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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."
That applies to telephone calls over POTS. It does not apply to IP traffic over their internet service.
So SSL is not really an option. IPSec might be an option.
New port numbers or IP addresses may be simpler, but can also more easily be blocked.
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.
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.
Sure, you could, if you live in a city area. As it is right now, I have only one option: Atlantic Broadband. There is no DSL and, well, frankly, regular phone lines are just not going to cut it for VoIP (nevermind that having a phone line essentially defeats the entire purpose).
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!
It is clearly anti-competitive for an ISP to force their subscribers to use one particular VoIP product. There are many places in the USA where there is only one viable choice for broadband internet, and if Vonage was blocked by those ISPs they would effectively be shut out of that area.
This can only be negative for consumers.
Just as a comment for those who may not be familiar with how cable services and QoS work, and how it affects Vonage...
Vonage is limited to using standard IP QoS, since it is just a regular IP device. However, an MTA built into a cable modem has full access to the cable modem QoS code. Part of the DOCSIS specification states that a DOCSIS 1.1 cable modem must support multiple "service flows", which are basically different queues. Each of these queues has it's own classification parameters (i.e. drop packets, forward packets, QoS, etc.), so it is only natural that a cable operator would give voice calls through their MTAs a higher QoS.
Where Vonage calls might get screwed is because the packets that are being sent through the cable modem by the Vonage MTA would be considered as data, and would go out through the data flow. If the cable operator so chose, they could configure the voice flow to work with the Vonage MTA, but whether or not they'd do that is another story.
-- Joe
If the users don't like it they can choose another ISP/connection.
Actually, most of them can't. In most places, there is only one ISP.
And the comms industry in the US is pushing hard for "consolidation", to minimize the number of people who can make a choice.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You and the parent both work for cable companies, and it's interesting that you both miss a key point. There is a huge difference between what the cable company does, and what vonage does. The cable companies are now investing money to *recrecate* the type of system vonage has developed.
Vonage isn't in any way "leeching" off cable providers, just as amazon & ebay aren't leeching of any ISP. The Internet is an end-to-end system, so it takes two endpoints to be useful. Vonage is actually helping to make Internet service more attractive, by providing additional services *via* the Internet than were available previously.
If the cablecos want to build voip services also, that's great. The key to remember is that they are selling access to the global Internet, and if they start "pruning" of the sections of the Internet that happen to compete with their business, they're going to have to fight their customers, and the FCC.
You may be misinformed about "equal access" in the US. This refers to the publicly funded POTS system. The idea is that the phone system is owned by the govt, not the telco. So the govt can mandate who can use it. Privately funded cable systems OTOH, have no requirement to allow competitors to use their infrastructure. The difference is that a cable company is not obligated to allow a competitor to sell cable or Internet service over their lines. Because connectivity is a necessary element of Internet service, blocking/restricting connectivity is a (partial) failure to fulfill their obligation the service contract. Applying "equal access" to viop would mean allowing other phone service prviders to use the voip servers that the cableco owned.
I am allowed to use all my ports with no transfer cap. ... Do providers just do some "pin the tail on the donkey" game with a map of the USA when it comes to transfer caps and port blocks?
;-). But they aren't available everywhere.
Yes, that's a good description of what they do. Hereabouts (Boston), the local linux/unix users group has had a discussion lately about Comcast blocking ports 80 and 25. Some people reported no blocking, others reported both ports blocked, others reported only one blocked. The story seems to be that they're slowly blocking these ports, one neighborhood at a time. If you don't like it, you can upgrade to business service.
Last year, we had RCN in our neighborhood. They started blocking port 80, then started blocking port 25. We switched to speakeasy in November, because they promise not to block ports (and are linux/unix friendly
A common excuse for blocking these ports is that it's an easy way for the ISP to block whatever malware is currently infecting Windows boxes and dragging the network to a standstill. But, of course, once a port gets blocked in your neighborhood, it never gets unblocked.
Unless you upgrade to business service.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You're a common carrier if you are like a railroad bridge over a long, otherwise uncrossed stretch of river. The defining regulation required the rail corp that controlled the bridge to charge nonprohibitive rates for competing traffic to use their bridge. This has been applied to other industries with a similar competitive landscape and monopoly problems, like telecoms (phone companies, etc). Refusing to connect the calls is another prohibited practice, unless you "don't like them" for a legitimate reason, like connecting them somehow causes you unacceptable risk or damage.
--
make install -not war
"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
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.
VoIP uses UDP, usually port numbers in the vicinity of 5060, and some units may have a way of moving away from these to other UDP ports that are not blocked.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
...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.
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.