The key opportunities and threats raised by the growing use of services over IP

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Overview: What is IP?

We live in an age where the Internet is the de facto media for publishing, collaboration, and information distribution - whether in traditional on-screen data and print formats, or voice and video formats everything is over IP, "everything" will include phone and fax calls, video conferencing, broadcast television and radio. This is likely to be a wonderful thing. "Everything over IP" is a decades old mantra.

IP (Internet Protocol) is the standard that allows dissimilar hosts to connect to each other through the Internet. This protocol defines the IP datagram as the basic unit of information sent over the Internet. The IP datagram consists of an IP header followed by a message.
IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) describes a system where a digital television service is delivered to subscribing consumers using the Internet Protocol over a broadband connection.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). The technology used to transmit voice conversations over a data network using the Internet Protocol. Such data network may be the Internet or a corporate Intranet.
IP services market is predicted to continue to be a strong growth area for the foreseeable future and is recommended as a good market sector in which to invest the time, effort, and money.
IP networks are now used to handle an increasing number of voice calls. While the bulk of this telephone traffic is currently enterprise, consumers are dabbling in IP Telephony (alias Voice over IP, VoIP). As products are commoditized and public services mature, new voice-data applications will be offered, encouraging even broader adoption. IP telephony will also encourage underlying medium agnosticism, catering in particular to mobile applications.

The telecom operators can now enter the television distribution market and offer triple play, which is telephony, data access and entertainment, over the same access.
Triple Play is an expression used by service operators describing a consumer package including telephony, data and video. Offering tripleplay on a broadband connection requires the use of IPTV and IP Telephony (Voice over IP, VoIP). The distribution of television over Internet protocol, or IPTV, is one such value-added service that is expected to address the issue of retaining the customer base while also generating new revenues.
The increase of the IP services use can be supported by the Figure below, which shows the statistics of international Internet capacity and traffic.

Figure 1. International Internet Bandwidth Growth, 2000-2005

Source: TeleGeography research

About the key opportunities of IP services growth

1. First of all the growing use of services over IP will contribute to the development of the Integrated Network in which data, video and voice will be easily sent by means of IP/TCP Protocol. This is practically more convenient to use one cable and one transmitting system to exchange all necessary information. From the economic point of view more customers will be able to connect to this network as it will be more cheaper and less bulky, and no doubt this will result in the increase of the people’s educational and information level. From the manufacturer’s point of view to build one main network and add all necessary services (such as Call-centers for example) is economically more rational than to develop several small ones for Internet, TV and traditional telephony.

2. Second, you want to communicate with others and to get some recreational programs – there is no better way than to use IP services with their simplicity in use, high quality (especially high speed) and low tariffs (all IP services providing companies are aimed at lowering the prices). The usage of IP telephony enables you to save on international and intercity calls but not to lose on quality. Global rouming also require less outlays. All day long you can watch your favorite TV programs with delays and without advertisement using IPTV.

3. Another opportunity is departments’ integration in one information structure. Recently with the development of information technologies different branches of one company in order to operate quicker integrate their channels forming an Intranet which function on the base of IP.

4. Business in telecommunications is a serious deal and several companies will go bankrupt. However many flexible companies will get profits.

5. Ultimately IP Communication will bring the humanity to the new qualitative level of Telecommunication development, on which basis new services can be designed.

From the other side, threats present…

1. I think that the most serious problem that can arise is that in this abundance of new and not-new services some people wouldn’t be able to get them. The reason isn’t that they don’t want but that the quality of IP Addresses is limited and one day it will be over.
IP Address Network addresses are usually of two types: (1) the physical or hardware address of a network interface card; for Ethernet this 48-bit address might be 0260.8C00.7666. The hardware address is used to forward packets within a physical network. (2) The logical or IP Address is used to facilitate moving data between physical networks and is made up of a network number, a subnetwork number, and a host number. All Internet addresses at SDSU have a network number of 130.191, a subnet number in the range of 1-254, and a host number in the range of 1-254.
The IP addresses of the 5th version are now ending (for example laptops require new IP Address each time they connect to the Internet) and to work out the next 6th version is the key task nowadays though this problem isn’t highlighted.

2. Another problem we should think over very carefully is the ecological aspect. Most of us know that cables and other electrical devices create an electro-magnetic sphere around them but less know how it really affects us. Broadband networks which are used in IP Telephony and Video are over saturated with digital bits and voltage in such networks is rather high. We get short-sighted mainly due to the full-time use of computer recourses but why we can’t stop?
3. Another threats concern certification, licensing and governmental policy that can write down all telecommunication achievements.
IPT phones and computers running IPT software (IPT softphones) are more computer than phone. They have operating and file systems, use Internet protocols, and run data and management as well as voice applications. They are vulnerable to unauthorized access, privilege escalation and "system" misuse, viruses and worms, and all the "classic" denial of service attacks that exploit network protocols (TCP, IP, ICMP, ARP). As a result your voice, data or video information can be transmitted wrongly. To cope with this many companies improve the security but threats of attack still exist.

SO,

As we can see much remains to be seen in future but the fact is that IP services are fast developing, offering their users possibilities and opportunities that are necessary, comfortable and attractive for them. With the development and the growth of IP services people “develop” too, and in their turn develop telecommunication technologies. This is a circle of evolution and as long as we are in it we are on the right way.

References:
1.Dave Piscitello's Personal Journal
2.Definitions of IP, VoIP, IPTV on the Web
3.Svyazist Journal
4.www.internet.ru
5.http://ip-telefon.ru/what_is.html
6.Abundant Opportunities in IP Telephony by Ed Tittel

Belyanchikova Maria