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Vonage Says VoIP Traffic Blocked By Providers
Anonymouse writes "Advanced IP Pipeline reports that Vonage has filed numerous complaints with the FCC over their VoIP traffic being blocked by major providers, something providers have long worried about but had not yet been seen 'in the wild.' Analysts expect the issue of network neutrality (or network discrimination) is only going to get larger as the bell and cable companies expand their VoIP efforts and bump heads with smaller providers."
Looks like FCC is blocking more than just VoIP :-)
What the f&ck?! Phone companies are COMMON CARRIERS. They have to carry ALL calls!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It takes a lot of money to build and maintain a solid infrastructure to support widespread VOIP, whereas Vonage, et al, are pretty much leeching on. Of course, the VOIP startups can try to make a partnership with the broadband providers. :p
For the purpose of disclosure, I do work for Comcast. That also gives me insight to how much money we are going to spend to upgrade our network so we can do a widespread VOIP rollout.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
IT sounds like the FCC is not going to take up the fight. These are not the VOIP's your looking for. Move along , Move along!
ISPs routinely block traffic they don't like for whatever reason. Unless you are contracted with that ISP and you have a signed agreement with them they can start and stop whatever services they want.
They have these loopholes to stop spam, P2P, servers, etc. Yeah, it's annoying, and yeah it sucks, but unfortunately they have that right as private carriers.
Find an ISP that doesn't have those restrictions and use them instead.
As more and more broadband companies (Cable and DSL) offer VoIP (Digital Voice) services to their customers, they are going to have to ensure the product they provide is hardened against competative network resrouce usage (i.e. ANY other traffic). In the Cable world, MSOs are going to be applying QoS tags to the bits containing Voice calls from their customers. When a call originates behind one of their MTAs or eMTAs, they are expected to do this. As a result ALL other traffic should, and will suffer to some degree. Whether they are deliberately trying to break the Vonage call or not, it is going to happen.
The simple fact of the matter is that the Triple-Play threat (Voice, Video, Data) should be more of a concern to Vonage, as bundling will end up being more of a concern than network performance.
Oh look, a Vonage advert at the top of the page.
If a network or a local provider is trying to block VoIP by detecting the TCP/UDP port, or the type of service (inspecting the payload), why not just run it through SSL?
Bon Voyage Vonage... Bon Vonage... Bomb Vonage... Ooops :D
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I have suspected for a while that the cable companies' sudden increase in cable modem bandwidth at the same time as the introduction of their own VoIP services is not coincidental. This would be detrimental to the Vonages of the world while at the same time they can put their own VoIP service on a dedicated carrier.
I know cable companies are not being pointed at by the report, but just making my point anyways. :p
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
couldn't you just switch isp's? just like if you don't like that some isp's block ports. Or am I totally missing the point.
I've already dropped one ISP over shitty service in the last 9 months, I have nothing against dropping another. If enough people with Vonage do the same thing, mabye the ISP's will figure it out.
However, I have Comcast in Seattle and I have no problems with my Vonage line. It's actually clearer than Sprint PCS.
I have had a lot of trouble making calls to India on Vonage. It couldn't be an IP problem because I get my Vonage dialtone just fine. But I dial a number in India and it doesn't go through, or it says "this number cannot be reached." Is it possible that Indian telcos are blocking incoming POTS calls originating in the telco side? Has anyone else experienced this or am I just imagining?
that Vonage et al don't want to be taxed like telephone companies, but want the same (FCC) protections as to access to the network?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Where's the first market-uber-alles Nimrod who declares:
It's their network, they can block what they want from it! If you don't like it, don't use their service.
I'm waiting patiently, but I don't think I'll have to wait long. As I was typing this short and sardonic post, one did.
To reiterate my point, if Vonage wants to not be regulated, it should not expect others to be regulated for its benefit.
These ISPs should be protective. Imagine their surprise when the RIAA comes after them for letting some Vonage customer use his line to stream an mp3 to his friend's E1060.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Well, according to the article the blocking is being done by the LECs, which are merely telephone companies that provide local service.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I guess this has been the presumption of the Internet for corporations, but this has never been presumed for consumers.
How many consumers are using broadband providers that prevent them from serving web content on port 80?
What about users who get stiffed when their "unlimited monthly Internet" gets terminated due to "excessive usage" (hence leaving us to wonder what part of the service was "unlimited"?)
I think this is just a case of corporations get preferential treatment, when consumers would never be presumed to have the same rights.
Well, according to the article the blocking is being done by the LECs, which are merely telephone companies that provide local service.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
By creating and successfully running a broadband application, the VoIP providers are just promoting more broadband usage indirectly. Why should the ISPs panick? In the long run, it is to their benefit, isn't?
Comcast defines a server as:
A SIP device does not qualify as it is not providing service network content or service to anyone out sideo yoru home -- though it receives data, it receives data on behalf of the end user.Fight Spammers!
We've been using Vonage for several weeks over a Comcast cable modem. No problems so far. Vonage has the cheapest rates I could find for direct-dialed international calls.
I used to work for the Nasdaq stock market. What's interesting is that Vonage's founder employed a very similar strategy when he started the Island ECN. He essentially piggybacked off of Nasdaq's infrastruture in order to avoid the costs of building a network. He has since left the securities industry to venture into telecoms, but not before selling Island to some private equity firms for BIG $$$. Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. In fact I am somewhat jealous that Vonage has come up with yet another way to capitalize on this model. These guys are very smart. And don't expect the FCC to do anything about it--in the end the SEC ended up as a major cheerleader for Island (lots of rhetoric about encouraging competition, etc.).
So this is a mixed blessing.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
When we built our own VoIP technology we used blowfish encryption and used dynamic ports. As a result, the packets look like generic TCP packets and there is no way to tell what's underneath.
