VTech's IP 8100 was intended for use with Vonage, but it's a cinch to unlock and use with other SIP providers!

Longtime readers of this blog know that I’m a sucker for novel uses of technology, especially those that give me a chance to learn something new. So when I spotted a Vonage VoIP telephone on clearance at the local Best Buy, I couldn’t resist. After a quick Google search to confirm it could be unlocked and used with any provider, I took one home. I don’t have it working perfectly yet, but I’m well on the way into a new area of techie exploration: Voice-over-IP with SIP!

Introducing SIP

I was vaguely aware of the open voice-over-IP protocol, SIP, already since I’d run into it during my work with power-over-Ethernet and Cisco router configuration. I had also heard of Asterisk, the open source PBX software project, while hacking my (now decommissioned) Linksys NSLU2 home server. And I’ve been a VoIP user for years, relying on my cable company for home phone service and dabbling with Skype as an inexpensive second phone line for conference calls. But I had never looked too deeply at these things, let alone tried to put them all together!

Here’s what I know: SIP is an open protocol that sets up voice links between endpoints, much as HTTP is used to connect web browsers to servers. VoIP generally consists of a stream of UDP packets containing encoded voice traffic, and SIP manages the connection. SIP has historically had a hard time with NAT routers (like my Tomato-powered WRT54GL and most other consumer gear) but the advent of UPnP and STUN has made things work a bit better.

Although there are a wide variety of services that make use of the SIP protocol, it hasn’t really reached critical mass with end users. One reason for this is the search for revenue: Providers are reluctant to allow open traffic to flow across the network since only captive customers are profitable. This is the reason that companies like Vonage and Skype (not to mention Google’s cool new Voice offering) are walled off from the world.

The Inter-Phone-Network

Although a growing number of SIP services allow free calling and open connectivity, it is extremely difficult to get out of the SIP world and into conventional phone and Internet voice networks. It’s a lot like OpenID or XMPP: Most don’t support it at all, some are happy enough to allow you in, but no one wants to let you out!

I was interested in connecting to a few “voice networks”:

1. The conventional public switched telephone network (PSTN) world that we’re all familiar with: The domain of landlines, cell phones, conference calls, and fax machines. The PSTN doesn’t care about VoIP, so upstarts have to learn to connect to it!
2. SIP networks are a set of IP-driven services that shadow the PSTN. Many companies use internal SIP networks rather than conventional analog PBX systems, and there are public SIP providers as well. Most of these allow free unlimited use internally in hopes of attracting customers to pay for PSTN links.
3. Google Voice (formerly Grand Central) is a nifty call management service for PSTN services. Along with whiz-bang features like voicemail transcription and call screening, Google Voice has taken some tentative steps towards integration with the VoIP world. Since it (apparently) uses SIP internally, folks have been trying to connect Google Voice to SIP networks. The company currently allows just one, Gizmo, to connect natively.
4. The proprietary Skype VoIP network, which I’ve used for a while. Skype offers paid “SkypeOut” service, allowing unlimited calling to US and toll-free numbers for a low quarterly fee. I’ve been using this for a while and have grown dissatisfied with its quality, reliability, and feature set. The company also sells “SkypeIn“, which assigns a PSTN phone number to your Skype account, allowing folks to call your computer. There’s also an iPhone app and a world of Skype hardware, which is really little more than standard audio gear like headsets, microphones, and sound cards.

The Vtech IP 8100

The phone hardware I’m working with is a Vtech IP 8100-1 kit manufactured to support the (expensive) Vonage service. I picked it up on clearance (there are three more at $25 – anyone want one?) as it appears Vtech is out of this particular business. The kit consists of a base station (which is a hybrid home Ethernet router and 5.8 GHz phone base station) and a solid wireless handset with a speakerphone.

Vonage appears to be a straight SIP provider but it uses locked hardware to force customers to pony up more than $20 per month for service. Happily and predictably there is an active community working on unlocking Vonage hardware for use with any SIP provider. My new phone was (partially) running with Gizmo within 30 minutes of opening the box!

Here’s a quick rundown for the folks at home:

1. Open up the gear and charge the handset
2. Plug the base station’s WAN (lower) port into your network so it can talk to Vonage (the bottom light will turn green when it’s set)
3. Get on a Windows PC (finding one was actually the hardest part for me!)
4. Download the latest version of CYT unlock
5. Attach the PC’s ethernet port directly to the IP 8100′s LAN (upper) port
6. In a web browser, navigate to http://192.168.15.1 and log in with “VTech” as both the username and password and leave the window open
7. From the command line, run “cyt46.exe VTECH”
8. Select option 1 and wait

Now you have created a super user account with “Admin” (case sensitive!) as both the username and password. This unlocks a new “configuration” page where you can set all of the SIP parameters for your provider of choice. It also tells the base station not to look at the Vonage TFTP servers for its configuration anymore.

