, all that would be necessary to set up a DID for the device, enter the according provisioning data into snom Active, maybe perform a test run to make sure everything is all right, and put the device into the hands of the parcel-service-of-your-choice. Even people who don’t know what VoIP is would be able to use this device as a telephone.

It does not even have to be a real DID. For example, callcentric offers “virtual” DID numbers that cannot be dialed from the PSTN. This reduces costs for the service and makes it possible to just try the service out. Customers are still able to call each other on the network. This could make sense for people who have parents in far-away countries.

Ideally, the person who sells the m9 would already have the customer’s credit card number, so that recurring revenues AKA telephone charges could be charged every month. There are a lot of service providers that could do that. This would address a different customer base that the people who are using a softphone on their PC or smart phone. Think about grandma.

Why power over Ethernet makes sense

Imagine a world where every country would have its own Ethernet connector. In this world mean that every switch would have a version for each country, possibly its own pin assignment, maybe even different speeds for the data. Vendors would have to produce for each country, keep inventory for each country and possibly also get certified with the Ethernet watch for each country. There are some people who see positive things with this, but at the end of the day it would mean that mediocre companies could lock competition out and I just can’t spot anything positive in this.

This world is a reality in the world of power plugs. There are plug for the USA, for Australia, for the UK, for Germany, for Switzerland, for France, and possibly even more countries in the world and they are all incompatible. Isn’t that crazy? I guess the standards were done at times when politicians thought that locking down their country would be a good thing.

There are other areas today where the industry purposefully introduced such country specific localization. Remember the last time you bought a DVD on your trip to far-away-country and wanted to play it back at home. Didn’t work! The DVD companies don’t like it when you purchase your DVD in China and play in back in Germany. This happened even without politicians I believe. It was just a way to maximize the turnover with countries where people are willing to pay more and countries where people on average are willing to pay only less.

What does that all have to do with the m9? There are two things here as well.

The first is the power plug. The m9 also has to deal with the problem that different regions have different power plugs. So far we have three regions: USA, Australia and the rest of the world. For USA, the m9 comes with the two-bar power plug that we all know. Australia comes with the old UK-style power plug (also known from your last trip to Hong Kong) and some special certifications if you want to sell the device in Australia (like the lower ring tone). The rest of the world comes with a number of plugs that you can use in your specific country. snom also uses this to differentiate the price (like everyone in this industry does). So next time when you buy an m9 in the USA, don’t be surprised if it does not fit into the power plug in Europe.

The second thing is the frequency. USA could not allocate the same spectrum like most of the other countries. I am not sure if that was really a technical problem, or the USA wanted to make sure that there would be a different price level possible in the USA area. Anyway, that’s why there are two versions of the m9 handset today. snom had no choice, just follow the industry.

What happened in the cell phone industry might also soon happen in the VoIP world. Like practically all cell phones today use USB for charging the device, vendors will stop sullying power supplies and instead point to Power over Ethernet. This will make the global supply easier; actually it will enforce more global competition, it will be more difficult to lock devices to a specific region, and at the end of the day customers will benefit from a global standard with a huge volume behind it.

PoE can not only be used for powering DECT base stations, it can actually be used for a lot more devices. I think they are working on powering laptops on PoE, of course desktop phones and video camers. But even things like LED lights start to use PoE. When you build a new house, consider running an CAT5 cable to the ceiling instead of a regular power cable. It might all help to get the volume up and the prices down.

I was personally never a fan of PoE. But thinking about it, I might actually become a fan these days.

The year of the hosted PBX

So I have Verizon FiOS at home for more than half a year now. For those who are not familiar with that offering: This is a triple-play solution with TV, Internet and phone which comes to my home over a fiber. TV works beautifully, we can enjoy video on demand and the phone includes a flat rate for domestic (US) calls.

The phone service comes “of course” in the form of a analog telephone line. That part is disappointing. So they dig a fiber to my home, all just to convert everything into analog and then back to digital (practically all phones are digital today anyway)? That’s stupid. Anyway, still understandable because my home has an analog telephone line in each room, and typical Verizon customers don’t like to rip this out of the wall and replace it with Ethernet. So do I. What I did was getting a cheap analog DECT handset and connected to the line in the basement. All the telephone lines are useless in my house. DECT goes through walls.

But of course that’s not all. Guess what, I also have a couple of m9 handsets in my house.

They are registered to various locations. Practically for all snom offices, I have a registration. Some of the registrations are even using Lync; others are using snom ONE. My home deployment even stands the “wife test”: She actually uses it. If I would count the minutes, I would actually say that she uses the m9 more than the analog DECT line. Number one on her telephone usage list is the cell phone, no surprises here.

Anyway, the surprising thing is that the voice quality for our VoIP at home service is out of question rock solid. I should have started measuring the QoS reports, but it feels like we never missed a single packet. FiOS has a large upload capacity (a few MBit per second), which is a problem in other installations where uploading data has only very limited bandwidth. I think that is the difference to the situation a few years ago. People were dreaming about hosted PBX, and the concept hade a lot of sense; but the bandwidth was simply not widely available. That has changed.as the Apple folks would say “the times, they are changing”.

Essentially I am a user of hosted PBX with the snom m9. It works great, and it makes a lot of sense. This is something people will find out this year.

Happy New Year 2012!

Time is racing, especially in the IT industry. 2011 was what it was, there were a lot of innovation but the overall economic environment wasn’t that great. Here are my predictions for 2012.

My first prediction is that the m9 will finally have a repeater that you can buy. Seems like the repeater had to go more than just the whole 9 nine yards and there are still eleven months to go in 2012. My hope is that it would not take so long.

My other prediction is that IPv6 will become a topic for VoIP. IPv6 had to go probably a hundred yards and back and forward and back again. But the pressure to move leave IPv4 behind is getting so big that people don’t have a choice any more. Check out http://ipv6.he.net/statistics, they have made some neat applications that show you the current picture. Hopefully people will realize that the m9 had IPv6 from day one and it is a great toy to try VoIP over IPv6.

Any my third prediction is that Microsoft Lync will take off on voice. I don’t know how many yards it did go, but for sure it was also a lot. When we started using it a couple of years ago (then known as LCS and OCS), there were many features missing to the degree of not being usable. Today, it is a different picture and people are realizing it. Certified or not, I am using my m9 on Lync every day and I am a happy user. Maybe the m9 even gets certified or tested or whatever the right description for that is. I am sure there are potentially more out there, and amid some dark projections for the business in 2012, I am sure that 2012 will be a good year for Lync and also for the snom m9.

I wish you all a happy new year 2012!