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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."
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.
...yet you wonder why people want municipal broadband...
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
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.
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
To reiterate my point, if Vonage wants to not be regulated, it should not expect others to be regulated for its benefit.
They're not leeching off of anything. Users are PAYING for monthly access to that broadband. It's not like the infrastructure isn't be paid for. The phone and cable companies are simply trying to force (AGAIN) consumers to utilize their services...
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I think the market and/or the FCC will quickly put a stop to this.
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.
That's like saying it takes a lot of money to build the infrastructure for broadband and iTunes and similar services are pretty much leeching on, so ISPs should be able to block off iTunes, Napster, et al... AFAIK, the ISPs and telcos didn't need to do anything particular to allow for VoIP, just provide enough bandwidth. Bandwidth for which they charge already.
The customers are already paying for network access. Using the network they are paying for is not "leeching".
If your cable company started an on-line newspaper and thus blocked access to all other news sites on the net, would that be OK?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Substitute http, or ssh, or telnet for VOIP and see how fast the ISP get's condemned.
Then substitute blocking say, Google's http traffic on MSN's network because MSN has a search feature now that they want their users to use... can you see how this can quickly lead to an ISP going down the drain when other's retaliate?
Are you really getting "Internet" access from the cable provider now? Sound like some of AOL's problems? At least AOL doesn't selectively prevent their customers from accessing their competitors.
Many cable companies have a government granted monopoly on cable internet access for these customers. Should they really ban their customers from say, accessing dishnetwork's site because they're a competitor?
It's like Microsoft making a mod to the DNS resolution in windows to keep people from accessing any Linux promoting websites. Would you be up in arms over that?
If an ISP's contract with their customers prohibit's a protocol, then fine, but someone with a government monopoly to provide a service (in this case, cable internet) shouldn't be able to put restrictions banning their customers from accessing their unrelated competitor on that service.
Of course, the problem with the cable companies has always been their government monopoly status. Thank goodness for DSL and satellite dishes allowing for a little relief lately.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
Fine. They're saying they have control over their network? Sue the pants off of them for every scrap of kiddie porn provided by a user, every spam sent out from their network, every hacker busted over their wires. If they can control the flow through their traffic like that, then they're responsible for their traffic. Can't have it both ways.
The infrastructure is ALREADY being paid for. Yes, that's right. The subscribers to your cable are already paying your company for the service they want. That gives them the right to use the service for what they want, including using it with services from other vendors such as Vonage. This would be no differant than if SBC blocked access to search engines/portals for all SBC/Yahoo! subscribers. This isn't anything like the phone companies being required to resell line (which should still be required as much of the rollout of infrastructure has been funded by taxes)
The human being will always play dirty if it can and it is allowed to...
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.
That's correct, because they absolutely do not want the regulatory and quality-of-service burdens that come along with common-carrier status. However, what they do want (and are lobbying heavily for) are the same protections and immunities from prosecution granted the old-line phone companies. I don't they they should get it: there needs to be some kind of carrot dangling over their heads to keep them honest.
Hopefully, competitive pressure will keep ISPs from becoming too onerous. I have Comcast (from way back when it was @Home, and then AT&T Broadband) and haven't had any problems running anything, or any issues with Comcast's floating bandwidth cap and all that. Yet, other people I know (not in this area) have had problems, so whatever policies they have they aren't enforcing them very consistently.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is one of the things that pisses me off the most. They block my own access to my own computers. At the same time they allow some cluelees n00b next door to download craploads of kiddie porno vids. I'd hardly use any network resources even if I could accept inbound web, mail, etc traffic but no they have to go and fuck with me and leave him to download gigs of porn.
The whole dynamic IP things irks me too. I want a real IP address and the right to use the Internet however I see fit without having to buy a business package. I'm not running a business in my home so why should I need a business package? For that matter why should a business need a business package if it's the same type of connection.
We should just create community-funded networks and leave the commercial guys in the cold if they won't give the consumer a good enough deal to compete. Why don't we have city-wide gigabit networks plugged into every home and business?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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
This is different. Cable companies are not blocking port 25 because they are trying to sell something competing. You could argue that blocking port 80 is because they are competing, but even then making the "you are doing this so you get the business instead" argument is hard to make stick.
