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The Communicator GUI is by far one of the most powerful aspects of the ShoreTel Unified Communication Package. But one of the most powerful mobility tools that is often completely disregarded is the built in Extension Assignment functionality. When Extension Assignment is combined with terminal or thin client sessions, the mobility uses for ShoreTel become unparalleled.

Needless to say the seamless nature of RDP over my Apple blew me away and also freed me up to not have to always sit in front of the desktop PC to get work done. Combined with the incredible Speech to text engine it became easy to quickly and easily dictate emails as well.

Today we are going to show how to use these two features to actually run the ShoreTel Communicator from the new IPAD 3. In this quick tutorial we are going to copy a number and past into the Communicator software after setting our Extension Assignment setting.

I recently needed to do a mock up for a data rack for a VoIP ShoreTel job my company is putting in.

I used to do this with Visio, but I wanted to really wow the people we were presenting to. I looked for all kinds of rack solutions. In my spare time sometimes I like to mess with basic amatuer 3d modeling with sketchup and also 3dstudio max.

It hit me suddenly that I could probably find a data rack at Google's 3dwarehouse and put the gear on the rack with basic box meshes and put a texture or image of each component on the rack itself.

Granted I left off patch panel and some other things, I mainly focused on what our core equipment would take up. I was pretty thrilled with the outcome and so were those that we presented to.

I was watching the masters this weekend and Exxon played a whole series of commercials about the United States not having the best test scores in the world any longer. The commercials seemed like a pep-talk or perhaps it was instructions coming down the line from the upper ups that we are going to start focusing on creating more educated students in the U.S.

The commercials were also loaded with ideas about investing in our teachers, but without any real admission of who was going to do this investment. It was all really vague even though it filled me with the desire to see U.S. competing at the "top of the class" again as they stated in their copy.

There were about 5 or 6 differing commercials all with the same theme, so you were hit with 5 impressions or so in one sitting... it definitely stood out to me.

The one thing that really caught me though... was an image at the end of one of the last commercials. After all of the rousing to bring America to the top again and to raise test scores... there seemed to me to be a very blatant image of the Federal Reserve Building with the sun rising behind it.

See for yourself below


I think this was probably done on purpose, but as to why I have no clue. I did a search online for more information about this, but apparently no one really saw it or had an opinion on it. Thought I'd post it up here to see if anyone has any ideas.

If you would like to watch the commercial in question it can be viewed here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpJlYVXOOZ4&feature=relmfu

ToS and Diff Serv or differentiated Services are tools used by network equipment to tag packets for priority. The most common that I see in the VoIP world is Expedited Forwarding or EF values. This has a decimal value of 46 for DSCP settings or the (differentiated services code points)

This can be used to give priority all the way through to an MPLS network for voice conversations going between sites. I found this article below going over all the main details of ToS ( type of service) and Diff Serv on Exinda's web site. They make WAN optimization products. The below really explains these services in even greater detail. Hope you find this information helpful. I know I did.

ToS and DiffServ

 

1 Introduction

 

ToS and DiffServ

Exinda Firmware Version: 6.1

 

All rights reserved. No parts of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means -

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems - without the written permission of the publisher. Products that are referred to in this document may be either trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners. The publisher and the author make no claim to these trademarks.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, the publisher and the author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of information contained in this document or from the use of programs and source code that may accompany it. In no event shall the publisher and the author be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this document.

 

1.1 Using this Guide

Throughout the manual the following text styles are used to highlight important points:

· Useful features, hints and important issues are called "notes" and they are identified in a light blue background.

Note: This is a note.

· Practical examples are presented throughout the manual for deeper understanding of specific concepts. These are called "examples" and are identified with a light green background.

This is an example.

· Warnings that can cause damage to the device are included when necessary. These are indicated by the word "caution" and are highlighted in yellow. Caution: This is a caution.

II

6 ToS and DiffServ

2 Overview

Appliances can read and write ToS/DSCP marks in packets, allowing users fine-grained control and classification of applications that are marked with Tos/DSCP values as well as applying marking policies to ensure traffic is treated appropriately by onward network equipment.

