Signal to Noise

Sent to me by Steve Johnson at InGate:

Unlike the impression given by Ted’s blog, Ingate Systems fully supports URI routing of SIP calls. Our firewall and SIParator products were designed from the beginning to enable enterprises to adopt SIP communications for global connectivity using URIs to route the calls over the public Internet and to resolve NAT traversal issues where they occur, at the enterprise edge. When ENUM was first introduced, Ingate and our sister company Intertex were among the first companies to offer products that support ENUM look up. Today Ingate is recognized as a leader in the adoption of SIP Trunking by enterprises, and offers its SIP Trunking module which includes this extensive routing functionality, to complement IP PBXs that have not implemented support for ENUM or URI routing.

I’m quite familiar with InGate’s products, and I understand their commitment to providing SIP trunk capabilities.  I was actually talking about directory services for named user to URI AND E.164 resolution–something none of the vendors can agree on right now (a very important reality, given the fact that people are going to have e.164 numbers for years and years to come). Sorry for the misleading post, Steve. And so this doesn’t turn into an InGate commercial, let me snip to the end of Steve’s message:

We fully endorse the position that Ted has made that URI routing and ENUM as important ingredients which are essential to the widespread adoption of SIP communications and Ingate offers products that support that view today.

Actually I’ve never been a big proponent of ENUM. I was referring to Shockey’s commentary at the VON event. I don’t even like ENUM; I think it’s a clunky half-solution, albeit one that solves a problem.  MY point is that a consensus standard for resolving user names to URIs and phone numbers in a directory service environment (not in a DNS hack) is essential to the widespread enterprise adoption of VoIP period, not just SIP.  In the same fashion, SIP URI-based call routing is also important for enterprise adoption of VoIP, as evidenced by the dwindling relevance of H.323 and MGCP (and by the bleak future, frankly, of ENUM.) The trouble is, getting all the players to agree on it without ‘giving away the farm’.

We’re not so underinformed here at Signal To Noise that we don’t realize InGate devices can do “SIP routing”.  Now go visit Mr. Johnson’s web site and buy a SIP device from him. Good stuff.