With VOIP it is different. If an ISP is selling a VOIP offering and blocking the competitors, then they are using their blocking "to compete unfairly". With outbound mail thru SMTP, and to a lesser extent with the prohibition of web servers, the ISP is not trying to make another of their products more appealing.
Just imagine the uproar if Vonage paid ISPs to block UDP port 5060 destined to any network but theirs.
I've never looked into how VoIP is deployed, but suffice it to say that if it listens on a port for incoming connections, then it is a service.
That's exactly what it has to do, if you are to receive incoming calls. In the IP sense, a traditional telephone is a "server", because it is always listening on the line for the voltage wiggle that signals an incoming call. An IP phone has to listen for incoming connections; this is done by calling the listen() library routine. The term for such a program is "server". If an ISP doesn't allow servers, they are intentionally blocking things like IP phones.
The common ISP "no servers" rule is equivalent to having a telephone line that only allows outgoing calls. That isn't very useful, of course, though phone companies can sell you that sort of service if you want it. They can also sell you a "server only" service that only allows incoming calls. This is actually a bit more common, though still fairly rare. You don't see many phones set up these ways, because people normally understand how useless such a phone would be to them.
The main reason that ISPs have gotten away from this is that the Internet reached popularity with the idea of "web browsing". This led to people accepting the idea that a web site was something that someone else did, and you just looked at them. But the real value of the Internet is two-way communication, just as with the telephone. You shouldn't have to relay email through a third-party site, any more than you should have to use voice mail to send someone a telephone message. You should be able to make some of your own files available on the Web, by running a web server on your machine. Not allowing such things is as limiting as an outgoing-calls-only phone line would be. You have a pale shadow of an Internet connection, and are missing some of the Internet's most important capabilities.
It'll probably all sort itself out in a few more decades, and we'll be able to use the Internet as it was designed. But we're seeing one of the battles here. The big companies want their control back. They don't like these little upstarts providing a comm service. If they can get away with it, they will block traffic to and from their competitors, so you'll have to pay them extra for a service that your own computer could do on its own.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Can't have it both ways.
Gotcha. We're turning off those spam & virus filters at our edge routers, and shutting down the firewalls too (except the ones that protect our own servers). Stop bugging us about the spam and get your *own* firewall, Johnnie!
Signed,
Your ISP
Apparently you have some misconceptions of how SIP works too.
The latest SIP RFC (RFC 3261) *requires* (in normative text) that all devices support both TCP and UDP as transport protocols. SIP devices MUST use TCP as a transport mechanism if the message to be sent is within 200 bytes of the MTU of the transit link.
Also, SIP has no "GET" header (like HTTP). The SIP methods defined by RFC 3261 include INVITE, REGISTER, ACK, BYE, CANCEL, and OPTIONS. Other subsequent SIP-related RFCs include other methods such as PRACK, SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY, INFO, and UPDATE. These are all well defined and the RFCs are publicly available.
I agree with the parent poster that SIP devices should be considered servers. I'd go one step further that the RFC defines a PEER TO PEER protocol, where all SIP devices MUST act as both clients AND servers. If I call you, my request is made from the "client" aspect to your "server" aspect. Once the call is setup, if you hang up the phone, your BYE message is sent from your "client" aspect to my "server" aspect. This is the nature of SIP.
The difference is that those are services that you offer to your clients, not exersizing editorial control. And personally, I do my own spam and virus flitering and firewalling, but that's just me.
I hate to sound pesimistic, but the only true solution is true deregulation of the last mile. An independent operator of the physical facilities within a locality.
Let's not forget wireless broadband, which will most likely cut a nice big piece out of the cable and telephone companies. When you eliminate "fiber to the curb" as a prerequisite for getting in on service provider racket, a whole new crop of providers will start popping up.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
ISPs are most explicitly NOT common carriers!
Under US law, as interpreted by the FCC, ISPs are engaged in "information service". This is a service rendered atop underlying "telecommunications", which, if provided as a "service" (for a fee), would be common carriage. But what that means is that ISPs usually buy their bandwidth from common carriers. (They can also self-provision, as via wireless, or when a cable companies provides it over its own wire. Then there's telecommunications without common carriage.)
ISPs, as information services, are expected to do more than pass along raw information. Indeed one of the legal justifications for their being treated a "information" rather than "carriers" is because they do have the right to pay attention and sometimes do. Spam filtering, address-range blocking, virus filtering, pr0n filtering, etc., are all "information processing".
