Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
...yet you wonder why people want municipal broadband...
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
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
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.
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.).
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...
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I think the market and/or the FCC will quickly put a stop to this.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
The human being will always play dirty if it can and it is allowed to...
The customers paid for access to the internet. It's low of the ISPs to block any part of your internet access they deem "less proffitable". Many broadband providers have already TOS'd out the ability to run servers, and that's just another extension of the shady business practice. The difference now is instead of 1% of the customers wanting to run servers, it's more like 15% of the customers wanting VOIP. You can't take the low road with a significant percentage of the population and get away with it.
I can appreciate that it's going to take some upgrading on the part of the ISPs to handle the increase in traffic, but good grief, that is what you're being paid for. If you could, would you have implemented blocking of port 80 (www) had you known how much traffic it was going to "leech" off your system? Really, what's the difference? All those evil web servers out there leeching off your system. I'm sure a "disproportionately large" chunk of your network traffic is www, surely you are justified in blocking port 80 in the interest of conserving your network's limited resources?
I believe your justifications are unfounded. It looks more like cable companies are trying to block other VOIP from getting a good start until they can get their own VOIP going.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
Real IPv4 died when you could no longer get a /24 routed and small dual homing died.
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?
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.
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
My Internet is Port-25-out blocked, but I'm staying with them, because other than that, they have exceptional service for the price, compared to anyone else in the area. It's TDS Metrocom DSL, 760kbps synchronous, observed rate is about 700+kbps either way, and it's roughly $40-45/mo. Good tech support, too. One of their people was actually a.) knowledgable and b.) courteous enough to go over some of the finer points of DSL networking when I was trying to diagnose what turned out to be a faulty DSL modem.
... they get props, too) allows port 26 SMTP connections, in anticipation of this, and everything is smooth sailing.
Back to the point, though...
I was talking to the tech support person about Port 25 Out blocking, and they brought up a good point: The mass of idiotry, the DSL customers of the area, were on their way to getting the IP range blacklisted from mass virus-infected spammers. Although I, and all the other customers, would be "more free" having port 25 open, realistically, I would have a much less useful service when my emails started getting bounced and spam-flagged.
The only thing I can fault them for is making it unconditional, not even letting people have access to port again if they called tech support. Other than that, they would either have to resort to a more "snooping" method of filtering, require specialized software, or end up getting blacklisted.
Luckily, my hosting provider (Just-hosting.com
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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
"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
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
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.
- 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
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.
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.
You are assuming that The port is blocked. This is the most stupid neandertal approach, though when cablecos and telcos are concerned such approaches are what is to be expected.
The correct assumption is that the traffic is not blocked, but assigned to a low priority class and throttled. Even if this is not being done now, it will be the situation in a year or two. I have been following RFPs run by several major telcos and the ability to both define and apply such policies is a must. If you do not have it your equipment does not get past the initial phase. And they are not talking per interface classes and diffserv here. They want it on the scale of a whole counry network with an idiot friendly GUI to put in front of the droid in business development who will be defining the policy assigned to each product.
Basically Vonage and Co are zombies and they will rot away in a the next 2-3 years. As Don Corleone used to say "Nothing personal, just business".
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
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.
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.
To me it seems that lack of competition between telcos as well as between network providers (ISPs) is a large part of the problem.
I live outside the USA, in the somehwat tiny country called the Netherlands. Where I live, I have a choice between at least 3 telcos, at least 5 DSL ISPs (using one of the 3 telcos, and one offering the alternative of cable)
My ISP started years ago as a 'free' internet provider, and is in fact a part of one of the 3 telcos. Now, I happen to use some other telco, but can still get their services (and DSL) despite it not going through their own lines.
They just upgraded my connection to 8mbit down and 1mbit up, give fixed IPs, allow running servers explicitly (not unusual overhere actually), have a fair use policy, but despite using 100s of gigabytes/month I have yet to run into the limits of that policy. They are also not an exception here, and competition forces them to keep this up.
The interesting thing is that part of this is a consequuence of government interference, specifically, forcing telcos to carry DSL for any ISP and not just their own.
The telco that my ISP belongs to has to allow others on their network, but in turn, their ISP is also allowed on the network of other telcos, so in the end it evens out nicely ad both have the possibility to deliver services quicker and with less investement.
Regulation that serves a clear purpose and is implemented well can do a lot of good for an otherwise free market, and can in fact make that market more free.
I know that doing it yourself is the American way in this, but on behalf of its citizens, the overnment could in theory do a lot of good here.
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.
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.
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.