Practical Voip Using Vocal [Paperback]

David Kelly (Author), Cullen Jennings (Author), Luan Dang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2002

While many books describe the theory behind Voice over IP, only Practical VoIP Using VOCAL describes how such a phone system was actually built, and how you too can acquire the source code, install it onto a system, connect phones, and make calls.

VOCAL (the Vovida Open Communication Application Library) is an open source software project that provides call control, routing, media, policy, billing information and provisioning on a system that can range from a single box in a lab with a few test phones to a large, multi-host carrier grade network supporting hundreds of thousands of users. VOCAL is freely available from the Cisco Systems-sponsored Vovida.org community web site (www.vovida.org).

A Silicon Valley start-up called Vovida Networks, Inc (think of VOice, VIdeo, DAta) created VOCAL and invested over one hundred man years into its development. Since Cisco acquired Vovida in 2000, individuals representing every significant telecom company and service provider in the world have downloaded the source code. Today, more and more people are successfully building VOCAL into professional solutions, while contributing fixes and new functionality back to Vovida.org.

Because VOCAL is open source, you can look "under the hood" to the base code and protocol stack levels and discover not only how the system works, but also how common problems are being worked out in the development environment. We're hoping that you will be inspired to take this system to another level by implementing a feature or functionality that no one has thought of before.

Written by a team from Vovida Networks, Practical VoIP Using VOCAL includes the following topics

:

• Installing and configuring VOCAL 1.4.0 onto a single host and onto a multi-host network with phones and gateways
• C++, C and Java architecture found within VOCAL
• Provisioning a VoIP system
• SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), SDP (Session Description Protocol) and RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) for call control and media
• TRIP (Telephony Routing over IP), DNS SRV and ENUM for routing
• MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol) and H.323 for call control and translation into SIP
• COPS (Common Open Policy Service), OSP (Open Settlement Protocol) and RSVP (Reservation Protocol) for policy and Quality of Service
• RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) for interfacing with billing servers
• SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)

If you're interested in VoIP, this is the only book available that focuses on the real issues facing programmers and administrators who need to work with these technologies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cullen Jennings is the Manager of Software Development in the Voice Architecture Group at Cisco Systems. Previously, he was vice president of engineering for Vovida Networks. His background includes management, consulting, and development both for technology-based companies and for educational institutions. Cullen is a member of the IEEE and ACM and has published numerous technical articles.

Luan Dang is Director of Software Development at Cisco Systems. Previously, Luan was Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Vovida Networks. Luan is currently a member of the Technical Advisory Council for the International Softswitch Consortium and has previously filed telephony patents for voice-over-IP (1999) and caller IP (1998). Luan has also been granted a patent for the display screen management apparatus in 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 522 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (July 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596000782
• ISBN-13: 978-0596000783
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #738,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Telephony

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a credible open source implementation, March 1, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Voip Using Vocal (Paperback)

VoIP usage is surging amongst many users worldwide. A pack of startups has been established; each trying to dominate this field. And ATT and other large phone companies are also starting to jump in. With all this, the average VoIP user expects it to be virtually indistinguishable from an traditional phone experience.

Well, that is where this book and you come into the scene. To make that simple user experience requires a huge amount of technical work. The book gives you a detailed appreciation of what that involves. This VOCAL is "only" one VoIP implementation. But it may be attractive, because it is open source. The book's authors were instrumental in designing VOCAL and offer the book as the definitive text on it. They give a lot of functionality, with the added promise that it is very scalable.

I cannot discern from the book how VOCAL will fare against well funded proprietary VoIP solutions. But at least VOCAL seems to give them serious opposition, as a credible and free alternative.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Source those cheap Net phone-calls, June 2, 2006

By 

FN "fredericknoronha" (Goa, India 403511) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Voip Using Vocal (Paperback)

Source those cheap Net phone-calls

Reviewed by: Frederick Noronha

Practical VoIP Using
VOCAL Luan Dang,
Cullen Jennings
& David Kelly
Publisher: O' Reilly, 2002
Price: $44.95

From the cover, an angry-looking snipefish stares out at you. Across its five-hundred odd pages, a sea of technical data greets you. Practical VoIP Using VOCAL is a book for those wanting to build their own VoIP system. Voice over Internet Protocol software improvements (with better bandwidth and processing speed) have made Internet telephony a decent-enough option to consider.

This book describes how the system is actually built. You can acquire the source code, install it onto a system, connect phones and make calls.

Co-author Dang is co-founder of Vovida Networks. VOCAL (the Vovida Open Communication Library) is an open-source software project. It provides call control, routing, media, policy, billing information and provisioning.

Your system can scale from a single box to multihost carrier grade. VOCAL is freely available from the Cisco-sponsored Vovida.org site. VOCAL is open-source. You can see not just how the system works, but also how common problems are being worked out in the development environment.

This book promises to "show how to implement, program and administer VoIP systems using open-source tools." As co-author Jennings argues: "Along with other VoIP applications, VOCAL is actively inverting the way telephony is deployed by allowing an Internet-style anarchy that was never possible in the traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). It has been a fun area to work in."

True. For us in India, since Fool's Day 2002, the area of Internet telephony has become a reality. Who doesn't want inexpensive telephone calls over the Internet, limiting long-distance charges to the nominal cost of
e-mail?

But the price of this US-published book (almost US$45), for us here, is still an issue. Hopefully the Indian edition at more affordable rates won't be too long in coming. All in all, a good book for those interested in this field. And, this is a field more should definitely get interested, if we're to enable the world's second-largest populated country to have more affordable access to communicating globally.