Now along comes VoIP. It flaunts its non-common carrier status. Vonage got an FCC ruling (now being appealed by state regulators) that it is not a telephone company subject to common carrier rules (and taxes). The logic basically goes like this:
- Telephony is common carriage
- IP is usually used to carry information
- Information is carried above common carriage
- VoIP is carried inside IP packets
- Therefore VoIP is information, not telephony.
If you look carefully, you can see why the states are upset. As an analogy, assume that postmen wore gray suits and policemen wore green suits. If a postman put on green trousers, could he give you a traffic ticket? (There's a minor technical flaw in their reasoning, because Vonage-type companies actually interconnect with the telephone network via regulated, taxed telephone companies. But they don't always play by the same rules.)
Still, the point is that ISPs are not common carriers. Vonage and other parasitic VoIP service providers (that's a technically-correct description, not an insult, because they take advantage of ISP and telecom services already paid for by their customer) don't pay like telephone companies, and have to adapt to the underlying transport (ISPs), to whom they pay nothing. So if the ISP wants to block them, it's perfectly legal. Your recourse is to change ISPs. Telephone companies pay for their wire. It shows up in the price.
Now here's the catch -- what choice of ISPs do you have? Cable companies don't usually offer choice, or else usually only offer two (themselves and maybe one little-advertised option). Telco DSL is technically a common carrier telecommunications service that has to offer service to any ISP that asks; Verizon Online is supposed to be just another ISP to the Verizon Telephone Companies. That's why Speakeasy can run over Verizon wire. However, Verizon and BellSouth have petitioned the FCC to drop all of those rules. They want to not be common carriers, and want instead to use their wire to carry their own ISP, period, no choice. See the FCC's web site, e-filing, ECFS, Docket # 04-405 and 04-440. As "self-provisioned ISPs" (like cable companies), they would be allowed to block Vonage freely, and deny you access to competing ISPs. This is what the Bush FCC appears to have planned for you.
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.
Good one, but in fear of people not getting your sarcasm:
This is really capitalism at best. The ISP actually needs to compete by putting out better service to survive. The community here is essentially just a company owned by its customers.
There is a big difference when it comes to common-carrier or anti-competition.
The whole point there is that you can't favour a particular "who" - if a railroad company said "freight trains are too heavy for this bridge and will have to divert" then probably ok, wheras if it blocked freight trains from other companies but allowed its own, it wansn't.
If the ISPs are just blocking _all_ VOIP traffic then fine - they aren't delivering a full IP connection, but (in most cases) nothing forces them to. If they are blocking Vonage VOIP whilst allowing their own VOIP then I would have thought you are right into the realms of competition law, particularly if the ISP has a monopoly on the network provision.
Not gonna happen.
That would be pretty stupid and neanderthal, too. It can't be done in secret. The first technician who is hauled before a Grand Jury is going to give up his managers in a heartbeat. The first manager hauled in will give up the droid suits in a heartbeat. The droid suits will be indicted. I imagine they're stupid enough to try it until a few of them have been consigned to the graybar hotel for a few years.
Vonage has over 350,000 "lines" and is adding them at 30,000 per month. The genie is well out of the bottle and can't be put back. VoIP growth is now running at 900% per year. Shipments of VoIP switch equipment have surpassed shipments of traditional switch equipment. The avalanche is well underway and people who have tasted affordable, flat rate VoIP service that works from almost anywhere on the planet are going to be out for blood if any politician, bureaurat or weasel telecom tries to get in the way.
I invite any telecom droid who wants his career to turn into a blackened, smoking pit to just try messing with VoIP traffic. Expect existing laws to be stretched to cover this and expect interference with VoIP traffic to be criminalized very soon.
Grandma to her congresscritter: "I don't know why, but as soon as my cable Internet company offered its own voice over Internet service, my Vonage service began to develop noise and dropped calls."
congresscritter: "We'll look into it, ma'am. We've had a lot of calls about this in the last week."
congresscritter to aide: "Harvey, get on the phone with FCC and the AG's office. These ISPs are fucking with my consituents' lives and safety. Find a law, and let's break their fucking legs with it."
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
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"!!!!!!
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.
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.