1. The ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service Jimmy Shih, Anthony Joseph, Randy Katz

2. Public Switched Telephone Network Background What is H.323? What is an H.323 gateway? What is the ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service? Internet H.323 Gateway

3. Part of the ICEBERG Testbed Indoor Coverage Indoor/Outdoor Coverage Local Area Network Proxy H.323 Gateway Public Switched Telephone Network 1900 MHz GSM Cellular Base Station Outdoor Coverage 1800 MHz GSM Cellular Base Station Data Converter Controller Paging Base Station

4. Outline Describe our initial ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service. Describe our second iteration of the ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service. Describe our research plans.

5. The Initial ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service Goals: Integrate the Motorola Vanguard H.323 gateway. Let people use the H.323 gateway to make and receive telephone calls.

6. The Initial Testbed Motorola Vanguard H.323 Gateway Two Telephone Lines, 100 Mbits Ethernet H.323 Proxy using Lucent Elemedia H.323 Protocol Stack to perform Admission Control Pricing, Charging, & Billing Call Routing & Hunt Group Motorola Vanguard H.323 Gateway H.323 Proxy Public Switched Telephone Network Local Area Network Two Telephone Lines 100 Mbits Ethernet

7. The Initial Experiment 12 users in our research group. Each user has certain number of tokens for making and receiving telephone calls using Microsoft NetMeeting. Limit to Windows platform. Limit outgoing calls to local and campus numbers. Users perform location updates to receive incoming calls on their computers. No security in place.

8. The Initial Experiment Billing statements sent to users through emails. Billing statements contain. Caller and callee of the call. Time & duration of the call. Cost of the call. Number of tokens left.

9. Experience From the Initial Experiment Work pretty well. Sound quality is good. Similar to telephone quality. Easy to setup NetMeeting and the interface to the H.323 gateway. Hard to get people to continue using it. First week, 88 calls. Fourth week, 17 calls. Only provide the basic telephone functionality. People already have telephones in their offices. Lesson Learned. Should make the service really cheap or make the service more useful.

10. Second Iteration of the ICEBERG H.323 Computer Telephony Service Goals: Have about 500 users (undergraduates) using the service. Explore research issues like congestion pricing, multicast billing, & datagram billing.

11. The Second Iteration of the Testbed Provide users with a Web interface. To support all platforms. To provide real-time pricing and billing information. Integrate with the IMAP email service. Web Server (H.323 Proxy using the upgraded Lucent Elemedia H.323 Protocol Stack). Relational Database. Upgraded Motorola Vanguard H.323 Gateway. Primary Rate ISDN line (24 simultaneous voice calls), 100 Mbits Ethernet. Motorola Vanguard H.323 Gateway Web Server (H.323 Proxy) Public Switched Telephone Network Local Area Network Primary Rate ISDN Line 100 Mbits Ethernet Relational Database

12. Research Issues for the Second Iteration: Congestion Pricing See if we can use prices to solve congestion at the H.323 gateway. See if we can use prices to solve congestion across multiple service providers. Provide integrated billing. Use a Clearing House to find the best path across multiple service providers.

13. Congestion Pricing Across Multiple Service Providers. Logically: One service provider responsible for calls in each area code. Physically: Emulate multiple service providers in our H.323 gateway. 415 Area Code Service Provider H.323 Gateway 415 ACSP 650 ACSP 510 ACSP Internet 650 Area Code Service Provider 510 Area Code Service Provider 415 Area Code 650 Area Code 510 Area Code PSTN Logical PicturePhysical Picture

14. More Research Issues for the Second Iteration Datagram services like voice message delivery service. Fast delivery with no call setup across multiple service providers. Allow sender and receiver to decide who should pay. Reliable and unreliable datagram services. Multicast services like multi-party calls. Allow participants to decide on how to split the costs. Readjust billing when membership changes.

15. Concluding Remarks Use the H.323 gateway to provide useful communication services to the EECS community. Use the H.323 gateway testbed to explore economic & system research issues regarding pricing, charging, and billing. Limitation. With one H.323 gateway, we can only perform medium scale experiments.

16. Acknowledgement Keith Sklower Brian Shiratsuki Michael Gould (Motorola)