 

Used in conjunction with superior classification techniques, including advanced layer

7 detection, users have complete control over how traffic is marked, and subsequently treated in the WAN cloud.

8 ToS and DiffServ

 

3 The ToS / DiffServ Field

The ToS (type of service) or DiffServ (differentiated services) field in the IPv4 header, and the Traffic Class field in the IPv6 header are used to classify IP packets so that routers can make QoS (quality of service) decisions about what path packets should traverse across the network. For example, users may want ensure that VoIP utilizes high quality, low latency (and expensive) links, or, they might want to ensure email or recreational traffic uses cheaper (but less reliable) links.

Previously, there were 5 different categories that users could classify their traffic with using the IP ToS field (see RFC 791).

· Normal Service

· Minimize Cost

· Maximize Reliability

· Maximize Throughput

· Minimize Delay

These have since been replaced by a new set of values called DSCP (DiffServ Code Points, see

RFC 2474). A DSCP is a 6-bit number; therefore, there are 64 possible DSCP combinations, of which, only a portion have been standardized and are listed below. IPv6 contains an 8 bit Traffic Class field. The 6 most significant bits are treated the same as IPv4 DSCP. The least 2 significant bits are not modified by the appliance.

 

DSCP Class Name Binary Value Decimal Value

Class Name Binary	Binary Value	DSCP - Decimal Value
BE	000000	0
AF11	(assured forwarding, see RFC 2597) 001010 10
AF12	001100	12
AF13	001110	14
AF21	010010	18
AF22	010100	20
AF23	010110	22
AF31	011010	26
AF32	011100	28
AF33	011110	30
AF41	100010	34
AF42	100100	36
The ToS / DiffServ Field 9
AF43	100110	38
CS1	(class selector) 001000	8
CS2	010000	16
CS3	011000	24
CS4	100000	32
CS5	101000	40
CS6	110000	48
CS7	111000	56
EF (expedited forwarding, see RFC 2598)	101110	46

 

 

IV

How Exinda uses the ToS / DiffServ Field 11

4 How ToS / DiffServ Field

Products can read and write the ToS/DiffServ field, allowing users to:

· Match packets with a ToS/DSCP value and apply optimizer polices to this traffic.

· Mark the packets with a ToS/DSCP value based on source/destination host/subnet, source/destination port, layer 7 application, time of day, vlan id, etc.

 

4.1 Matching Packets

When defining Optimizer Policies on the Exinda appliance, there is a ToS/DSCP drop down that allows users to match only those packets with the specified ToS/DSCP value.

 

Figure 1: Optimizer Policy configuration page.

Users can select the appropriate DSCP/ToS value from this drop down field and any packets that match this ToS/DSCP value will be applied to this policy.

 

Example 1: VoIP equipment in a user's network may be configured to mark all outgoing packets as DSCP EF (decimal 46). VoIP is a real-time application and the user wishes to prioritize this with a high priority policy that guarantees VoIP a certain amount of WAN bandwidth. To achieve this, the user selects 'DSCP 46' from the ToS/DSCP drop down and configures the appropriate bandwidth allocation in this policy.

 

4.2 Marking Packets

Users may want to mark certain packets with a ToS/DSCP value so that external routers can

treat the traffic appropriately. The same policy configuration screen above (see Figure 1)

allows users to configure such an action.

12 ToS and DiffServ

 

When the policy action is set to 'Optimize', several options are available on the right-hand side, one of which is the 'ToS/DSCP Mark' checkbox. Users will need to enable this feature by checking the box and selecting the appropriate ToS/DSCP mark from the drop down. Any traffic that matches the corresponding filter rules will then be marked with the specified value and should be treated appropriately by routing equipment down the line.

 

Example 2: Service Providers may provide users with a table similar to the one below

(example only). Each class has different guaranteed service and pricing levels. This information should be used in conjunction with optimizer policies to implement and ensure quality of service. See Table 1 to convert the DSCP Settings to a decimal value that can be used in the Optimizer Policies.

 

Traffic Priority Class IETF DiffServ Traffic Priority Class DSCP Setting

Real Time (Gold) Expedited Forwarding EF

Mission Critical (Silver High) Assured Forwarding AF31

Business Critical (Silver Low) Assured Forwarding AF32/33

General Business (Bronze) Best Effort BE

 

Table 2: Example service provider DSCP class mapping table.

