"I'm not certain, but I think there are some MS certified modems which have a generalized A/D-D/A capability sufficient to handle voice." They do. And I'm not so sure POTS is going to be where things will be the most interesting...cable modem telephony might be where things get interesting. As for the Telcos allowing a call to be terminated on their copper, they'll never let this happen without going through the 5ESS, and recent legislation means they probablyt won't have to let you use some higher frequency band either. I've heard of some P2P startups that leverage the discovery mechanisms in P2P networks in order to setup a SIP session for telephony. It's interesting to consider the possibility that, depending on the P2P system, it's conceivable that one could call another user without having any way to "trace" that call, or payment for that matter. So if bin Laden were feelin' lonely one day and signed onto the network, you could give him a call, without him worrying about the missles falling within a few minutes. -TD

From: Steve Schear <s.schear@comcast.net> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: RE: The killer app for encryption Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 16:42:01 -0800

At 03:47 PM 12/18/2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

...

At 08:16 PM 12/18/03 +0000, Jim Dixon wrote:

...

What exactly do you mean by "peered IP telephony"?

What I'd like to see is a P2P telephony that also supports end-user gateways to the POTS. I'm not certain, but I think there are some MS certified modems which have a generalized A/D-D/A capability sufficient to handle voice. Although it opens up the possibility of end-user eavesdropping some of this might be thwarted by randomizing user node selection and detecting/reporting line impedance changes (indicating an extension going off-hook) to the 'client' wising to use the POTS. I suggested this idea to Jeff Pulver, now a VoIP champion, in 1999 but he thought it was too out of the mainstream to be interesting. Now that P2P is beginning to branch out from file sharing maybe this is no longer a far out idea.

steve

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