We're releasing NetQoS VoIP Monitor v1.1. Biggest changes: SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) support, automatic and on-demand problem investigation, and capacity planning reports.

I want to start with SIP support, because there's an interesting related story that caught my attention when it came out on Slashdot.

One of the odd things about SIP is that it is, to some extent, a peer-to peer based protocol. The advantage of this is that it only requires a simple core network, with all the fiddly bits distributed to the network edge. This makes SIP more scalable than other protocols. You can see why our customers think SIP support is important and why NetQoS worked to put it into this release.

But as a side effect of the way the technology was designed, SIP's peer to peer network means that it can be difficult to route emergency calls because of the mobility of IP endpoints and the fact that SIP has no network location capability - you'll remember that Vonage got into a little bit of trouble a while back because it couldn't consistently promise E911 support. (That has since been fixed.)

SIP also establishes a VoIP connection directly between the two calls out at the edge. Once the call is set up, the data does not pass through any sort of central server owned or controlled by the VoIP provider. That makes it harder for the government to legally (or whatever) intercept calls.

I mention this because the actual documents governing the rules behind U.S. government interception of VoIP was leaked to Wikileaks on the 15th of March. Now, this is nothing new - CALEA requires VoIP providers to maintain wiretapping capability - just like the plain-old-telephone-service providers are. It's interesting, however, to see the documents. Or at least it might be to somebody else who is interested in network security and encryption.

But from a performance angle, the CALEA requirements for wiretapping are directly in opposition to the efficiency of a SIP VoIP network - that is, if a service provider must be in the middle of every call, it eliminates the benefits of the P2P structure. That adds a lot of network overhead.

The other new features in VoIP Monitor v1.1 are generally less conversation sparking - but no less important. Most of our other products, such as SuperAgent, have both automatic and on-demand problem investigation and capacity planning reports. These capabilities have been added to VoIP monitor in the new version.

Automatic investigations occur when a VoIP performance threshold - such as delay to dial tone - is exceeded. Then VoIP Monitor traces the call signaling path and compares it to the automatically generated baselines.

As far as capacity planning reports helps go, VoIP Monitor v1.1 providers enhanced reports on call volume, call quality, call failures, grade of service and gateway utilization. It provides a view of the effect of different call volumes. With this information, IT professionals can view capacity for specific locations or gateways or for the enterprise as a whole - the utilization reports are especially useful when negotiating contracts with service providers.

We have a demo of VoIP Monitor v1.1 up and running at VoiceCon in Orlando, at booth #1305, if you're attending.