"How Will the Migration from IPv4 to

IPv6 Impact Voice and Visual

Communication?"

October 2011

A POLYCOM WHITEPAPER

Introduction

On World IPv6 Day1 (June 8, 2011), major service providers--

including Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook-- will turn on Internet

Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and for 24 hours they will offer their

content over IPv6. While IPv6 implementations started in the 1990s,

"World IPv6 Day" is the first global test that is intended to help

service providers and vendors prepare for the inevitable migration

to IPv6. Why is IPv6 so important to the Internet? And how will the

migration to IPv6 affect voice and visual communication?

This paper discusses the shortcomings of the currently used IPv4

protocol and provides the rationale for migration to IPv6. The new

protocol is not only a new way to package and transport information

over the IP network, it also requires changes in the architecture of

the Internet and enterprise intranets. Since real-time applications

are very sensitive to changes in the transport mechanism, this paper

will focus on the impact of IPv6 on voice and visual communications.

The Business Case for IPv6

IPv6 is a very small portion of the Internet traffic today and,

while everyone agrees that more IP addressing space is needed,

businesses and service providers have struggled to agree on the

business case for IPv6. Businesses are trying to stall by buying

address space from other users, and, when Microsoft purchased

IPv4 addresses from Nortel2, they set the price for IPv4 address at

$11.25. Governments, including the U.S. Government, have been

encouraging IPv6 by making it a mandatory requirement for all

new products purchased by government agencies. Since vendors

usually do not create separate product lines for government, IPv6

has been implemented in everything from telephones to video

endpoints to soft clients. For example, Polycom's video solutions

support IPv6, including Polycom® HDX® endpoints and the Polycom

RealPresence™ Platform: Polycom RMX® platforms and Polycom

CMA® and DMA™ solutions.

It is also extremely urgent for residential and mobile service

providers since they are even bigger IP address space users than

businesses. The consumer market drives content providers to

enable IPv6 in their services (hence World IPv6 Day), which then

will drive even more IPv6 adoption in the business community. IPv6

is gradually starting to make business sense.

Living in the IPv4 World

All information on the Internet and on private intranets is carried

in IP packets. The packet format was defined in the 1980s and

described in the Internet Protocol specification (also referred to as

IPv43). When IPv4 was designed, no one really expected that the

Internet would become so pervasive and it seemed reasonable to

use 32 bits (4 bytes) to address network elements; this resulted in

approximately 4.3 billion addresses. Figure 1 depicts the structure

of an IPv4 packet.

Figure 1: IPv4 Packet

The IP packet consists of a header and data. The header includes

the addresses of the sender (source) and the receiver (destination)

plus additional information necessary to route the packet over the

IP network. The maximum size of the IP packet was set to 65535

bytes which was more than enough for any application at the time.

Since the organizations initially using the Internet trusted each

other, security was not an important requirement for IPv4, and the

protocol itself did not provide any security mechanisms.

In the 1990s, the rapid growth of the Internet led to the first

discussions about the design limitations of the IPv4 protocol. The

industry was mostly concerned about the small address space and

the discussion led to the definition of a new packet protocol (IPv64)

that used 128-bit addresses. However, changing the underlying

networking protocol requires service providers to upgrade software

and hardware, then to reconfigure their networks. No wonder

service providers did not rush into implementing IPv6. Instead,

service providers used Network Address Translation (NAT) and

later double-NAT as work-arounds to overcome the address space

shortage. NATs are usually implemented as part of firewalls, and

directly impact voice and video communication because they hide

the real IP address of the destination. This means that a voice/

video device on the Internet cannot just call a device behind a

corporate NAT. In addition, business-to-business calls must go

through multiple NATs, and this frequently leads to call failures.

Even if the call goes through the NAT, real-time application

performance takes a hit because NATs makes computationally

intensive manipulations on both incoming and outgoing packets,

which leads to additional delay.

Another fundamental problem with NATs is that they change the IP

address field in the IP packet and this leads to incorrect checksums

and encryption failures. In other words, NATs break end-to-end

security in IP networks.

