There are free conference bridges that only use the PSTN - they make money by reverse termination charges (for example /www.freeconference.com ). There are very expensive conference bridges that do cool tricks SS7 technology. There are free confernce bridges that use SIP/H.323/IAX/ Skype (but as far as I know, not Jingle). There are very expensinve confernce bridges that use SIP - actually SIP seems to be the preferred way to build a really expensive conference service these days. The cost of a conference bridge has pretty close to nothing to do with the signaling protocol. It has to do with if you can reach a human operator and say "can you phone me back at room 252 in the following hotel in Istanbul, I don't know the country code and have no idea if the hotel phone number I have includes anything like an city code". Or you can ask the operator to find the line with the bad echo and disconnect it. I'm sure that opinions vary widely on if we need this level of conference bridge or not but today we have that and when you need it, well it is nice to have. My personal opinion as a someone that has been on these calls is that I could live with the following: 1) a bridge that worked every single time 2) web interface where one could initiate dial out to DID numbers 3) web interface where someone could mute participants that had put the conference on music on hold 4) would be nice to have web interface that showed active speaker This is blasphemy but I don't care if it has an VoIP interface or not, but I absolutely have to be able to call it from my mobile phone. Obviously I think it would be cool if I could use VoIP with wideband audio. Cullen PS - as a WAG on the budget estimate below, I would guess the IESG uses something like 150 hours of conferencing a year. On Feb 11, 2008, at 8:55 AM, Dan York wrote: > I'm with Richard on this one. I have to think that among the many > companies that make up the IETF there exists a couple with > conferencing bridges that can support SIP endpoints! ;-) Can we > move some of this conversation in the bill below onto the Internet > using systems where our costs essentially go to $0? (Obviously we > still need to communicate to non-wired folks across the PSTN, such > as event location facilities, etc.) > > Or is the issue really that, as Jonathan Christensen of Skype > states, the original vision of SIP for rich communications remains > "unrealistic"[1]? That as a practical matter we *can't* use SIP > endpoints due to NAT traversal, security issues, federation/trust > issues, etc? > > My 2 cents, > Dan > > P.S. How many folks out there have phones (hard or soft) from which > they can place calls to other random SIP endpoints? (I do, but also > realize I'm in a minority.) > > [1] http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/2008/02/09/ecomm2008-jonathan-christensen-of-skype-and-the-unreal-vision-of-sip/ > > > > On Feb 9, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Richard Shockey wrote: > >> And this coming from the Standards body that has developed SIP ... >> unbelievable. I don't think I'm going to listen to any more >> arguments about >> IPv6 experiments during Plenary's any more. >> >>> >>> One thing the IAOC is looking at at this instant is our phone bill. >>> The IETF's phone budget for 2008 is >>> >>> IESG: $58,800 >>> IAB: $22,500 >>> Nomcom: $30,000 >>> IASA/IAOC: $17,235 >>> --------- >>> $128,535 >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ietf mailing list >> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >> http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > > -- > Dan York, CISSP, Director of Emerging Communication Technology > Office of the CTO Voxeo Corporation dyork@xxxxxxxxx > Phone: +1-407-455-5859 http://www.voxeo.com > SIP: dyork@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Skype: danyork > Blogs: http://blogs.voxeo.com http://www.disruptivetelephony.com > > Bring your web applications to the phone. > Find out how at http://evolution.voxeo.com > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf