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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."
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.
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?
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.
So this is a mixed blessing.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
By setting precedent (of norms, not law) like this ISPs have given themselves the power to severely curtail open and flexible communication. The real Internet, unfettered IPv4, is dying I'm sorry to say. This isn't just among cable companies; DSL also routinely blocks TCP packets by ports. The only real solution I see is creating new uncensored realms within say VPNs. Unfortunately, many ISPs also ban VPNs.
The best thing an Internet user can probably do is complain to their ISP if certain types of traffic seems to be blocked. One better step would be to threaten your ISP over breach of contract, if they were to provide you "Internet" (i.e. IPv4) service but aren't delivering.
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.
That is not, by the way, modified by any fine print in their service agreements, unless they can show that customers in general read and understand the agreements. You cannot morally or (in the US or other former British possessions) legally bind somebody to a contract when you are deliberately relying on that person's not understanding the contract's terms; I believe the term is "meeting of minds".
ISPs routinely rely on, and indeed encourage, their customers' technical and legal ignorance. They also prey on people's basic good nature, people's bizzarre respect for arbitrary corporate "policies", and people's unwillingness or lack of energy to assert their rights. They should not be allowed to get away with it. The ISP industry has become a really, really dirty one, and needs cleaning up.
When ISPs start putting these restrictions in all their advertising, with the same prominence as their rates and (alleged) bandwidth, they can restrict customers' traffic. Until then, they are obligated to carry traffic in the reasonable and customary way... which means at least not blocking traffic to competitors, and arguably treating every packet exactly the same with no filtering, QoS, transparent proxies, restrictions on servers (how many customers understand the definition of a "server") or anything of the kind.
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
- 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.
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
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.
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.