Mapping private and public IP addresses (NAT) is one of the

three main functions in IPv4 firewalls today. Another function

"How Will the Migration from IPv4 to IPv6 Impact Voice and Visual Communication?"

2

1

http://isoc.org/wp/worldipv6day/

2

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215055/Microsoft_offers_7.5M_for_666_624_IPv4_addresses

3

IETF RFC 791, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0791.txt?number=791

4

IETF RFC 1883 http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc1883/ and later RFC 2460, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2460.txt?number=2460

A POLYCOM WHITEPAPER

is called "stateful firewall function." When packets arrive from

the public network, the stateful firewall function determines if

there is any outgoing traffic (that is, from the private network to

the public network) belonging to the same connection. If there

is, it lets inbound traffic into the private network. If not, inbound

traffic is blocked and packets are dropped. The third main firewall

function (Port Address Translation, or PAT) maps private to public

port numbers. This is because IPv4 addresses are scarce and

applications often use many different ports in association with

a single IP address. The next section describes how the firewall

functionality changes with the arrival of IPv6.

The Arrival of IPv6

The pool of available IPv4 addresses has been depleted, yet service

providers need unique IP addresses for the home routers, laptops,

and other mobile devices their customers are using. The address

shortage is bad in Europe and even worse in Asia where China is

adding something like 80 million Internet users a year.

IPv6 can immediately alleviate the address shortage. It allocates

128 bits for IPv6 addresses, which results in approximately 340

undecillion (a number with 36 zeros5) IP addresses. Figure 2

depicts the structure of an IPv6 packet header with the much larger

address fields.

Figure2: IPv6 Packet

Breaking Barriers to Communication

Although the migration to IPv6 is driven by the address shortage,

IPv6 brings many new functions that will have impact on real-time

applications such as voice and video over IP. Since there will be

enough IPv6 addresses for everyone and everything, NATs can be

completely removed, and real-time applications would work much

better on the Internet.

Some organizations believe that NATs' ability to hide IP addresses

of internal IP servers and devices provide security, and these

organizations push for retaining NATs in IPv6 networks. However,

this argument is flawed since security experts have repeatedly stated

that NATs today do not improve security because a hacker can scan

the small IPv4 subnets--they usually have just 255 IP addresses

each--within seconds, even if they are behind a NAT. Scanning IPv6

subnets in comparison is futile because these subnets are so large

that it would take years to find something in the subnet.

Does IPv6 make firewalls obsolete? IPv6 firewalls will be required

in the future to perform the stateful firewall function. However,

IPv6 firewalls will not need to perform NAT and PAT. PAT is not

necessary since the IPv6 address space is big enough to allow

applications to keep the original port numbers. NAT is not defined

for IPv6, in order to simplify end-to-end communication without

interruptions. Note that if a firewall does not support IPv6, it will

not recognize an incoming IPv6 Ethernet frame and will not let it

through. Several newer firewalls such as Juniper NetScreen and

SRX and the Cisco ASA support IPv6, but the vast installed base of

firewalls is still lagging behind.

Security

Removing the NAT enhances security by allowing end-to-end

security protocols such as IPSEC6 to efficiently secure the

communication in IP networks. IPSEC encrypts the data in the IP

packet but allows routers to read and modify IP, TCP, and UDP

headers. The IPSEC implementation requires scalable identity

management infrastructure that must be deployed in parallel to

IPv6/IPSEC, and as result the IPSEC specification will continue

to be updated as better identity management infrastructure and

encryption key mechanisms are developed.

Many security problems in IPv4 are related to packet fragmentation,

which happens when a packet has to be sent through a slower link.

The router splits the packet in multiple fragments and sends them as

separate IP packets. The receiver must recognize the fragmentation,

collect all pieces, and put the original packet together; this process

can be susceptible to penetration. IPv6 does not allow packet

fragmentation by intermediaries/routers because it requires that

oversize packets must be dropped, and an ICMPv6 "Packet Too Big"

message be sent to the sender. The sender then reduces the packet

size so that it can go across the network in one piece.