Seriously, unlocking the hardware was simple, but getting SIP service up and running is proving much more difficult!

SIP In, SIP Out

One key paradigm shift for VoIP users is the separation of inbound and outbound services. This seems alien to most folks, but VoIP users happily use one service to receive calls and a completely different one to place them. Google Voice is the shiny new incoming call handler that everyone wants to try, but most expect to continue to rely on unknowns like Gizmo or Nonoh for outbound service.

This is where my SIP experiments hit a rock: I was able to set up my Google Voice number (781-Ped-Xing, for all you Max Headroom freaks!) to route inbound calls to my now-Gizmo-powered SIP phone, but only when the Gizmo app was open and running. And outbound calling through Google or Gizmo didn’t work at all!

This is not, as they say, a satisfactory condition. So I’m working on it. I’ve considered running my own Asterisk server (on the Mac Mini) to take care of local SIP with my phone, but this seems overly complex. I’d really love it if I could get Gizmo to work correctly, using Google for inbound calls and Gizmo for outbound, but this isn’t working yet. I’ve also considered using another service provider altogether but found their pricing and terms to be questionable. Plus, only Gizmo connects to Google!

I’ll keep working on it, posting the results here. Subscribe to my Terabyte Home feed via RSS or email to follow this discussion, and let me know if you have any suggestions! And if you want a Vtech IP 8100 kit, drop by your local Best Buy’s clearance section or drop me a line and I’ll grab one for you!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Experimenting With VoIP
This post was categorized as Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Mac Mini (Early 2009) unboxed at last

I’ve been waiting on a Mac Mini to replace my sluggish and crash-prone Firefly/NSLU2 home music and file server, and Apple finally delivered the goods today, after leaving us in the lurch at Macworld 2009! I’ve placed my order for a base-model Mac Mini, and look forward to using Apple’s iPhone Remote with the Airport Express AirTunes as my primary home music playing system.

What’s new with the Mac Mini? And was it worth waiting for? I think so!

• Faster CPUs – The old 1.83 and 2.0 GHz Core 2 has been replaced by a choice of 2.0 or 2.26 GHz chips, both with a much-faster 1066 MHz front-side bus. And these are the new Penryn (probably 3M 45 nm mobile) chips, replacing the old Merom units of the previous Mini, so they run faster clock-for-clock and cooler.
• Upgraded graphics – Where the old Mini relied on Intel’s tortoise-like GMA 950 integrated graphics, the new Mini has the new NVIDIA 9400M platform, also found on the new MacBook. This means the Mini is not only a capable game machine, but can make use of Apple’s Grand Central/OpenCL technology in Snow Leopard, when it’s delivered.
• Dual-monitor support – The Mini has both a Mini DisplayPort and Micro-DVI port, so you can use two monitors at once. It comes with a DVI cable, but if you want to use VGA you have to buy an adapter (unless your monitor is Apple’s massive-dollar LED Cinema Display!)
• FireWire remains – Despite all the rumors, the Mini retains a FireWire port, and adds an extra USB port to boot! But like the display port, the FireWire is an S800 port, so you need an adapter to hook up the older, and much more common, S400 devices.

You might also be interested in my more detailed Mac Mini review, or my post on upgrading the RAM and hard disk drive in my Mac Mini!

But the best reason to use a Mac Mini as a home server is Apple’s software. OS X remains a solid platform, with excellent network file service support, and Snow Leopard should make it even better. The combination of ZFS and two hard drives in a Mac Mini will be killer! Plus, Apple’s AirTunes/iTunes/Remote ecosystem makes a very snazzy home music service. Maybe I’ll add an Apple TV, too?

All considered, this is a solid if uninspiring upgrade. It’s a MacBook in a little box with a FireWire port and half the price tag. Nothing amazing, but a solid choice for a home server, which is what I plan to use it for. As for the configurations, I wonder who Apple is kidding. The $200-extra high-end model adds an extra GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard disk over the 1 GB/120 GB base model. If you want the faster 2.26 GHz CPU, you have to build to order and shell out an extra $150. So the base model is the most compelling choice, since upgrading RAM and disk is straightforward. I’ll use the extra 1 GB  module left over from my MacBook Pro upgrade.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | The New Mac Mini is Finally Here!
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Homes now need data storage as well as closets...

