Introduction -- IronPipe™ MultiMedia Internet Telecommunications

Emerson Development LLC has been awarded a fifth telecommunications patent that introduces breakthrough technology combining the multimedia capability of the Internet with the safety, security, and reliability of the phone network. This exciting new technology enables a world in which audio/visual phone calls will become the standard for routine, daily communications. The Emerson Development MultiMedia Telecommunications technologies will create the next generation of telecommunications -- visual, multimedia, and videophone communications on screen-based phones that require no knowledge or training for users. Just dial a phone number.

We Have Been Awarded 5 Patents on MultiMedia Telephony!

This remarkable MultiMedia Telephony technology is a true quantum leap that will fully merge the telecommunications and Internet networks. The benefit will be MultiMedia telephone communications having graphical and videophone capabilities on screen phones, yet dialed on the public telephone network like any other call, and fully compatible with the world’s billion POTS lines (POTS = Plain Old Telephone Service).

The “convergence” of voice and data has been the elusive goal of the telecommunications industry since the mid-80’s, hallmarked by the introduction of digital PBXs, digital telco central office switching systems, and digital transmission networks. But conversion hasn’t happened, and can’t happen without a rethinking of these “digital” designs.

On the opposite side of the fence, the Internet is slowly bringing about a limited type of convergence in the form of Internet Telephony, also called Voice over IP (VoIP). VoIP is, in general, devoted to providing cheaper long distance service by using the Internet as a transport medium.

There are standards efforts that have been underway for a few years with the objective of providing greater VoIP functionality. And, even though they seem to hold out the promise of graphical and video communications, they miss the mark by wide margins for a number of serious technical reasons.

By comparison, the Emerson Development MultiMedia Telecommunications provides the carrier class infrastructure, operations, management, and billing capabilities that will be absolutely necessary for the major telecommunications companies throughout the world to venture into this field. These mandatory capabilities include requirements for security, privacy, secrecy of communications, and unlisted numbers, including the guaranteed ability to keep the identities of callers secret under every circumstance imaginable. And just as importantly, MultiMedia Telecommunications provides for these privacy and security requirements while still enabling government mandated provisions for law enforcement wiretapping and call tracing.

Multimedia – The next generation of telecommunications

Twenty years ago, when Microsoft was introducing the early versions of Windows, the computer industry as a whole was skeptical – why do we need a graphical user interface? In the absence of applications and systems that we could experience for ourselves, it was difficult to imagine how a Windows interface would add value. Now, of course, we are all accustomed to the rich, multimedia presentation of the Internet, and couldn’t imagine going back to a text-based interface.

The world of telephony is where the computer industry was twenty years ago. The routine experience consists of audio-only phone calls, and it’s hard to imagine the value and benefits of screen-based phones and services. Emerson Development has prepared presentation material that describes some of the potentials that multimedia telephony will offer – but to be sure, once it becomes commonplace, and a million developers have tinkered with it, we won’t be able to imagine doing without it.

Emerson Development is not the only one in the industry talking about multimedia telephony, but our view is more expansive than most. We believe that, over time, audio-only phones will be as archaic as DOS-based computers. Furthermore, our unique patented technology will enable anyone to take advantage of multimedia phone service since the user only needs to know how to dial a phone call. That fact will enable and drive universal deployment of multimedia services. It will become the Internet for the rest of us – just dial a number.

Defining the Problem… How can we achieve multimedia telecommunications and still accommodate national security needs and maintain the traditional integrity and reliability that we all expect?

The Issues of VoIP, SIP, and ENUM: The standard industry concept of implementing multimedia telephony is to deploy VoIP (Internet telephony) using SIP and ENUM. There is some practical experience with SIP, but ENUM, in general, is an unknown.

Background: SIP is a protocol for storing and communicating call setup signaling information across the Internet. ENUM is a DNS scheme for cross-referencing phone numbers to IP addresses. It is important to understand that, in order to achieve universality and the simplicity of just dialing a phone number to make a multimedia call, ENUM must be universally deployed. (And that would mean that every phone number in the world must be stored in DNS systems.) Otherwise, the caller must use a computer-style interface and type an “address” in the form of “sip:joe.rizzo@generalmotors.com”. This requirement is certainly beyond the realm of the non-computer literate. Furthermore, taking one moment to realize the implications of this in some non-English languages that require hieroglyph keyboards (Chinese, for example), one can readily anticipate that this scheme will never see universal deployment. Anyone can dial a number, many won’t be able to “type” an “address”. Therefore, in the VoIP scheme, universality demands ENUM.

VoIP, SIP, and ENUM are Fundamentally Flawed!

There are many advocates of Internet telephony, but we believe that VoIP, SIP, and ENUM are fundamentally flawed. These technology solutions expose the industry and the nation to serious and unnecessary risks, while compromising the quality of our nation’s phone service.