Voice and Video Quality

Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms developed for IPv4 can

still be used with IPv6. Although it might seem that real-time

applications could face potential increased latencies as a result

of the larger address, the new header structure in IPv6 allows

faster header parsing which leads to faster packet forwarding in

routers. In particular, all optional information is taken out of the

base header and transported via header extensions. The impact on

real-time communication is positive: voice and video packets will

move faster through the IPv6 network. It is only in mixed IPv4-

IPv6 environments that latency increase can be expected, due to

tunneling and translation delays.

3

5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecillion

6

IETF RFC 4301, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4301

A POLYCOM WHITEPAPER "How Will the Migration from IPv4 to IPv6 Impact Voice and Visual Communication?"

The new packet structure in IPv6 allows for larger packets with

jumbo payload of up to 4 billion bytes7. This allows for sending more

video information in a single packet, instead of splitting it in multiple

packets, which should benefit visual communications, especially as

video quality increases and video packets get larger.

However, larger packets lead to higher end-to-end latency, so these

large packets are still not suited to live voice and video applications.

Larger packets that exceed the so called Maximum Transmission

Unit (MTU) on any of the links between sender and receiver must

be fragmented, that is, split in smaller packets. As mentioned above,

IPv6 does not allow routers to fragment large packets and instead

requires them to drop the packet and send an error message back

to the sender. Since there is no mechanism to assure the IPv6

packet will go through end-to-end, multiple routers on the path may

drop packets and several retransmissions can follow before the

IPv6 packet goes through. This, of course, leads to high latency that

negatively impacts the user experience on voice and video calls.

On the positive side, IPv6 mandates that all links must handle a

datagram size of at least 1280 bytes8; this is called the "minimum

MTU". (In comparison, IPv4 has minimum MTU of only 576 bytes).

If the sender keeps the IPv6 packets below 1280 Bytes, they will

always go through the IP network.

Migration to IPv6 - Starting from the

Backbone

There are fundamentally three ways to manage the transition from

one version of a protocol to another, and this is no different with the

migration from IPv4 to IPv6: dual-stack, tunneling, and proxy with

translation.

In dual-stack implementations, devices/terminals/endpoints on one

side and routers/switches on the other support both IPv4 and IPv6

simultaneously.

With tunneling, if the backbone network already supports IPv6

while attached regional/local networks only support IPv4, tunnels

can be built either on the fly or statically (per configuration); these

allow IPv4 packets to get encapsulated and transported over

the IPv6 backbone, then converted back to IPv4 packets at the

destination network.

The third approach of proxying with translation can be deployed

when an IPv4-only network wants to communicate to an IPv6-only

network. The translation mechanism manipulates the smaller IPv4

addresses to create a corresponding IPv6 address, and a border

element performs the mapping between the two formats. In effect,

this is a kind of IPv4-to-IPv6 NAT.

Note that just supporting the new IPv6 headers in networking

equipment is only a part of supporting IPv6. Several other protocols

have been enhanced to support IPv6: the Internet Control Message

Protocol (ICMP) v69, the SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND)10,

the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for IPv611, the

Domain Name System (DNS) for IPv612, Open Shortest Path First

(OSPF) routing protocol for IPv613, and Mobility Support in IPv614.

The migration to IPv6 started with network backbones. Due to

Polycom's involvement in Internet2, we know that this network

already provides IPv6 services to the US Research and Education

community through two IPv4-to-IPv6 relay routers. IPv6 support

is easy to do for backbones that do not have any end users, and

where issues are mostly around carrier-grade NATs and web filters

that look into packets and cannot understand IPv6.

While some backbone networks such as CERNET215 in China are

running only IPv6, many other backbone networks are running

dual-stack. From a technology perspective, supporting IPv6 on

the backbone is not a problem anymore but work continues on

optimizing IPv4-IPv6 translation and tunneling techniques.

The Network Today

Commercial service providers are in different stages of deploying

IPv6. Global Crossing, for example, has made a lot of progress,

while Level 3 has so far been less aggressive in this area. It is

expected that after the acquisition16 is completed, Level 3's network

will be up and running with IPv6.

National/regional/local networks are mostly not running IPv6 yet.