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

Along with my professional focus on enterprise storage systems, I’m enamored of home networking, and recently passed the three terabyte mark at home! This got me thinking about where home storage is heading.

As you can see in the photo, my office closet is overflowing with computer equipment (and one sweet guitar), but my data storage is much better organized. I have a hacked Linksys NSLU2 with 500 GB as a file server, a 500 GB PC backup disk, a 160 GB Time Machine disk, 1 TB of TiVo storage, and the rest. But wouldn’t it be nice if this could all be combined into some kind of super home server?

Past Failures: Home Servers

Home storage appliances and servers have come and gone over the year, with none seeming to make much of a mark. The market remains littered with UPNP media servers and home NAS boxes dashed on the shoals of an unappreciative public. Nearly every home network device company has produced one or two home storage servers, none of which have succeeded. Although I use a Linksys NSLU2 at home, I had to hack its Linux software and completely replace Linksys’ features to create a useful device! The un-hacked NAS devices of Buffalo, Western Digital, Netgear, and the rest have generally failed to find buyers as well. So far, consumers seem content with simple USB and FireWire external drives.

The most adventurous home storage servers came from Zetera and Ximeta, both of whom relied on proprietary IP SAN protocols. Note that these were SAN products, sharing block storage over Ethernet, rather than conventional NAS solutions. Both required drivers, limiting client support. The one Zetera buyer I know was pleased by the performance but never used the device as anything but a large hard drive for one PC.

Then there is Microsoft. Recall that the latest Windows Home Server is only their latest attempt to enter this market, and yet I know of no one who has adopted the device. The same can be said of the various media center servers from Microsoft and others. At this point, it seems likely that the future of home storage servers will not come from Microsoft, though their two XBox generations have great potential as clients.

Even EMC has entered the market with their nifty (but largely unnoticed) LifeLine product and Iomega acquisition. Supporting file services and backup for computers as well as audio and video for media players, EMC positions LifeLine much like their Retrospect backup product, but goes further in offering a complete software solution for hardware OEMs wanting to offer a non-Windows home server. Although an impressive offering, it is too early to tell if EMC will have much success with this product.

The Sleek, Shiny Elephant in the Living Room

Of course, there is one company that sells media players and servers by the bushel, complete with sleek, shiny interfaces. Apple’s tremendous success with the iPod has led to their iTunes software becoming the dominant media organization platform, complete with its own proprietary discovery and sharing protocol. Now, with the Apple TV and video iPods, the company is broadening into more media categories. Surely their dominance here puts them in a special position when it comes to setting the stage for a home server or storage revolution.

They also have a strong position in the world of dedicated home storage. Their Airport products are among the only routers to be widely implemented with shared storage. Although many other companies offer similar products, low customer understanding means that these functions are not widely used. And the new Time Capsule device is surely already the most widely-used home NAS product.

But Apple has not yet shown any home server strategy. Administering multiple iTunes servers can be frustrating for users, with no inter-iTunes synchronization or centralization capability. Although the Mac Mini, Apple TV, or Time Capsule could certainly be seen as a home server, the company does not position them as such in the market. Indeed, some iTunes users like myself rely on compatible third party media servers like Firefly and TwonkyVision rather than using iTunes itself. Still, rumors of an Apple home server persist.

One issue for Apple is their reliance on proprietary protocols. Although the Bonjour discovery protocol is certainly simpler than UPnP in practice, Apple stands alone in relying on it. They also steadfastly stick to AFP for NAS and DAAP for remote media streaming. This limits the number of third-party clients and servers that can be used with their hardware and software.

The Future is Friendly

Although Apple has not yet tipped a home storage strategy beyond Time Capsule and Airport Extreme, they are best positioned to deliver a real home storage solution. A simple step would be to create an iTunes media server integrated with Time Capsule and add client/server media synchronization. The company already has OS X backup and file services integrated, and this move would further centralize the digital home around Apple products. But the company’s reliance on closed protocols like DAAP is worrisome, since it locks consumers into nearly all-Apple solutions.

Microsoft’s Media Center and Home Server combination, based around UPnP, shows great promise, with many compatible third-party clients and servers already available. But my own experience with the solution has not been at all positive (I still can’t get my Roku SoundBridge, Vista Ultimate laptop, and Media Center PC to see each other!), leading me to question the viability of this option.