These risks fall into two categories: communications security risks, and business risks for telephone carriers.

Problems: VoIP technology presents security risks at several levels:

In general, VoIP suffers from the general Internet weaknesses of security, privacy, and secrecy.
In the VoIP model, all call setup signaling data, as well as the conversation data, traverses the Internet and thus is susceptible to all the known threats of snooping, eavesdropping, and intercepting or replacing one communication with another. This endangers the privacy and secrecy of personal and corporate communications, which, by extension, represents a national security risk.
Being server-based, Internet telephony is susceptible to hacking, Denial-of-Service attacks, and other forms of malicious interference. This, also, endangers personal, corporate, and national security, and this exposure could be exploited in cyberwar. “VoIP is making it easier to wage cyberwar, an analyst reported last week, just as flaws that make some VoIP products vulnerable were revealed.” Network World 1/19/2004.
SIP and ENUM are dependent on DNS which is notoriously trouble-prone, slow, and susceptible to errors. DNS is completely decentralized, with millions of DNS servers operated by businesses, organizations, ISP’s, and anyone else who wishes to do so. Anyone can be a VoIP telephone vendor and put up a DNS server to run SIP and ENUM. From a practical perspective, we depend on the good faith, integrity, and reliability of the DNS operators for successful operation of the Internet. However, allowing the national and worldwide telephone system to depend on DNS exposes the United States to a similar dependency, which is hardly prudent.
There is no inherent security built into DNS. There are Internet standards proposing security procedures, but implementation is optional and not widely implemented.
General issues of secrecy – In addition to conversations themselves being secret and secure, Internet telephony must be able to protect unlisted phone numbers, IP addresses (which are equivalent to a phone number in IP telephony), and geographic locations (can’t reveal the calling locale of a battered spouse or someone in a witness protection program). These requirements are not contemplated in VoIP.
Any Internet telephony scheme must accommodate the requirements for legal wiretapping and call trace. Although occasionally discussed, these requirements are also not contemplated in VoIP implementations.
Internet telephony is unregulated by the FCC, and the government cannot figure out how to deal with this problem. Anyone can become an Internet telephone company, and do things any way they like, regardless of all the above issues.

Problems: VoIP technology presents business risks to telephone carriers

Telephone companies around the world have built a system with a shining reputation for reliability and integrity. The phone network, and its reliability, is based on the utilization of the worldwide private SS7 signaling network for setting up and managing calls. SS7 is abandoned in VoIP (and deliberately so, VoIP was designed by Internet researchers who wanted to bypass the phone company). Instead, call signaling is carried in the open on the Internet, drawing routing information from DNS.
With ENUM, SIP, & VoIP, all call processing intelligence and all transmission moves to the Internet. When carriers participate in VoIP, the PSTN evaporates.
Since Internet telephone service is subject to all the vagaries of the Internet, carriers can’t control quality, reliability, or security.
Audio quality on the Internet is uncertain. Overall, Internet telephony is not “carrier class”.
Anyone can set up a phone company and offer comparable service levels to traditional carriers. Consequently, carriers who venture into Internet telephony will gradually lose their reputation for quality, along with their advantage in this newly competitive arena.
Carriers who move into VoIP will undermine the very principles that made them great.

DNS - a History of Exposures and Attacks

The entire worldwide DNS system was brought to its knees by hackers multiple times in recent years.

“Massive DDoS Attack Hit DNS Root Servers -- During the course of the ping-flood pounding, only four of 13 root servers remained up and running while seven were completely crippled….. Tuesday evening's distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the 13 copies of the U.S. root server should serve as a warning to every company employing DNS, said the inventor of the technology Wednesday.” InternetNews.Com Oct. 23, 2002.

A similar attack June 15, 2004 brought down Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Fedex, Apple, Akamai, and many others.

And more recently: “ICAAN says that starting at 4 a.m. PST (12:00 UTC) on February 6, 2007, a massive distributed denial-of-service attack hit six of the root servers like a brick wall, with a wave of bogus queries hitting the root servers at the rate of 1GB per second. Two of the root servers were immediately and severely compromised; four fared well under the strain. According to ICAAN, the amount of data sent to the DNS root servers during the attack was roughly equivalent to receiving 13,000 e-mails every second, or 1.5 million every two minutes.” CNet.com March 23, 2007

Benefits to IronPipe™

Telephone carriers stand to benefit from this new technology because it preserves their business position by providing high value in the PSTN and in the underlying private SS7 network that connects the PSTN together.

Traditional telephone carriers, as well as VoIP vendors that participate in this new technology, will benefit by offering new high value consumer services instead of competing by cutting prices.

Consumers will benefit from a flourish of new MultiMedia features. The experience will be similar to accessing a web page with a browser, but would be done by dialing a phone number.

Industry and governments will benefit from a rich communications environment that is secure from espionage, hacking, intrusion, and interruption.