However, National Research and Education Networks (NRENs)17,

for example, that connect to Internet2 backbone in the USA and to

the GEANT backbone in Europe have time until 2012 to convert to

IPv6.

IPv6 Support in the Polycom Solution

The Polycom visual communications solution already supports IPv6.

HDX 6000, 7000, and 8000 endpoints have been supporting IPv6

since version 2.5. Since HDX technology is used in all of Polycom's

telepresence systems, IPv6 is supported in OTX, RPX, and ATX

telepresence solutions.

4

7

IETF RFC 2675, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2675.txt

8

The value of 1280 was selected to be below the Ethernet max frame size of 1500 Bytes, so that the IPv6 packet can be efficiently transported in a single Ethernet frame. There are also some other considerations around

the value of 1280 related to IPv4 -IPv6 tunneling.

9

RFC 4443, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4443.txt?number=4443

10

RFC 3971, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3971.txt?number=3971

11

RFC 3315, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3315.txt?number=3315

12

RFC 4472, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4472.txt

13

RFC 5340, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5340.txt?number=5340

14

RFC 3775, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3775.txt?number=3775

15

http://www.cernet2.edu.cn/index_en.htm

16

http://www.level3.com/en/About-Us/Newsroom/Press-Release-Archive/2011/2011-04-11-globalcrossing.aspx

17

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_research_and_education_network

A POLYCOM WHITEPAPER "How Will the Migration from IPv4 to IPv6 Impact Voice and Visual Communication?"

Polycom Worldwide Headquarters

4750 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588

1.800.POLYCOM or +1.925.924.6000

www.polycom.com

© 2011 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are

registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. No portion hereof may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, for any purpose other than the recipient's personal use, without the express written permission of Polycom.

3847_1011

In the Polycom RealPresence™ Platform, RMX1500, 2000, and

4000 media platforms support IPv6 and can be configured for

IPv6-only, IPv4-only, or for dual stack IPv6-IPv4, which means that

both IP protocol versions run simultaneously. IPv6 addresses can

be used to address external entities such as H.323 gatekeepers,

SIP proxies, DNS Servers, and Default Routers, as well as defined

participants. Less visibly to the end user, IPv6 can be used to

address internal RMX components within the RMX chassis, for

example, the control unit, the signaling host, the shelf management,

and the media cards18.

The DMA 7000 solution supports IPv6 on all key interfaces--to

the RMX solution, to the gatekeeper (the CMA solution), on

the management interface, as well as for connections to DNS,

Microsoft Active Directory, and other servers in the network. Finally,

CMA 4000 and 5000 solutions supports IPv6 in "maximum security

mode" that is required for JITC compliance.

Conclusion

The migration to IPv6 is inevitable but it will not happen fast.

Network backbones will support IPv6 first, followed by mobile and

residential service providers that are running out of IPv4 addresses.

From the private networks, government and education will lead the

way with businesses following them.

June 8, 2011 is the next in a series of practical steps to take the

Internet and other IP networks to a future unbounded by space

limitations, a future where everything can have its own unique IP

address.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues Jeff Rodman, Alex McCarthy,

Jeff Adams, Assaf Weissblat, and Andre Reid for their contributions

to this work.

About the Author

Stefan Karapetkov is Emerging Technologies Director at Polycom,

Inc. where he focuses on the visual communications market

and technology. He has MBA from Santa Clara University

(USA) and an MS degree in Engineering from the University of

Chemnitz (Germany). He has spent more than 15 years in product

management, new technology development, and product definition.

His blog is http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/.

18

IPv6 is supported with MPM+ and MPMx media cards

A POLYCOM WHITEPAPER "How Will the Migration from IPv4 to IPv6 Impact Voice and Visual Communication?"

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions for telepresence, video, and voice powered by

the Polycom® RealPresence™ Platform. The RealPresence Platform interoperates with the broadest range of business, mobile, and social

applications and devices. More than 400,000 organizations trust Polycom solutions to collaborate and meet face-to-face from any location

for more productive and effective engagement with colleagues, partners, customers, and prospects. Polycom, together with its broad partner

ecosystem, provides customers with the best TCO, scalability, and security--on-premises, hosted, or cloud delivered.

