[Asterisk-Dev] Henning G. Schulzrinne quote on IAX2 from von magazine

[Mike Taht]

from: http://www.vonmag.com/issue/2005/jul/features/pioneers.htm

" IAX2 is a limited-functionality protocol for voice only. It carries voice 
and signaling on the same channel, which simplifies NAT traversal, but would 
be severely limiting for larger-scale applications, particularly those 
involving mobility. PSTN folks will be familiar with terms such as 
hairpinning and tromboning, which are partially due to having signaling and 
audio bits traverse the same path. Thus, I do not believe that IAX2 will be 
suitable for larger-scale use, even though it works reasonably well for 
simple PBX setups. Since there are now well-developed protocol solutions for 
NAT traversal in SIP and since it is clearly possible to build low-cost SIP 
phones, I don't see the long-term advantage of a limited-functionality 
protocol that doesn't easily extend to call features, presence, event 
notification, instant messaging or even multimedia."

He then spends another dozen paragraphs discussing skype. Now, my take on 
the statement above is that he doesn't have a clue about the potential and 
features of IAX2 - that he hasn't seen IAX2 based applications like firefly 
(which has features like, presence, event notification, IM, and multimedia) 
- and that he doesn't grok that ethernet packets generally arrive one at a 
time regardless of whether or not they are broken up into separate signaling 
and data packets... 

but hey, maybe the folk on this list understand where he's coming from and 
can explain why sip is better....

-- 
Mike Taht
PostCards From the Bleeding Edge
http://the-edge.blogspot.com
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