One final roll…

Intern-net

The list of restricted categories of websites access, where I’m interning (click to enlarge):

No wonder they say they look after us like parents!

BVoIP – a short history

Note: To be completed…

The basic setup of a VoIP system closely follows the traditional telephone network. Telephone numbers are replaced by IP addressed phone numbers, codecs are used to convert the analog voice signal into packets, and packet switching replaces the traditional circuit switching. Initially, it was possible to place just on-net calls – calls between two VoIP systems in the same network. This however would have given very limited commerical viability and development turned towards integrating VoIP with the mainstream PSTN network.

Even with the traditional telephone system, companies quickly realised that it didn’t make financial sense to go the PSTN every time to route calls even though both the caller and the callee belonged to the same network. The Private Branch eXchange or PBX was developed so that organisations having a large number of telephones could take care of internal and first-level switching and call routing, maintain extension numbers and manage the features provided for the telephone numbers under it.

Companies then realised that they were now spending too much resources on things that weren’t their core competency. For example, a Walmart or a Disneyland now had to employ people and dedicate time and money in maintaining all this equipment even though all these were just supplements to their actual businesses. This gave rise to the IP Centrex service (Centrex – CENTRal EXchange) where the PBX for the client is maintained by the telecom service provider.

There are two ways in which you can maintain and use VoIP –
1) a dedicated physical VoIP phone (like the ones we have in Manyata) connected via the LAN cable
2) VoIP software installed in a computer.
Either way, since the IP phones use the Internet, they can be administered by the provider anywhere there’s an Internet connection so that a VoIP phone is essentially like a mobile phone.

The Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) and the VoIP software are responsible for the various features and add-ons that you may want to opt for (apart from the mandatory functions like Dynamic IP Address resolution) : Caller ID, Call waiting, Call transfer, Auto Attendant, Three-way calling, Toll Free, voice mail, attaching voice messages to an email, etc. This part of the VoIP world is still in it’s nascent stage and a desi approach should make available third party software as add-ons and tweaks to ‘customize’ our VoIP phones to play a “busy” signal or a “non-in-service” message, or to even be able to ask our managers to join a conference bridge where 5 different voices keep telling how good we are.

One of the challenges faced by VoIP phones from totally replacing the traditional handsets is a power source – VoIP needs a constant power supply to be plugged into for it to work so that a power cut may effectively mean you’re without a phone. Also, since it’s internet based, VoIP is also susceptible to worms, viruses and hacking, although this is very rare and VoIP developers are working on VoIP encryption to counter this.

To be updated:
SIP, S77, authorized interception
problems in dialling Emergency 911 calls since VoIP uses IP-addressed phone numbers.
economics and infrastructure requirements
basic telecom – packet or circuit switching, codecs, etc

VoIP phone/computer <–> PBX <–> PSTN <–> PBX <–> VoIP phone/computer
|
| (if callee is within the loop)
v

10 by 10

So, how many people work in your company?
About 10%.

Waaaeennnn!!! He stole my candy!!!

My favourite eye candy is moving to greener pastures in around 2 weeks. While I’m definitely happy for the one in question, my heart bleeds, and soon so will my eyes. While an able replacement will surely come up in due time, the company will have to take the blame for any drop in any productivity I may currently have.

You know you’ve been spending too much time in office when

… you go to The Forum on a saturday morning and at the entrance, in a sudden moment of panic, search your pockets for your id card.
… you have a wonderful lunch on the said saturday and ask for a fruit bowl in place of the finger bowl.
… you go to a PCO (since your mobile’s gone kaput) and keep hitting a ‘0’ before you dial a local number.
… you see a stray cow on the road, note its sad expression, and remark to your friend, “This one looks like its delivery manager has asked it to quadruple its milk output on one-tenth the earlier allotment of hay and to do it thrice a day including sundays with cuts in the earlier amount of petting.”
… you have nothing to blog about other than crapping about deadlines, and yet write about hitting 0’s and sad buffaloes and expect readers (woohoo, anybody there?) to come back for more.

My apologies to Bangalore …

… for

The weather station at GKVK campus recorded an all-time low of 8.4 degree on Thursday….
During November, the minimum average temperature in Bangalore is normally around 18 degrees C.
The city is likely to experience a minimum temperature of 13 degrees whereas the airport area will have a minimum temperature of 12 degrees.

I’m sorry, I did do my best. But without the “fire-fighting” and the “project is burning” and the very popular “things are HOT” that my project’s been so faithfully providing all these years without ever “closing shop”, things like these temperature drops are bound to happen when things suddenly look like they’re smooth.

The article also talks about the climate and about the north-bay cyclones causing the change. Very interesting I tell you, especially those pics of Deepika Padukone in woollen lingerie. Link to the article here.

Haysooos!
I was kidding!
Er – are you there?

The last 2 weeks and the next 2 weeks of my life….

….Overloaded!

Overheard

“How is kutti?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening…”
“Kutti! How is kutti now?”
“I’m sorry, come again?”
” How is little-Christine?”
“I’m sorry?”

yeah, we’re sorry too Christine.

ps: in case any of you are as intellectually endowed as the one at one end of the above conversation, Christine’s from the US team who’s just returned from maternity leave, and ahem, some great guy here is trying to enquire about the baby while waiting for others to join their review call.

Well, atleast he didn’t think of getting babe and baby mixed up and using it in the greeting!

Ada aapicergala

Dear Managers,

Yes, I accept that certain things in life are funny. I can accept ironies and Murphy’s law. I can look at the lighter side of things. I can even take some of your dumb questions in the same vein as when the blonde heroine asks “What happened?” to James Bond (who’ll give answers like “He caught a train” or “I gave him a hand”). I can even appreciate how hard it is for you to pay tax for the bonus you received for bagging the Best Manager award.

But certain things are NOT funny.

Even if managers who are technical enough to switch off their PC’s or laptops without a “The Complete Idiot’s guide to Shut Down Windows XP” are fast becoming extinct, you should at least be able to read mails which contain detailed instructions (sent by someone who knows how dumb people can get to be) and follow them. Agreed. At times you may want to use something called intelligence and showcase your estimable knowledge of the application. But not at 11.30pm just before you go to sleep, never on days where a particular cycle of the project is ending, and never ever on issues which you have yourself called ‘burning’, ‘hot’, ‘critical’, ‘highly visible’ (even if you do have a tendency to call the same about anything you haven’t heard before).

Coz, in the end, some poor li’l developer like me will have to get into conference calls in the middle of the night and even start blogging about how he came to be in it.