For more information, visit www.polycom.com, call 1-800-POLYCOM, or contact your Polycom sales representative.

If any of you out there have endeavored to learn how to improvisationaly solo on guitar the first thing you are going to run into whether you are a seasoned musician or beginner is the shear number of pathways there are to solo in a given key on the guitar.

This has to do with the way guitar was set up to actually simplify the playing of chords, and it is pretty dang simple to play chords on guitar, that is why we see a lot of rock bands blaring power chords and making some pretty decent sounding music without even changing the formation of their chord structure once, besides just sliding up and down the neck like a trombone.

Solo'ing is a little different. If you want to create fluid solo's utilizing all octaves available on the guitar you really have to think about guitar as an instrument. It is much harder than just looking at a piano. With a piano you can clearly see how  many octaves are available to you. That is because each time that the piano starts its black white key pattern over again you have reached a new octave.

This can be easily ciphered as well, by simply playing the white keys from left to right. Starting with the C key. You will notice that this produces Do Rei Mi etc... as long as you don't play a black key and you will also notice you are back at Do again in the same place in relation to the black keys where you first started only the note is now higher pitched.

So on guitar, this relational pattern doesn't exist. It has to do with where the notes were placed, but there is no simple key where you just move up the neck and you play a scale in successive order. On piano the key of C is also the only key where this works like that besides a minor i believe its relative minor, but its basically the same thing. On guitar, however, all keys have the exact same pattern. On piano, only C works in the fashion described, if you want to play in B or A or E you have to learn where to use the black keys, or the sharps and flats for every different type of major, minor, and whatever scale you are working with.

That makes Piano very difficult for scales as well and requires a rich understanding of music theory to play all scales on piano in all keys. Most piano musicians do not know all the scales, they have a few worked out and that's what they like to play in. I would recommend that they include E minor/major pentonic in that repatoire though, because of the advanced ability for guitarists to play those two keys fluidly on guitar. unless the guitar play has drop tuned or capo tuned his instrument, but even in the capo case you will lose the ability to reach octaves on most guitars unless they are cutaway or electric with extra frets, and you can only drop tune a guitar a key or so without getting slinky guitar strings that are unplayable. So for this reason learn E.

The reason I say that is that the E scale is the scale that is at the very open position on the guitar. Open meaning you can play the bottom string, the one closest to you, producing the lowest tone, without pressing anything down on the fret board, and in standard tuning is supposed to produce an E. Now the magic about this position is that it allows you to play half of the notes of the scale, at least the pen-tonic scale, without pressing down any notes with your left hand. That is because it makes a bar under the root note, which in this case is E.

So that gives the E scale an incredible advantage for producing Drones (open notes) that you can fall back to while soloing to get back to your root note. Also as mentioned it is difficult to see how many octaves the guitar has on guitar, well for all intensive purposes referring to classical music, it only has 3. I know sad right? All those frets all those keys, and it has about as many octaves or less than a harmonica.

But the cool thing is if you think of guitar soloing in a horizontal and vertical way. You want to get through much of your solo vertically, horizontal slides would only be used for flare and additional intonation, but don't get lost always be aware of your original starting vertical movement. Until that is you run out of room. But then find the next note higher up the neck where you can continue to move vertically. Then at last move horizontal up into no mans land when you can absolutely find no more vertical structures. 

You can hit a 4th octave on guitar after sliding up, but the very last one you have to bend the string to hit the 4th root note up the progression. Which makes guitar players look absolutely the coolest when they do that big bend to end their lead.

I know that this web site is dedicated to my web projects etc... but I guess it is my blog and I can write about whatever I want to here. For those of you who know me I play guitar... have for a long time. For about the past year I have been playing Bach songs from a small song book that goes over his most famous songs. There are tabs and there are notes... I use the tabs for the fingering and the notes for the rythym... I can play pretty perfectly Bouree, and Air, and a few of the other Cannons. For some reason I find it really intuitive. Like I can just start playing one I've never played before and get the melody. Really I find these songs much easier to learn than, say even some pop songs. They are playable, really playable melodies and super complex... but the thing is... I could never write anything like this. I mean when I try I realize how complicated they are... the way the bass moves in comparison to the melody, and the way chords are added in is so ... masterful.

