Bridge issues (Re: [MINUTES] W3C Credentials CG Call - 2018-03-20 12pm ET)

Hi all,

Apologies for the terrible audio bridge issues today. That rarely
happens, but seems to be increasing in severity. We were able to track
down what happened today and it boils down to this:

Our incoming channel bandwidth from our upstream VoIP provider is rated
at 4 simultaneous PBX (public phone system) calls. The system is able to
burst to 8 simultaneous callers for hours at a time... and we had 16
phone-based callers today. Running a system at 400% capacity is going to
cause problems.

We haven't hit this problem before because many people used to connect
via SIP, leaving the phone-based lines to those that really needed them.
Lately, most everyone has been using the phone-based number to dial in,
which led to the tragedy of the commons failure we had today.

We have asked our current provider to increase our channel bandwidth and
they're mishandling the upgrade process pretty terribly (slow to
respond, not transparent about what they're doing on their end, etc.).
That is not acceptable.

Here's what we're doing to address the issue:

We are setting up a parallel set of phone numbers via another
provider (Twilio) AND adding European dial-in numbers for those that
have been using Skype to dial our US-based number.

We are opting for an unlimited dial plan option via Twilio as well. In
the end this will give us:

1. Three dial in numbers from two upstream providers (redundancy, fail
   over, etc.)
2. Dial in numbers for North America and Europe, as well as the SIP and
   WebRTC dial in options we currently have.
3. All of the accessibility, transparency, and automation tools that the
   communities have had for the last 9+ years.

However, I don't expect all of this to be in place for next weeks call
so I suggest we have a primary Zoom room ready, with audio recording
capability, and use that. Once the new VoIP/PBX/SIP providers are in
place, we can switch back.

We'll keep the community updated as things progress.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The State of W3C Web Payments in 2017
http://manu.sporny.org/2017/w3c-web-payments/

Received on Wednesday, 21 March 2018 00:19:44 UTC