Just call tech support and voila you're talking to India. From there you can ask the locals to patch you up to your final destination. Heck, they can even tell you the weather or update you on the latest news and rumors regarding your family and friends.
Try progress, try progress for the last few decades.
-Steve Gray.
The human being will always play dirty if it can and it is allowed to...
Sir, this is by far the smartest response I've ever read on Slashdot.
Thank you.
-Matt
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Slashdot's staff really has to add some kind of explanation to that notice. All the FPs have actually declined in quality, harping on that one note.
--
make install -not war
Yup. Free as in beer, blaw, blaw, blaw. Most Slashdot "readers" are still sucking of mom and dad or the govt's teet, so what do you expect?
A man after midnight, won't somebody help me chase the shadows away! Oh wait, you're mostly hetero males. Hmm. I guess it doesn't work after all then.
I work for a major backbone company who provides VoIP services to a number of players. We are getting ready to roll out Enhanced 911 (E911) service. Any company found to be arbitrarily blocking calls (including 911 calls) might be in for a bit of a legal surprise.
As Buckwheat might say, "it's as simple as dat!"
I mean, I like my cable modem and all, but the day Time Warner decides to shit on my VoIP connection in favor of their overpriced junk ($15/mo Vonage does me just fine, don't need unlimited talking LD or local) is the day I drop the whole megillah.
My guess is the Vonage computers have a hard time understanding the Indian operators accent, until they're outsourced, of course.
They aren't exactly a victim... they just get made when people do it to them...
http://sipphone.com/press/pr_sep30_2004.html
Vonage locks hardware without informing users... but that's not anti-competitive.
It's easy to block H323 traffic, but try blocking SIP or IAX traffic, it's not that easy, it can go through proxys, and you may even use it over SSH. Absolutely undetectable. The only thing that may tell that you are using VoIP is the network activity, you can easily identify a voip conversation with ethercap (forget about open ports and/or content), it's usually a constant flow of packets, in both directions, using a somehow stable bitrate. But even that can be hidden under a ssh connection.
ALMAFUERTE
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Or are they just QoS'ing it down to a dull roar? If VOIP is sucking such a percantage of their pipes that it's affecting their customers in other ways, that, I can't say that I'd blame 'em. Not too much different that universities throttling down P2P....
Fuck Vonage.
Try cancelling the service... its harder than AOL. I've been getting chargebacks for months since I don't have time to wait 45+ minutes on hold.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I have alway stated they need to masquerade as some other protocols.
I have been doing video streaming for 14 years now and it's always need necessary to look like http or ftp or some other protocol to get my Livecam streaming video past firewalls and other obstacles.
With my ECIP/SPAck it's been the same way. I have even had IETF members swear to official to block my packets at the backbone level.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
and I took the chance during an open meeting to ask our regional Comcast rep whether he could state that his company would promise not discriminate against competing VoIP services... He said he couldn't and wanted the next question.
Agreed. A simple 'sorry, our servers aren't all in sync yet; please try again in a minute or so' would work wonders.
you'll see that it is certain rural LECs doing it. Anything with the word rural in it is not worth the call. Move along.
This reminds me of the story of how the automatic telephone switchboard was invented. An undertaker was convinced that the telephone operator (who was the wife of one of his competitors) was routing calls to her husband rather than him when clients asked for him.
His response was to invent the automated switchboard to keep human operators who were prone to bribery or bias out of the loop.
see
Almon Strowger for more information. Not much has changed, except now we can program computers to carry out the dirty work.
http://notanumber.net/
I don't know. I'd say that's better quality then GNAA.
More than competing services from providers, the consolidation of communication companies is going to have a huge negative impact. Maybe they'll start providing VoIP for free, by raising monthly cable/DSL prices by $20/mo., gradually. Perhaps they'll institue a system-wide policy to slow-down VoIP traffic from other providers, and/or drop a fairly small number connections from competitors over a (randomized) length of time.
More than that, the consolidated companies can throw their weight around much more. The FCC should slap any ISP for doing something like this, but with such large companies, they can bribe everyone in Wahington, and have enough lobbyists to provide as many sound-bytes as it takes.
As I type this, Verizon is merging with MCI, and somewhere a few more politicans and CEOs are getting richer, while driving service, reliability, etc., into the ground.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The IP providers are trying to have it both ways.
With one side of their face, they claim that they cannot be held accountable for the content that traverses their network. This is the "common carrier" argument, they are selling connectivity only. Just like the road is not liable for being sped upon.
But with the other side of their face, they block services that they think are inconvenient to their business model, such as blocking port 80 inbound to subscribers unless they buy "business" rate services, or block port 25 outbound with the excuse that "it blocks spam".
So what happens when they are dragged into court, and have to explain how they can do both of these things at the same time? Likely nothing, they have good lawyers.
Which reminds me, the FCC would just LOVE to get their regulatory claws into the IP service business. This gives them multiple paths, "ensuring customer equity", "preventing unfair competition", and worst of all is their claiming that since the content of services they already regulate (like phones and TV) are being delivered by IP now, their regulations apply to the new medium.
Whatever you do, don't remind them that the entire justification for the FCC is to "regulate scarce resources (broadcast spectrum) for the good of all", and IP is not a scarce resource.
Bureaucrats hate being told they have no jurisdiction. They will go get some and come back in force. Watch out, you selective filtering IP providers, you're just setting yourselves up for a nasty fall.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
One big problem is that the VOIP packages I've dealt with at the ISP I work at want to use port 69. We block this port as I'm sure most ISP's do. I mean don't all ISP's wnat 1337 HaX0rs crippling them.