Although Apple or Microsoft could come to dominate, I suspect the future of home storage is out of both companies hands. A number of others are working on improved home server experiences, including EMC’s LifeLine and the expanding use of Debian Linux and open source tools. But all could be sidelined by improved Internet-based services. Google, Microsoft, and Apple continue to expand their online consumer suites with greater storage, synchronization, multimedia integration, and all have the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for in-home storage.

Although I cannot yet tell which service will win, one thing is certain: Consumers demand friendly, flexible solutions. They don’t want to fuss with their media, and they don’t want simple shared storage. They want integration with multiple devices and flexibility to access their content on any device. The first company to offer a simple, flexible storage server for the home will surely be on the right track!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | The Future of Home Storage
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It amuses me to think of the statistics:

• We have 11,284 tracks stored, including 279 Christmas songs and 549 kids songs!
• Most songs were ripped using LAME at the VBR3 setting in joint stereo
• This music library takes up 58 GB of storage on my NSLU2/Firefly server
• The jewel cases take up six large cardboard boxes, but the original discs take up just two fat CD storage books

We’ve quickly adapted to a hierarchical model for home music distribution.  The main server has everything, so our two Roku Soundbridge players play directly from it.  But we also use iTunes on three machines, and have imported a subset of the music to each based on personal preference.  From these iTunes implementations, we sync a sub-subset to our iPods – a 40 GB click wheel, two iPhones, and two Shuffles.

Although our TiVos can play MP3 files over the network, we don’t bother.  It just seems wrong to turn on the TV to listen to music…  Similarly, we don’t use Windows Media Player for much of anything, even though it’s compatible with the Soundbridges and media server.

We listen to a lot more Internet Radio than I thought we would, too.  Sometimes we’ll even tune in WKSU over the Internet rather than hoping for good FM reception.  And I’m listening to WBUR a lot again, too.

I’ve also started to rip DVDs to watch on the iPhone, and am storing these on the NSLU2 too.   Add in the iPhone versions created automatically by TiVo Desktop Plus, and I’m amassing a large collection of H.264 media.  In fact, I’ve already got 50 GB of H.264 video stored up there!  Makes me want to go get an Apple TV so I can easily watch it at home.  Is the end of the DVD coming soon, too?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | No More CDs
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

What Is Drobo?

First, let’s talk about what Drobo’s current product is and isn’t. It is basically an external USB drive enclosure for a single PC – think about your basic Western Digital MyBook or Seagate FreeAgent and you’re almost there. But it doesn’t come with any hard disks; instead, it has slots for four that you add yourself, so adjust your thinking accordingly.

OK, you say, I’ve got that. A shiny 4-slot RAID enclosure, right? Well not so fast. It doesn’t use any of the common RAID levels, and proudly so. Instead, it uses virtualization and what looks to be automated block-based data mirroring to protect the data. It appears to protect data “on write”, meaning it is ready to run quicker when you add or replace a disk. Instead of running through a time-consuming RAID rebuild, it would just copy the blocks needing protection to the new disk.

Yeah, I said virtualization, but that’s not the only enterprise storage buzzword you’ll find in this little device! It’s also got thin provisioning! No kidding – in order to deal with the fact that operating systems don’t like to see their disks grow, the Drobo just tells the OS that it always has 2 TB available, regardless of the number or size of the disks installed. This might prove disconcerting to users, though…

Data Protection

This alternative approach to data protection can lead to some strange capacity situations. Basically, the device reserves an amount of space equal to the largest drive for data protection. Note: the following examples use the weird disk industry capacity numbers, not the actual usable numbers…

Put in three 500 GB drives and you’ve got 1 TB to use (500+500+500-500). Add another and you’ve got 1.5 TB (500+500+500+500-500).

Swap one of those half-terabyte drives out for a 1 TB unit and the Drobo “reserves” half of the big drive and treats it like a 500 gigger, so you still have 1.5 TB available (500+500+500+1000-1000). This can lead to some weird situations when really large drives are mixed with small ones – A 100 GB drive and a 1 TB drive equals 100 GB of space (100+1000-1000), potentially confusing customers who just spent some big bucks on a giant disk!

This guy would be better served capacity-wise by popping out that little 100 GB disk and just using the terabyte unit, which would give 500 GB of usable space. That’s right, the unit also allows you to use a single drive, and configures it to “protect” itself! Of course, the engineer in me wonders about the logic in mirroring blocks to the same drive – protection from drive failure, of course, would be lacking, but also think of the seeking as the drive churns to write every I/O twice!

