We need instant messengers. More messengers
The construction of the tower was interrupted by God, who created new languages for different people, because of what they no longer understand each other, could not continue building the city and the tower, and scattered throughout the land.
(WITH)
Today, there are a huge number of ways to exchange voice and text messages: classic telephony and e-mail, ICQ, Skype, VKontakte, Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, FireFox (yes, now it’s also a phone), etc. And it seems that more will continue. This is terribly inconvenient: in order to communicate with a large circle of people, a person must have a bunch of accounts and track them in a timely manner. In this article I will try to summarize my thoughts on why this is happening.
One of the reasons lies at the level of the idea of fourth generation communication protocols: LTE and Wi-MAX2 protocols lack standardized channels for voice transmission. Those. to make a call, the phone either makes a downgrade to 2G / 3G standards, or the call is made by applications like Skype. This means that modern mobile communications has ceased to be a telephone. And with this we must somehow put up.
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Simplified cellular communication developed in the following sequence: voice, voice and data on the voice channel, voice channel and data channel, and only the data channel. Accordingly, the developers of the physical and channel protocols actually placed the entire responsibility for voice communication on the shoulders of the overlying layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model.
And here the problems started. Proprietary communication and instant messaging services through data networks has become an indecent lot. The reasons for this, I see in the following (purely my IMHO, so I would like to hear objections and additions in the comments):
1. Voice protocols through packet switched networks are not related to the physical layer, so they pass by standardization giants such as IEEE and ITU. Of course, you can argue, but what about H.323? Yes, there is such a generally accepted open standard, and it is widespread. But you will experience serious difficulties if you try to make friends with phones, for example, D-Link with Cisco UCM. At the same time, the service of short instant messages (in a general sense, and not outdated SMS), so demanded in the modern world, is not standardized for IP networks at all (with the exception of e-mail, which clearly does not meet modern standards of everyday communication).
2. Too many interested parties. There are far fewer hardware manufacturers than software manufacturers. Large hardware vendors (especially chip developers) are more likely to agree with each other than all the variety of software companies who want to snatch their share in a niche with a huge growth potential. Anyone who is able to combine all protocols of household communications, without exaggeration, will be able to command the world. Moreover, anyone can take part: many can create their own messenger. And then marketing falls on the heads of innocent users, since the majority of instant messengers are similar in consumer characteristics and advertising becomes the main factor of competition.
3. Corporations are not interested in full cooperation with each other, since the situation has not yet reached a dead end. And from a business point of view, constantly updating services is more profitable than constantly providing the same, but high-quality service. Of course, management creates slogans and missions for companies, but one should not forget that the main goal of any commercial structure is to make a profit, not the comfort of users, which is one of the means, but not an end in itself.
4. While classical telephony is still alive, the channels and addressing system of which can be used. To carry out important communications up to the emergency call. However, it is unlikely to be convenient in the future: principles that do not meet modern requirements and are not compatible with data networks are laid in the subscriber addressing system.
5. Prompt delivery of messages and delivery guarantee. Well, nowhere without it.
6. It is unclear who should actually support the communication server. Ideally, the communication system should resemble torrent, email or DNS - i.e. have different owners and maximum decentralization, but there are no such protocols yet, just as there is no good motivation for their creation and promotion. Enthusiasts can hardly bear the power of market players. In the end, the monetization of virtual services brings to the network the flaws that were not in the initial stages of its development (in fact, this issue is worthy of a separate article).
7. Most states are interested only in listening to existing and emerging communication systems, but no one wants (or advertise it) to take part in the creation of such systems on their own. A powerful message system created by the explicit protectionism of the authorities, perhaps, exists only in the PRC. This phenomenon is absolutely not clear to me.
Summarizing the points mentioned, it seems to me that the global cause of the current situation is too many directions of development vectors for a fairly highly specialized technology. Technologies that develop under strict control outside the free environment are sometimes more effective than those born in such an environment. For example, the extremely robust TCP / IP stack was clearly of military origin, with all the ensuing consequences. First, he defeated the OSI protocol stack, which was originally not a model for classifying protocols, but a full-fledged independent data transfer stack. Unfortunately, OSI as a protocol stack was defeated (more details can be found here ).
Now TCP / IP stubbornly does not give up its relative IPv6, born and introduced by the free community. IPv6 protocol - it seems to be the case: in all modern OS and in most network equipment firmware. There are IPv6 traffic exchange points. But in practice, I have never come across a connection by a provider of a natural or legal person, with only IPv6 addresses allocated to it. Talk about the fact that tomorrow all will move to a new standard, since IPv4 is doomed, it has been going on for almost 10 years. For IT technology is a huge time.
If the situation continues to evolve according to the laws of the free market, then as one of the possible negative results, the global connection may be in the hands of 1-2 corporations that have managed to devour competitors in the course of the natural struggle. This is by far the most negative scenario. I think it’s not even worth explaining why the monopolies in vital sectors are bad. Especially global monopolies.
Of course, I exaggerate slightly. Predict a whole thankless task. You can prepare 10 radically different forecasts, but in fact it will turn out 11. Yes, and the death of classic telephony will not happen soon, but this is only a matter of time. I hope that when this happens, its worthy replacement that meets the requirements will appear:
The question remains: who will take on the development of such a protocol and who needs it, except for end users?
(WITH)
Today, there are a huge number of ways to exchange voice and text messages: classic telephony and e-mail, ICQ, Skype, VKontakte, Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, FireFox (yes, now it’s also a phone), etc. And it seems that more will continue. This is terribly inconvenient: in order to communicate with a large circle of people, a person must have a bunch of accounts and track them in a timely manner. In this article I will try to summarize my thoughts on why this is happening.