If ISP's decide to block 5061 they would blocking way more than just Vonage, even if they block TFTP then Vonage uses an alternate port. So tell me, which ISP's are blocking Vonage?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Vonage had a widespread outage the other day. Vonage users couldnt make calls out.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I am a vonage subscriber. I recently joined. Great price, great service.... I dumped my verizon line that costs $45 a month.
I welcome vonage and any other VOIP solution that provides BETTER service than POTS and at a cheaper price.
I never had caller id, voicemail, 3way calling, unlimited free longdistance etc with verizon.
Vonage is great. I see that many here are bashing it, but really its a nice service at a great price.
If a customer pays an ISP... that ISP should be required to fullfill their obligation... WHICH is to provide internet service.
VOIP is just another thing you can do with your internet service. ISP's have no right to dictate what you do with your service if you pay for it.
I pay for Vonage, I pay for Optonline (which also has a VOIP service of their own).
I pay for the pipe, what i do with it, is irrelevant ESPECIALLY if its using a competing service!!!
Oddly enough, it's the company that we dumped to get our VoIP. Of course, that same said company had decided to double bill and when we notified them that we need to have our service disconnecter *after* a date, they dumped us three days ealier.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
This type of behaviour is fraud. Any company that says it provides "Internet access" must provide Internet access. Blocking certain ports or packet types means that the ISP is no longer providing Internet access; it is providing something entirely different, something that is not 100% Internet access. This is clearly fraudulent and the ISP shall be forced to make good on its contract, and it must clearly state exactly what type of service it is providing if it is blocking certain things or handling certain types of packets specially. This also means that "unlimited" access must mean that: No limits.
We have a Televantage phone switch with a VoIP board. Basically my office is a private VoIP provider. One of our remote employees uses SBC DSL. Guess what? They absolutely block H.323 traffic. We've ended up running all of our remote employees through a VPN to avoid this very issue.
The mail ISP in my country, a former monopolist (and almost sole ISP) is tring this stunt. However, there are alot of unaware people falling for their 'great service'. But basically they are giving private IPs, and NATiing all their traffic on that service to one public IP, so VOIP cannot work on that service. And of course the package they offer with VOIP capabilties are much higer priced than the other service. And yes, they are also the main telephone company. They have very little compeition in land lines.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
A SIP device does not qualify as it is not providing service network content or service to anyone out sideo yoru home -- though it receives data, it receives data on behalf of the end user.
First: With respect to the USUAL definition of server and client: A SIP phone that is receiving calls is a server and a SIP phone that is originating calls is a client. (It's even described that way in the RFC.) Of course a typical SIP phone instrument is being both at the same time.
The phone-as-server accepts connections, and provides services such as negotiating the type of streams you are willing to accept, ringing the phone, or telling the remote client that you're busy, might be reached at another site or set of sites (temporarily or permanently), or that you only accept calls if they're first routed through THAT proxy.
Rule of thumb: If an automated agent accepts connections and provides some useful information or activity (even if small) to a distant agent, it's a server. If it initiates connections to distant servers, it's a client.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
or, at least make the latency unbearable...
"Find an ISP that doesn't have those restrictions and use them instead."
Check out your current ISP with http://www.testyourvoip.com/. It places a call in Java to test out your connection's ability to handle a good quality VoIP call. But it will also tell you if your provider is blocking VoIP specific ports.
-ben
read your agreement, they _own_ the equipment they send you
I agree that it's wrong for them to block other VoIP providers, however, the lines become blured when you talk about packet shaping. What if they cut bandwidth to Vonage or VoIP that they are direct competitors with? It's harder to prove, but just as damaging. What if someone only has VoIP and needs to make a 911 call?
The decision the FCC made years ago to allow communication companies to be involved in more than one service has provided some good competition, however it's also created some interesting conflicts of interest.
New port numbers or IP addresses may be simpler, but can also more easily be blocked.
New port numbers aren't necessarily a solution, because someone calling you has to have a way to find you.
Fortunately, while there are default port numbers, they're not hardwired into the protocol. SIP registrars (directories), redirect servers ("i've moved"), proxies (firewall traversers, PBXes), and user agent servers (sip phones doing call forwarding, etc.) can all redirect your sip negotiation to any port they like, not just the default port.
An ISP trying to block someone using an external registrar would pretty much have to identify the SIP session by its content, which means examining the start of every TCP connection or UDP packet (SIP can use either) to figure out if it's a SIP session.
Unfortunately, the upcoming generation of edge routers can DO that. B-(
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
IANAL
When you agree to subscribe to broadband service, you are not getting "Internet Access", you are getting whatever the broadband service contract says that you are getting. If it is not spelled out in the contract, it is not guaranteed. Simple as that. Looking at my service agreement from Comcast, they pretty much don't gurantee any level of service.
Does anyone have information on better contracts for "business level" services?
The ISP's are the owners of their networks and it is up to them whether or not they want to let Vonage through.
Last time I looked, using market dominance in one of your products to give another of your products an advantage is explicitly banned by federal antitrust law.
It's what got Microsoft in trouble over Internet Explorer.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
ISPs currently aren't treated as "common carriers" under FCC rules. They can, therefore, discriminate for or against any traffic in any arbitrary manner they wish.
But discriminating against the traffic of other VoIP providers when you also provide VoIP yourself is an antitrust violation. That comes under the jurisdiction of the FTC.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Does anyone know what companies Vonage is complaining about? I didn't see it in the article.
I'm using Vonage right now to post this comment so apparently my carrier is allowin j(*&Slsaj [NO CARRIER]
Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
to be linked to a gene unique to CEOs given to periods of hoarding.
Wait that was Verizon... Nevermind ignore this post.
I proclaim that companies shall not use the letter V. Thank you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
There should be a law giving ISPs of all kinds (dial-up, cable, wireless, DSL etc) the same common carrier status as POTS phone companies have.