I looked online, but I can't find anything about how he composed these songs. I have a speculation it would be much easier to write them if I were playing them on piano... but if that is the case how did he know they would transpose so perfectly to cello or guitar even.

The closest hint I ever heard about how these songs were constructed was that he never wrote a parralel fifth, which basically means no to ascending bar chords.... at least that's how I understand it. I also read on that he started a style of music where he would play with the bass and treble harmony... meaning as the bass descends the treble ascends and vice versa and through that he would create these astounding melodies.

I also learned that music majors have to study bach more than anyone else.When learning how to compose he is like God in the classroom. I am starting to see why.

Anyhow if anyone know how the heck he did it feel free to leave me a comment I would love to understand how to write more like that.

I recently created a brand new web site for my other company Matt J. Fox Dry Cleaning. I think it came out looking pretty sweet. On top of a web site I also created an invoicing program that will bill online.

There is also a google maps integration that shows my route on the different days that I work. Over all it is a pretty suite looking web site. Check it out at Matt J Fox Drycleaners.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me at any time.

- Matt

I have recently created a full fledged drycleaning route invoicing program in PHP and MySql. This program is really helpful for anyone who needs an invoicing program that bills on a monthly basis for any kind of route services.

Add quantities, ticket numbers, see quartly yearly and monthly reports. See item totals. Best part of it is being able to send out an automaticly generated invoice and give users the ability to pay through paypal.

Create new months add past due balances, add percentage discount, referral discount programs and more.

Contact list expense reports are also included.

If you would like to see a demo of this feel free to contact me at any time.

-Matt

 

 

I just recently got an Android and part of the reason I got it was because I work with Google Maps API and program dealer locators and other things and wanted to see how difficult it would be to program for the Android. I started with a project in mind that would show me on a Google Maps markers of all the homes that recently sold, and homes that were recently listed.

At first this seemed like a daunting task and I was confused how I would accomplish such a thing. I figured I needed to write a program that would send me my gps coordinates in a variable form that php could handle that I could then send back to google maps and keep it refreshing.... that would be a poor mans way to do it.

Turns out that Android is so flexible that it allready had all the tools for everything I needed to accomplish this. There is a program called My Maps Editor by Google. This program for Android does a few things.

First and foremost what it does is that it links of with your My Maps account through Google. You may be asking yourself "What is a my maps account?" It is simple, you can use your gmail log-in to get to "your maps" from the google main page or the google maps page. Once there you can create markers or lines on maps and save them under different titles. You can make them public or private for the world to see.

So for example. Say you have a route that you like to run and you wanted to make it public. You could draw a line of the route and place markers showing distances etc... and put them in a map and save it as Coast Ridge Run and make it public. People who were searching for Coast Ridge Runs would probably come accross your map on a Google Search.

Ok that is great but how does it help us with the houses that have recently sold or are being listed. Well if you go to Trulia.com if you do a basic search for a zip code in a given area you will notice in the top right of the page there is an RSS icon. If you click on that you will see that there is a Google Earth RSS option. If you click on that it will give you the option to save a .KML file. If you save that file and then go back to your google my maps. You can choose to import a .KML file to your my maps. This will put on the map all the markers of houses that have recently been listed.

If you have my maps on your Android you will be able to see these listings from your android. And even better you can have the map follow you by GPS from your current coordinates.

So say you are a real estate agent, and you want to see houses that have recently been listed in the area while you are showing a client a home. If you had specified the URL to the KML file for your my maps to grab information. You would have the most current info at your finger tips of what houses have recently been listed in the area. Or if you were driving your car down the street you could see in the different areas what is going on.

This is a powerful and unique tool for agents. The only problem is that Trulia's web site appears to be broken, or they do not want to put information up about sold homes for .KML files. All of there other RSS feeds do seem to work, but the KML files do not. That means that we need to manually edit their RSS feeds to fit with KML in order to have accruate and up to date information.

This is something that I am working on at the moment, but feel there must be a better way to do it with a screen scrape or PHP program that reeds the feed etc... but this might be getting over my head.

Will have more on this later. But as of now Android is a hit! and has made my housing searches just that much easier.