Almost a month ago when the news of John C Dvorak who had done dozens of columns in the tech press since the early days of the P.C., part of some people felt it was the end of an era. Dvorak had a lot of hot takes on lots various elements of technology.
When I was producing a tech news segment, I was tasked by myself acting as an assignment editor, to go find a few samples of some magazines from my own collection. I had many PC Magazine and PC/Computing which was an IT focused mag in the late 1990s. I have an entire collection of Mac User from 1986. I sampled one of three magazines so I could get it out over the air so to speak.
Ironically I thought in August 2003 it would be him whining about Macs. But looking below the front cover..
Here’s the column:
This was an interesting time in 2003, the Blackout of 2003 happened at the time of publication which IIRC the publication date was a week ahead of the actual week, and deadlines I think were two weeks before. Cell networks were still primitive and couldn’t work in subways.
This was also a different time for Vonage because they supported some off the shelf stuff before things got more locked down for obvious cybersecurity reasons. This is also a time where Cisco was open but closed but was not sure where they were going.
The ATA 186 ran on multiple protocols, the proprietary Skinny Call Control Protocol, the obvious Session Initiation Protocol and MGCP which was an open standard to the SCCP than SIP. It used a similar stack to H323, one IP address for files, call control audio streams, the time of day, the MGCP never really took off and too many people wanted SIP.
Since I own an ATA 186 since my early attempts with Cisco, I just recently got it back online. It uses SCCP, and it can be managed on a web browser but it’s more basic than Grandstream’s web interface of a decade later.
I’ve noticed that most VOIP ATA adapters are less than POTS quality, or maybe I am biased because plugging in old rotary dial or loud bells can’t be done on them. Or my wiring is lousy or what.
In the last 23 years, the VOIP world has changed dramatically. While Vonage did continue as a market player, it has gone in different directions, there’s still 8×8, Ring Central, and even Cisco, Avaya and other vendors sell their own systems acting as a carrier themselves with the whole cloud thing.
Not to mention the minimalists as cord-cutters/cord-nevers and don’t feel like being tethered.
I guess while I was trying to direct the mission of TMOT to be more on the analog stuff, I guess things like this are now antiques too lol