Although would this mean places like airports, coffee shops, airplanes, municipalities and so on that now offer internet access of various kinds would be covered too?
What about the case where someone is leaching off someone elses WiFi connection (with or without permission), would that be covered?
In any case, giving ISPs common carrier status would be a good thing IHMO.
Except these companies are advertising on television and in print the service as "Unlimited Internet Access."
Just because something is in a contract does not make it legally binding; also, even if something is not written, that does not mean there is not a contract.
For example, consider buying a ticket to a theater show. If I disrupt the performance, I am in breach of contract, even though there was no document or signing. Similarly, if the theater operator cuts the show short, he is in breach of the contract.
Also, you can not contract away yourself (slavery) because self-ownership is inalienable, no matter how many pieces of paper you sign.
Sorry, this doesn't sound comparable to me. What Vonage is doing, according to your article, corresponds to what US mobile phone carriers have been doing since the dawn of time: they both sell you hardware at a subsidized price, with the catch that it's locked to only work with their network. And Vonage isn't even keeping you from using a non-Vonage branded VOIP box with their network, which gives them a leg up on at least Sprint PCS (who won't activate any non-Sprint branded phone on their network).
- First!
- First Post!
- In Soviet Russia...
- And the server is toast...
- Well it didn't take long for that to happen...
- Nothing for you to see here, please move along huh huh huh
If a real first post arrives within a certain time limit, it should be preceded by one of these. And modding one down shouldn't cost you a mod point.Even if nobody but the first posters themselves know the difference, just spoiling the experience for them would make it worth it.
They may advertise their services on the TV, but there is a disclaimer refering to the service agreement in fine print.
I understand that there is a notion of "it is what it is" in regards to contract law... i.e. a man could sign a contract declaring that he was a woman, but the contract would be voice because he is not.
Your theatre example does not hold up. There is usually an escape clause in the even that the show is cut short or canceled.
Read through your broadband access contract. I reread the one from Comcast tonight. As a consumer level service user, Comcast basically does not guarantee squat! There is no bandwidth guarantee, and the "agreement" is full of excuses for them to limit your service.
I have three types of cable coming in to my house:
1. Powerlines
2. Non-Twisted Copper
3. Coaxial cable
The first two types are connected to networks that were built with taxpayer assistance. Thanks to that, the services (and associated charges) comming over those wires are REGULATED by federal, state, and local laws.
The last type is connected to a network that was built by private companies with private sector dollars. That network is "slightly" regulated in that the cable company is given a monopoly on the township for a limited time span.
The way I see it, if a private company owns the network - they should decide what services will be provided on that network.
If consumers and federal/state/local governments do not like the options given to them by those private networks, they should make it a priority to fund (via tax dollars) a public network that can be run according to need.
Take the city of brotherly love - Philadelphia, PA for example. The city is tired of waiting for private cellular phone companies to provide wireless internet service, so the city is looking at building their own. Why shouldn't the government compete with the private sector? Especially in situations where the private sector is falling GROSSLY short on services, but collecting a king's ransom?
Capitalists claim competition is a key driver of efficiency in markets (they are right) - but why can't the government be a player in that market?
-ted
So does traffic shaping reduce or eliminate a telco's ability to claim that it is a common carrier providing equal access?
On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much moral or legal difference between shaping the who (Vonage) and shaping the how (p2p protocols such as BitTorrent).
I don't understand this discussion, or maybe I understand it better than others. I have VOIP. I have a hardware firewall which blocks all but port 80.
My understanding is that, when the SIP device finds all ports blocked, it works around the block. Maybe with STUN.
Skype also works around firewall blocks.
Can anyone explain this?
ahem. actually its been done by the carriers in more places than I can remember - Argentina, Ethiopia, Paksitan...
Voip has been enemy number 1 for PTTs the world over for many years. Get out from under that rock and take a look around.
I don't think I've ever seen a cable company that really paid for the whole cost of their network. If you're cable is on a pole line, the they are most likely using pole lines built and paid for by the electric and phone companies. This doesn't include the easement for the pole lines. Similarly, if the cable is underground, they make use of easements for their right of way. They may have paid to put the cable there, but they most likely DO NOT own the right of way.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
The way I see it, if a private company owns the network - they should decide what services will be provided on that network.
Yes, we are in agreement, but you are talking about the 'last mile'. Cable network providers generally don't send Internet data traffic over the same coax past a neighborhood substation, but rather over sort of dedicated wire (yes, this is a terrible generalization, but usually applies in some very high level form or another.)
Also, a lot of cable ISPs maintain their own backbone networks between components of the actual cable net, a number of which your traffic can/may/will traverse before it hits the ISP's upstream. Who paid for that wire?
You're absolutely correct; if the entire infrastructure (at least that part used by your data traffic) of the company doing the technical limiting was paid for by the company, they can do what they want, insofar as it's not against any laws. That's a good thing too--in such situations I don't want my government being a bureaucratic wet blanket. Call your congressman if you feel otherwise, that's what he's there for. Otherwise, if there's a cent of your own tax money involved, wa-hey.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
In some municipalities, counties, or states, there are laws governing the usage of cable similar to the telephone company. Usually, because the cable company must obtain the rights of way through the cities, counties, etc. those government usually sets up conditions and requirements for how the cable must be operated in exchange for such rights to dig up the streets and run cable through the streets or over them. Some cities have requirements in allowing other television stations and possibily competitors to use the lines. Hence why cable companies must carry common airwave channels also on their lines.
As for internet service, that is actually governed by the common carrier laws (if I remember correctly), as I remember that the cable company, that I was working for briefly, was legally forced to allow customers to have Earthlink as their ISP instead of the cable company's own ISP. So, to extrapolate upon that logic, Vonage must be allowed to go through the cable company's ISP by extension of the common carrier rule as we have discussed.
