h.323, which I picked on recently, saying that it’s not what SIP is has been found buggy again. Face it, h.323 is an old technology which has been eclipsed by a much more robust and capable protocol, SIP (session initiation protocol).
Many of the older VoIP companies out there are still using h.323. Some are using protocol mediators to support the IETF’s Interworking Function allowing the translation from h.323 to SIP, but it seems the older flavor of IP Telephony has some bugs which can allow a network to be compromised.
Don’t you think it’s time for the network operators to switch? What I find interesting is the timing and how close it came to Level3’s flurry of announcements. No company is posied better to gain from the switch from h.323 to SIP nor in a better position to stir up the pot by depositioning older technology when their sales force is about to go great guns to get new business.
There may be other and valid reasons to migrate from H.323 to SIP. But this news item is not one of them. The referenced story itself suggestes that the problem is in implementation and also says that the same group found errors in SNMP. Should we abandon it then? Another version of the same story indicates that SIP went through a similar such discovery.