One of the reasons lies at the level of the idea of fourth generation communication protocols: LTE and Wi-MAX2 protocols lack standardized channels for voice transmission. Those. to make a call, the phone either makes a downgrade to 2G / 3G standards, or the call is made by applications like Skype. This means that modern mobile communications has ceased to be a telephone. And with this we must somehow put up.
')
Simplified cellular communication developed in the following sequence: voice, voice and data on the voice channel, voice channel and data channel, and only the data channel. Accordingly, the developers of the physical and channel protocols actually placed the entire responsibility for voice communication on the shoulders of the overlying layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model.
And here the problems started. Proprietary communication and instant messaging services through data networks has become an indecent lot. The reasons for this, I see in the following (purely my IMHO, so I would like to hear objections and additions in the comments):
1. Voice protocols through packet switched networks are not related to the physical layer, so they pass by standardization giants such as IEEE and ITU. Of course, you can argue, but what about H.323? Yes, there is such a generally accepted open standard, and it is widespread. But you will experience serious difficulties if you try to make friends with phones, for example, D-Link with Cisco UCM. At the same time, the service of short instant messages (in a general sense, and not outdated SMS), so demanded in the modern world, is not standardized for IP networks at all (with the exception of e-mail, which clearly does not meet modern standards of everyday communication).
2. Too many interested parties. There are far fewer hardware manufacturers than software manufacturers. Large hardware vendors (especially chip developers) are more likely to agree with each other than all the variety of software companies who want to snatch their share in a niche with a huge growth potential. Anyone who is able to combine all protocols of household communications, without exaggeration, will be able to command the world. Moreover, anyone can take part: many can create their own messenger. And then marketing falls on the heads of innocent users, since the majority of instant messengers are similar in consumer characteristics and advertising becomes the main factor of competition.
3. Corporations are not interested in full cooperation with each other, since the situation has not yet reached a dead end. And from a business point of view, constantly updating services is more profitable than constantly providing the same, but high-quality service. Of course, management creates slogans and missions for companies, but one should not forget that the main goal of any commercial structure is to make a profit, not the comfort of users, which is one of the means, but not an end in itself.
4. While classical telephony is still alive, the channels and addressing system of which can be used. To carry out important communications up to the emergency call. However, it is unlikely to be convenient in the future: principles that do not meet modern requirements and are not compatible with data networks are laid in the subscriber addressing system.
5. Prompt delivery of messages and delivery guarantee. Well, nowhere without it.
6. It is unclear who should actually support the communication server. Ideally, the communication system should resemble torrent, email or DNS - i.e. have different owners and maximum decentralization, but there are no such protocols yet, just as there is no good motivation for their creation and promotion. Enthusiasts can hardly bear the power of market players. In the end, the monetization of virtual services brings to the network the flaws that were not in the initial stages of its development (in fact, this issue is worthy of a separate article).
7. Most states are interested only in listening to existing and emerging communication systems, but no one wants (or advertise it) to take part in the creation of such systems on their own. A powerful message system created by the explicit protectionism of the authorities, perhaps, exists only in the PRC. This phenomenon is absolutely not clear to me.
Summarizing the points mentioned, it seems to me that the global cause of the current situation is too many directions of development vectors for a fairly highly specialized technology. Technologies that develop under strict control outside the free environment are sometimes more effective than those born in such an environment. For example, the extremely robust TCP / IP stack was clearly of military origin, with all the ensuing consequences. First, he defeated the OSI protocol stack, which was originally not a model for classifying protocols, but a full-fledged independent data transfer stack. Unfortunately, OSI as a protocol stack was defeated (more details can be found here ).
Now TCP / IP stubbornly does not give up its relative IPv6, born and introduced by the free community. IPv6 protocol - it seems to be the case: in all modern OS and in most network equipment firmware. There are IPv6 traffic exchange points. But in practice, I have never come across a connection by a provider of a natural or legal person, with only IPv6 addresses allocated to it. Talk about the fact that tomorrow all will move to a new standard, since IPv4 is doomed, it has been going on for almost 10 years. For IT technology is a huge time.
If the situation continues to evolve according to the laws of the free market, then as one of the possible negative results, the global connection may be in the hands of 1-2 corporations that have managed to devour competitors in the course of the natural struggle. This is by far the most negative scenario. I think it’s not even worth explaining why the monopolies in vital sectors are bad. Especially global monopolies.
Of course, I exaggerate slightly. Predict a whole thankless task. You can prepare 10 radically different forecasts, but in fact it will turn out 11. Yes, and the death of classic telephony will not happen soon, but this is only a matter of time. I hope that when this happens, its worthy replacement that meets the requirements will appear:
- Unification addressing. And I still hope that we will not have to use IPv6 as a single addressing, as promised by some of its adherents. Agree, typing in the phone 128-bit identifiers would be a nightmare.
- Decentralization: no country or corporation should be able to completely shut down communications in the macroregion.
- Anyone can improve the client interface, but not the communication protocol.
- The scalability of the protocol (in terms of increasing the flow of data transmitted). It is worthwhile for the global protocol to stumble over how it will trigger a new wave of proprietary solutions.
- Reliability of the protocol: it must be suitable for emergency communications. Until now, there is little that can compare to classical telephony in terms of reliability.
The question remains: who will take on the development of such a protocol and who needs it, except for end users?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/254785/
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