In the Cable world, MSOs are going to be applying QoS tags to the bits containing Voice calls from their customers. When a call originates behind one of their MTAs or eMTAs, they are expected to do this. As a result ALL other traffic should, and will suffer to some degree.
What makes this more interesting is not just port blocking as a way to ruin VoIP businesses but the way a service is "rated" by the provider itself.
VoIP, along with network gaming and certain other applications all require one thing to work well, a constant quality data stream. The TOS for some providers may differ on what exactly a decent connection is.
I work for a cable internet company. A month or so ago we were experiencing an overload of a certain region's systems (they has since been completely rebuilt). Anyway, at the time we instituted some load sharing techniques on the network to make sure more people could connect (although everyone's connection wasn't as fantastic as the fewer who got on before). A side effect of the first iteration of our load balancing was a pronounced latancy that occured at a regular intravel.
Now, to normal web surfers, this was barely noticeable. But we recieved lots of calls from people doing network gaming complaining about slow speed, and VoIP subscribers complaining about the connections effecting their phone service. We got the most calls from people using VPN connections. The latancy was bad enough the VPN servers believed the user was gone and would log them out frequently.
While we don't block any of the traffic for these services, we don't support them either per our terms of usage. The support calls generally went as verifying the user could get on the web. To which they all replied they could. Measuring the latancy, and seeing it appear once in awhile, but since the average packet times were still under 100ms, despite the occasional 500+ms packet, we were providing a decent connection. Since web surfing was not being effected really we were supportting what we could.
The latancy problem was worked on and resolved within 48hrs mostly to appease VPN users, but for gamers and especially VoIP users, our response was "We don't block it, but we don't support it, if it works, hooray. If not, too bad."
While Vonage is upset it is being outright blocked by some providers, some are doing it as part of lessening network congestion by Zombie PC's, and some may simply be disrupting the network's stability accidently as part of dealing with other issues. Vonage will have to realize when it plays on its competitors equipment, things may not always be sunshine and dasies, and they may find themselves effected by issues they have no control over.
My understanding is that the Netgear FVS-328 blocks incoming connections to all UDP ports. It has a control panel for unblocking them.
I think that it is time, that the gov (both feds and states) remove the ability to have local monopolies or at least limit it for a set length of time. Once the monopolies are removed, competition can take over (and it will; qwest would love to go into NY, Chicago, LA, Dallas, etc and kick).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I use to work at ATT/TCI. Then comcast took over and most jobs were drained from Colorado. ATT was doing phones over cable (but not sip). It works, but expensive on bandwidth. Right now, Comcast is busy developing their system and trying hard to get it work correctly (the ppl in phili do not know phones or cable and lastly have piss poor QA). According to some of my buddies, once they have it working (perhaps up to asterisk level), they will roll it out everywhere. Then they will kill all sip on the cable except for theirs. of course, keep in mind, the folks that I know, are the geeks that are trying to rescue the project. They probably do not know the real politics back in philly. So....
Most are trying to do 50-100 years monopolies. If they have a monopoly, then they should be offering up what they said they would; the internet.
If they do not have a monopoly, then who cares. It is their business.
Personally, I think that this would be a good time for a limited distance monopoly to work; That is from the CO to the home. Or better from the block green box to the home. Minimize the monopoly and do not allow that company to offer any other service.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...and, indeed, there are quite a lot of folks using OpenVPN in UDP mode for moving VoIP traffic.
Trying to tunnel a protocol which has its own reliability layer through another protocol which also implements a reliability layer makes bad things happen.
Skype's peer-to-peer randomly distributed connectivity is impossible to detect, impossible to lock down, and therefore impossible to block.
The skype program can even automatically detect whether a connection is BEING blocked, and can decide to set up a new connection to another intermediate machine.
Remember - skype's program makes at least 50 random connections to other computers in the distributed network, and any one of these could be used to route voice traffic.
Carriers stand absolutely zero chance of blocking skype.
Which is why I've been advocating the creation of a public distributed "VPN" along the same lines - to carry more than just VoIP traffic.
There is a federal regulation that mandates that you must be able to take your telephone # with you to another service. The problem with the law is that I don't think there is any section that says how long the bells can drag their feet in this process. There are many cases where the POTS providers stall for MONTHS fufilling LNP (Local number portability) requests for VoIP telcos. Can anyone point me the actual section of the regulation that governs LNP?
I didn't find the answer to this question in the Telecom Act of 1996
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It's been a while since I last tested Vonage's service. When we tested it, Vonage configured the Cisco ATA-186 to use non-compressed 64Kbit/sec data streams as the default. (IP/UDP encapsulation increases net bandwidth requirements to ~80Kb/sec in each direction). Get enough of those puppies running and you'll suck down a fair percentage of any smaller ISP's backbone. Note: This type of VOIP encoding technique requires more data bandwidth than carrying the same phone call over a POTS network!!!
At the time, you had to jump threw hoops to get Vonage to turn ON compression and reduce the network loading by a factor of 10 to 20x, (down to 4 to 8Kb/sec). But at the time, activating compression was a double edged sword, as quite a few of Vonage's termination switches&gateways no longer worked properly with the compression protocol activated.
Since then, they have improved things a bit. They've added a user configured "Bandwidth" saver to the account management web page, and "Probably?" fixed many of compression issues with the termination switches&gateways.