Try out the online “Drobolator” to see how it works for yourself…

Drobo Grows Up

But I digress. Just put two or more drives of similar sizes in your Drobo and be done with it. One really nice thing about the device is that you can mix and match drives as needed, swapping out big and small depending on what you have available. Mixing drive types and sizes would disagree with most RAID controllers, but the Drobo eats them up, allocating as effectively as possible.

This is probably the nicest aspect of the device. You just leave it on and connected and in use and add and remove drives according to your needs and resources. Drobo handles all the setup and configuration – just slide the drive in and you’re done. Once you’ve initially formatted the 2 TB (thin provisioned) drive, you never have to do any more configuration. Data migration is unneeded too, since Drobo’s data protection system keeps the information continually available. Start with the old 160 GB drives you have today and swap them out for 500 GB or 1 TB drives next year and everything just works.

One of the best sources for big cheap drives is likely to be those selfsame MyBook and FreeAgent external disks I mentioned above. These often go on sale at big-box retailers for well below the cost of a bare drive, and most use the best SATA drives offered by their manufacturers. The MyBook Premium ES I have, for example, included Western Digital’s impressive 500 GB Caviar SE16 drive mechanism. Purchased at Best Buy for $139, it was far cheaper than the drive alone would have been at the time. While the old Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 used a PATA drive (I checked…), the newer ones apparently switched to SATA, too, and were on sale for $79 for 500 GB last week!

I’ll Buy One When…

Despite my interest in the device, I don’t have a Drobo myself, and probably wouldn’t buy one at this point since it doesn’t really meet my needs. First, Drobo is a USB-only device for PCs and Macs. Although I bet the Linux EXT3 filesystem used by my Linksys NSLU2 home server would work, it’s not explicitly supported by the company. If it was a NAS device, serving storage over Ethernet, I would be much more interested in adding it next to the Slug.

But I’m not a typical end user – most people use a home desktop as a standalone device and would be pleased with an easy to use USB device with massive storage. One issue for these folks is that many use a laptop as their only system, moving around the house, and the chunky Drobo wouldn’t be a good solution for them.

But if you’re a Mac desktop user, Drobo looks like an awesome choice. Add Leopard’s innovative Time Machine to a Drobo and never lose data again!

One device that I would love to hook a Drobo to is my TiVo Series 3. It would be brilliant to have a super-reliable, upgradable storage system to hold video content with no management needed. But the device lets me down here again since the TiVo needs eSATA not USB storage.

Maybe Drobo 2 will add eSATA? NAS? Coffee making?

Oh, and if you were wondering what Geoff Barrall of BlueArc did for his next act, look no further than Data Robotics! Quite a change – enterprise NAS to consumer storage… Who’s your marketing genius, Geoff?

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Why I Like Drobo
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I’ve bought two 3200′s and a Western Digital MyBook (500 GB each) over the last 9 months, adding 1.5 TB to my home environment without opening a computer case or spending a fortune. The MyBook (which has eSATA) is connected to the Series 3 TiVo, one of the 3200′s is connected to my NSLU2 for home server duty, and the other is doing backup duty.

And, yeah, the most recent 3200 had that Chinese virus problem, but Avira’s AntiVir blocked it and a quick reformat wiped it clean… It’s kind of amusing to be personally affected by a tech meme, isn’t it?

With the advent of “quick enough” USB 2.0 and blazing fast eSATA, I wouldn’t be surprised if these external drives change the face of the PC. I already know of a few folks who have switched to the Mac Mini and are hanging these drives outside instead of buying a big empty case to house internal storage. And the laptop market is booming, threatening to replace the traditional desktop PC. Perhaps the idea of a Lego brick PC wasn’t a bad one after all – it was just waiting for USB to ramp up the speed…

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Terabytes on the Cheap
This post was categorized as Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I wonder why they decided to clear it out. It was brand new, and had never appeared on their shelves that I noticed. It couldn’t have been displayed for more than a month or two since it was the new 1001 model. Oh well, their loss, my gain!

I’ve also monkeyed with my media server. I was running Unslung as my OS on the NSLU2, but I got sick of its weirdness, and it kept running out of memory. So I wiped it and went for SlugOS/BE (aka OpenSlug), a very trimmed down OS for the Slug. The Firefly Media Server people don’t officially support it, but I was able to get it running in short order. It seems much more stable and responsive. And I replaced the old Linksys build of Samba with version 3, which is much speedier and uses far less CPU time. I’m happy!

As an aside, did you know that Best Buy will haggle on their clearance items? Ask the manager, and they can easily knock off 15% to 25% from the yellow-sticker price!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Another Roku Soundbridge
This post was categorized as Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.