But from what I hear, the nasty (2 * 80Kb/sec) is still the default, and it inflicts a "Tragedy of the Commons" type problem on smaller ISP's. Where no single user causes a problem, but when dozens/hundreds of simultaneous users start placing calls using their Vonage service, an ISP with limited resources is forced to act. This problem can only be corrected at the source, (Vonage), since most users are blissfully ignorant of the implications. (I.E. A couple of intelligent users reseting their compression settings will have little net effect on the overall traffic patterns. )
In summary, Vonage is complaining about smaller phone companies not providing enough IP bandwidth to carry a significant portion of their PAID/Measured traffic over Uncompensated long distance backbone connections. Ha, fat chance! For the most part, I would say that Vonage's problems are self inflicted, story over.
If a broadband ISP can't handle all their users utilizing 160Kbit/sec of bandwith they are far too oversold to be of any value to any consumer.
I work for such a provider, and we're also a Old School Long Distance(tm) company. If we were to block or limit wanted traffic (VoIP service), we would be breaking the statutes that allow us to remain common carriers of IP traffic.
Even to deal with virus outbreaks, we don't stop the packets (that would be filtering, which is bad), we just redirect them to a device I have built that can identify the customer from radius logs and network maps, then spits out a report for us to contact them.
Common carrier is important, and there is court prescidence to justify the fact that 'rate limiting' is the same as 'filtering' in the eyes of common carrier status. Let someone take it to court against the provider, then there will be hell to pay. Would you want to be "responsible" for the data passing over your internet connection?
Thought not.
Great post. I would have just jumped on a band wagon to blame the ISPs. Thank you for the enlightenment.
In Korea, only old people ...
Your idea, is original, but this is why it won't work... [checklist of items]
The FCC really need to regulate this
The FCC need to stop regulating this...
This patent is so obvious
I've seen so many idoitic replies to this story ... even more than the slashdot usual.
... this is just stupid.
First:
It's their network, they can do what they want.
Technically true but not morally. I am paying for a service from my provider and I expect to be able to use that service, but the minute too many people start using a service that they are all paying for (broadband) they have to cut it off. Why? I'm paying for it. I guess their profit margin would be to slim if people actually used the service that they were paying for.
Second:
They are just making sure that the network does not become affected by all that traffic.
So how does cutting off traffic help? How does blocking my traffic affect me?
You know what
You forgot the big nasty and probably the best reason for ISP's with lots of bandwidth. Vonage uses ports that are frequently used by worms and trojans. When all of a sudden my Vonage stopped working cold, I found out over the course of a week that my college had blocked the ports because of a recent worm. With no ports to connect I couldn't play so I canceled.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Also, my understanding is that BroadVoice is far better than Vonage, which annoys Slashdotters with Flash ads, as though we are like little cats and something moving will make us follow it.
BroadVoice, like Skype, works around the difficulty. If necessary, they could do everything over port 80, I understand.
The states only care because they charge a huge tax on telephone service (which is unjustified, since its horribly regressive).
They aren't upholding any noble legal principle here. They just want money.
"hereas Vonage, et al, are pretty much leeching on"
yeah, Amazon does the same thing. They have a "for-profit" web site, and they expect ISP's to deliver their packets to customers without paying.
That should be against the law.
Just let time warner kill my VOIP connection with vonage. God forbid i EVER need to dial 911 and I can't!? I will sue the pudding out of them for it.
This by itself is probably the only thing stopping cable companies from just shutting down your VOIP connections.
On top of that, people mention that I should dump my ISP and find someone else. I have a regular residential Time Warner Road Runner connection (3mb download). THERE IS NO ONE ELSE THAT PROVIDES THIS SERVICE!!!!
The article states:
"According to Powell, his understanding is that the blocking is not coming from major service providers, but from rural Local Exchange Carriers (LECs). Brooke Schulz, Vonage's senior vice president for corporate communications, said Monday that the company would not comment on the report."
From that it sounds like it is certainly the phone companies not the ISPs that are blocking the Vonage traffic. This probably means that they *are* common carriers. However the article states there are currently no laws regarding this type of blockage. But, I repeat, "this has nothing to do with the ISPs"!!!!!!
If they can't afford the bandwith, maybe they shouldn't sell broadband, or put bandwith limits on customers. I use comcast, I pay for 4meg/386k. I keep bittorrent open 24/7 and use a constant 100+k down 24k up. I also use vonage with 100 minute phone calls being the norm. If comcast blocked my voip or bittorrent service, I would switch providers instantly.
You are revealing my lack of knowledge about these things.
My understanding is that the VOIP providers establish a "connection" using TCP, and then the actual communication takes place with UDP. Skype uses only UDP for the voice part of the communication.
Can anyone help here? I find it impossible to know everything about every subject in computing, as does everyone else.
The argument that LECs and ISPs have been using to avoid liability for filesharing is that they are not content providers and have no responsibility to filter or otherwise regulate the content that is delivered over their links. However, once they start filtering VoIP, then they are implying that they are indeed making an effort to regulate content, and therefore are opening themselves up to more legal nightmares.
I would think that if provider X doesnt allow traffic Y, its their choice. ( and of course must notify their users and allow them to drop service with out an additional fee ) Unless of course data providers have been declared as 'common carriers'.. Which i hadnt heard they did, yet. However, if they are soon forced to monitor and drop packets ( ie, RIAA/MPAA ) then they would not be a 'common carrier'... Cant have it both ways...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its true that the service providers need competetion. With that being said, I would rather the government no run my network. This is mainly because -- in my experience -- the government is incompetent.
My father has been a medium-high level gov't official for decades now and I can tell you that most government employees are lazy, unmotivated and incompetent. Private industry demands better from their employees. The result is better and more reliable service.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I declare that sigline of the year. Awesome.
And with Verison buying all those big pipes at MCI, you can bet there will be a lot more of this, and on a much larger scale. And the size of the corporation will provide perfect plausible deniability. Excellent.
So? If they sell for instance 2mbit/2mbit ADSL to me, I have the right to use just that. The backbone isn't one of my problems.
It's just their problem if it can't handle the load they are getting or are not billing the customers properly.
...then they should have stopped doing it.
How does this get modded funny? It's just not anymore. It's redundant. It's stupid. And it wasn't that funny in the first place. And yes, I'm posting as AC, rather than karma whoring.
ISP's broadband models are based on an average 20Kbps per user. If you want 160Kbps guaranteed, expect to pay 8 times as much for your broadband. Vontage is making a lot of bucks off bandwidth they are not paying for - and neither are you!
The only problem with your argument is that these ISPs have binding contracts with their customers to provide a certain amount of bandwidth. So if their customers use Vonage, then Vonage traffic should be able to absorb every bit of that bandwidth, all the time. It's hard to imagine that the amount of bandwidth they've promised customers is less than the 160 Kb/sec you claim that Vonage consumes. So if they can't handle all their customers simultaneously using 160 Kb/sec then they are guilty of fraud because they have sold something (bandwidth) that they are unable to provide.
You are also wrong that Vonage is complaining about smaller phone companies not providing enough IP bandwidth; what they are complaining about is ISP's *specifically targeting* and blocking VOIP traffic. Failing to deliver adequate capacity is another matter. There are no real quality of service guarantees in residential service, though no failure could be more grave for an ISP which, after all, has nothing to offer but bandwidth.
Compression is not necessarily a good idea, not if it increases latency.
If they do not have a monopoly, then who cares. It is their business.
I'm not sure this business model could work.
Suppose the deal is that the public allows a cable company to come in a wire up a city in exchange for a 10 year monopoly.
After 10 years, in theory somebody else can come in and run their own wires, but nobody would ever do so unless offered a monopoly of their own. The reason is that although the incumbent company may be charging very high prices at the moment, they'd drop them the instant a competitor actually got up and running. Since the incumbent starts out with 100% market share, the competitor wouldn't be able to pay for their loans on all that cable they just ran and they'd go out of business. At this point, the incumbent buys their cables since they're the only company that can profitably use them, and they raise their prices again.
Wires on the ground tend to be a natural monopoly, and consequently they tend to require regulation. I'm open to other scenarios that would eliminate the need for regulation, but in most cases it is a necessary evil...
In all actuality most residential customers do not have a binding agreement and receive "best-effort" bandwidth.
Uh, are you suggesting you want to ban overselling?
We could do that by law, but then nobody would sell broadband for less than $500/month. You simply can't afford to provide it for less than that right now.
What you get with your $25 DSL subscription is an agreement that they'll give you a lot of bandwidth as long as you only use it for generally-interactive network usage and not use protocols that tie up the network in a disproportionate manner.
ISPs don't normally police this strictly, but they do put their foot down when their costs go up substantially.
Take a poll of what most DSL customers want:
1. Allow Vonage - everybody's bill goes up by $10/month (including non-Vongage customers).
2. Allow Vonage with an extra $30/mo fee for only Vonage customers.
3. Ban Vonage.
Most people would pick #2 or 3.
Don't get me wrong - I sometimes play fast and loose with the ISP terms and conditions, but I try to be considerate and throttle network usage. If they complained I'd throttle further.
I don't expect the same SLA and TOS for a residential DSL line as a commercial T1. You only get what you pay for.
It is easy to say "well then, don't sell DSL if you can't afford the bandwidth" - but do we really want to not be able to buy DSL?
It must be gratifying for telecoms to see others making spurious arguments in their defence. The issue here is not people using VoIP twenty four hours a day, seven days a week (24 x 7) which is what seems to be claimed. It is the telecom equivalent to the Microsoft monopoly case.
Microsoft was found guilty of using its effective monopoly position in the computer OS to favor its own applications over competitive products (e.g. the OS doesn't ship until Lotus crashes or whoever the current target was).
In this case the telecom has significant leverage over your IP connection. If it can make independent VoIP companies ineffective by blocking ports or selectively denying them bandwidth it opens the door to allowing the ISP to provide that service. We have already seen this happen with telecoms and ISP service. How many more examples do we need as the telecom companies continue to merge into ever larger monopolistic entities? If we manage to have telecom, cable TV, IP over power lines, and true high speed wide area wireless them maybe there will be enough natural competition to keep them honest. But we are a long way from that currently.
Of course this should all be a moot point since they claim common carrier status, That removes any question of "shaping bandwidth" or blocking ports. If they want to play those games they should lose their common carrier status and face liability for everything that goes over their network.
The Post Office can and does choose to compete, and refuse to cooperate with other carriers.
About the only level of cooperation you might see, as part of customer service, is a fed ex drop box outside the office, which is shocking enough, given their attitude.
I do think that the other could come in and compete.
But at the least, it is time to minimize the monopoly. That is the monopoly should be from CO to the house. And it should not be allowed to compete in any thing else.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The simple to read Corporatism alert:
Irgin - the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak
Erizon - not so weak flesh
Onage - clear and present danger
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"Vontage is making a lot of bucks off bandwidth they are not paying for - and neither are you!"
Ummmm, I absolutely am paying for my bandwidth. And when ISP's advertise 300kb/s they better be ready to back it up. I don't care if they say "up to...", if they don't say "but as low as..." or "as long as you are only surfing the web..." then they should be responsible for the speed they use to sell their product. I think ISPs have teh reasonable expectation that if they advertise "up to 300Kbps" that most consumers will be led to believe they will acheive that speed and not 20Kbps per user, 15 times slower than their marketed speed. I could beat that with a 33.6K dialup.
Why don't they use encrypted packets and random or pseudo-random port numbers?
That's pretty much the solution any time some idiot tries to filter your network traffic. At that point they either have to let it though or they have to start blocking any traffic they can't identify. And the latter option results in a substantially unusable internet connection and they'd lose all their customers.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Vonage has screwed me for several months now! I am paying for their "service" and the number they gave me can't be reached by my customers. When people try to call it says "Thank you for calling, goodbye" and then they are hung up on! WTF??? I have complained and complained; but they keep saying it's the fault of the other phone cos. Bull! I am not paying the other phone companies for service, I am paying Vonage and they are screwing me. Every other phone I have seems to work fine. Vonage acts as though they have no responsibility to their customer. As a company, I hope they fail. I am all for VOIP, but Vonage SUCKS! I'll be switching back to Qwest soon. I may get charged more but at least I'll get my calls. My advice: stay as far away from Vonage as you can. Unless of course you enjoy pissing your money and time down a drain.
However, it does make sense for Vonage to at least try to play nice with the network - utilizing compression by default, etc.
Don't get me wrong - I'd be using Vonage myself if my phone company let me drop my local line but keep DSL. However, Vonage can't claim to have clean hands unless they take reasonable steps to keep network intrusion to a minimum.
The parent was simply pointing out that Vonage by default makes no attempt to compress the data much at all. You don't need the same kind of datarates for phone as you do from an mp3 file - if they just use a little compression they could drop network usage by quite a bit.
I would like to see where in your TOS that your ISP actually tells you that they expect "generally interactive" services be used.
If they sold you a bitrate and they have no such interactivity clause in their TOS, then they deserve to sink with their ship.
Someone else (yes, perhaps more expensive) will come along to take their place immediately if there's money to be made from the original customer base and proper contracts.
You get what you pay for, but in most States you also get what you were promised, or consumer protection laws kick in.
If that bankrupts some idiots who didn't know how to properly set up TOS with their clients, so be it. The data transport business is hard.
Time for Bobby Businessowner who owns the ISP to go back to the sandbox and play with his little-boy toys if he can't learn to hire a lawyer and write a proper service contract and TOS for and with his customers.
I used to work for a co-location company that both had proper TOS contracts for everything, including maximum burst and sustained rates as well as a slew of other metrics, but who also gave 100% refunds for down-time. Even DNS server outages were considered... yes... downtime.
Damn yes, they were more expensive than their competition, but the 100% uptime guarantee drew a crowd of folks who simply didn't want to deal with network problems, and wanted to focus on their business.
It also drove some pretty damn nice engineering to avoid down-time in the back-end and paid for good quality hardware to do it with.
If all you want and expect is crap, that's what you'll get.
Market pressure goes where the price/performance curves cross, and in residential service, people are all too easily convinced their performance is going to be low. Not enough people vote with their wallets.
I specifically use a small local ISP run by solid businesspeople and staffed by smart geeks at a higher price than the local burger-joint DSL provider known as Qwest.
Qwest is required to provide them access to their backbone (someone mentioned common-carrier laws -- yes, we have them here, and Qwest doesn't like to mention it) and I get transport services from Qwest to their POP and then out through their well-staffed, decently-paid, happy to serve when called staff member's, and relatively speedy network with good uplinks to the world.
I get one bill from Qwest for the transport and another bill from the ISP for their routing and server services, basically. Put together, the price is competitive with all but the lowest bait-and-switch Qwest pricing, and when I call on the phone I talk to a real human sysadmin for things like DNS reverse delegation and I fill out a standard ARIN form for static IP's when needed and pay very little for them.
I have a high-quality experience at very little extra cost. A true class-act shop, like most small businesses that have their pricing and marketing done correctly and aren't in a constant death-struggle with bankruptcy.
+++OK ATH
As a counter-point, my Vonage account has been fully operational for several months. The biggest issue I had was "porting" my old POTS number to Vonage. It took a few months, but during that time, Vonage credited my account, essentially providing me my long distance service absolutely free. I'm not sure that it wasn't a reluctance on the part of the POTS provider to release the number.
I work for a large corporation that provides out-sourcing opportunities for smaller companies that do ostensibly the same business. Every day we get requests for small "mom and pop" companies, equipped with a off-brand, off-the-shelf or home rolled VPN concentrator, to connect to our network, without benefit of actually having a tech staff of thier own. It's often pretty funny (in a sad patehtic way) to hear some glorified secretary try to configure their end of a "meet in the middle" connection. I can explain the options available when you get to them, but I can't tell you how to operate in the OS of every piece of equipment ever built. This is a downside of the "plug and play" mentality. It's pretty easy to see that using anything configured by default increases the likelihood that it will be compromised by the less scrupulous among us.
Sure there have been a few glitches in my voice service, but I do not pay for business class on my cable internet service or Vonage. Absent business class connections, I have to concede that "best effort" is in effect here. I may change my mind about Vonage if I ever need to use 911 and find the service is impaired, but as of now, I use my basic Vonage service as well as my basic broadband internet service to conduct business for work frequently.
All that said, the few people I've known that have had problems with Vonage, usually stems from the fact that they are using a router/firewall between themselves and their carrier, and then didn't make any allowance for the VOIP service in the "whiz-bang" internet appliance they bought at Costco/downloaded from the internet. This is why there are certain things you should get professionals to do, or (even better) be willing to invest some time into teaching yourself. Expectations of service levels are moot if you try to do the work yourself, without proper knowledge. I mean, do you blame the power company for the fire if you connected your house to the commercial power grid yourself using unwound wire coat hangers? Sure, it's just point A to point B and wire coat hangers will carry voltage and current, but it's still not a good idea. This is why the government required inspections on such connections to public services.
This post is in direct response to above and not necessarily on-topic to the parent article.
IAX uses a single UDP port: 4569. No TCP.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent