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Vonage Says VoIP Traffic Blocked By Providers

Posted by timothy on from the shut-up-you dept.

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."

49 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." by nerd256 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Looks like FCC is blocking more than just VoIP :-)

  2. there is no current law or regulation?! by Anita+Coney · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 4, Informative
      What the f&ck?! Phone companies are COMMON CARRIERS

      That applies to telephone calls over POTS. It does not apply to IP traffic over their internet service.

    2. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by jlaxson · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not only does it apply to POTS, it applies to any situation where someone/thing is carrying goods or information for hire. The Post Office, couriers, and ISPs are all examples of common carriers. In a regulatory view, Common Carrier status protects a carrier from legal liability for what it transports, however, such a carrier can't then cherry-pick what it wants to carry. See Wikipedia.

      Now, IMHO, this is why the big carriers can't or won't filter competing VoIP traffic. No doubt they'd love to, but then they wouldn't be able to use Common Carrier status as a legal protection against what goes on through their network. No doubt the RIAA would love to be able to force Comcast or AT&T to filter music sharing.

      --
      On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
    3. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by Pxtl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, even if they're blocking SIP, or another essential VoIP protocol, by host/network or other routing, they're filtering only packet headers, not content. That header filters are the bread and butter of ISPs, and content filters are not - in response to the previous post. What good would filtering the content do? That doesn't tell you that it's VoIP, or a phonecall, or audio data - the headers do. While the content would need to be filtered to identify the specific datatypes mentioned in that previous post. The interventions are not parallel, as was suggested.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    5. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Good point. They can't control the content, but they can control the carriage. Protocol bits are the difference between being able to stop traffic and inspect the contents of each truck vs. blocking a lane because of unsafe conditions.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    6. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

    7. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by clem · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.
    8. Re:there is no current law or regulation?! by isdnip · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. Isn't this to be expected? by redphive · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. VoIP over SSL? by ChipMonk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:VoIP over SSL? by Husgaard · · Score: 5, Informative
      VoIP is based on UDP, and does not easily vork over TCP.

      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.

  5. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by Serveert · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...yet you wonder why people want municipal broadband...

    --
    2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
  6. Re:It's an ISP... by RubberChainsaw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But ISPs want to be seen as common carriers when it comes to the filesharing lawsuits filed by the RIAA/MPAA. If ISPs want to reserve their right to block traffic like Vonage, then they must also fufill their obligation and block illegal P2P traffic.

    They can't have their cake and eat it, too.

    --
    I welcome our new 99% overlords.
  7. anyone else find it funny.... by way2trivial · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:anyone else find it funny.... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      I'm pretty confident that Yahoo and Google would prefer not to be taxed like telcos, but if a bunch of ILECs started blocking all traffic from/to Yahoo and Google and the ILECs' customers they would raise holy hell about it too.

      In other words, the content doesn't matter. This is the internet, bits are just bits.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  8. Vonage should be able to compete w/o regulation by krem81 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I am usually a staunch supporter of Vonage and other VOIP providers to run their business without federal regulation and I admire the business that they built, but they should not be given the benefit of FCC shilling on their behalf. The ISP's are the owners of their networks and it is up to them whether or not they want to let Vonage through. On the other hand, it is up to Vonage to figure out ways to get around the limitations without the taxpayers' help - be it by way of exclusive agreements with the ISPs, informing consumers that their Internet use is being curtailed or simply by changing the ports it uses from time to time.

    To reiterate my point, if Vonage wants to not be regulated, it should not expect others to be regulated for its benefit.

  9. Copyright infringements. by mctk · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  10. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by enjo13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  11. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by Optic7 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I wish luck to any ISP that tries this with me. I will be gone to another ISP quicker than they can say "Von...". What the heck, I'm paying them for an IP connection. As long as I'm not doing something shady (DOS, SPAM, etc), they are pushing it if they selectively block my traffic.

    I think the market and/or the FCC will quickly put a stop to this.

  12. Read the article! by Anita+Coney · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  13. Corporations by null+etc. · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "The presumption [of the Internet] is that you're fully connected," Cerf said. Any attempts to block certain application types or types of content, he said, "will destroy the utility of the Net."

    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.

    1. Re:Corporations by jc42 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

      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 ;-). But they aren't available everywhere.

      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.
  14. Again, read the article by Anita+Coney · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  15. Re:quick question by Skye16 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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).

  16. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  17. How they get away with it by IO+ERROR · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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. They can screw with the competition's VoIP traffic while giving the best service to their own VoIP traffic, for instance. They can keep your VPN from working. They can tell you you can't run servers. They can tell you how much email you can send per day and what server you have to send it all through...

    So this is a mixed blessing.

    --
    How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
  18. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  19. Why not tunnel? by bigberk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  20. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by bigberk · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Are you really getting "Internet" access from the cable provider now? Sound like some of AOL's problems?
    I have been arguing this for a long time, but it's always fallen on deaf ears. "We have to block port 25, email viruses are bad" sez the ISP. Or, "Our transparent port 80 proxy is good for you, it makes the Internet go faster".

    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.
  21. E911 by Ant2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  22. Re:It's an ISP... by Hizonner · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Wrong. I am contracted with the ISP. My having an account with them obligates them to deliver my traffic under reasonable and customary assumptions about their service.

    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.

  23. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by earlytime · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

  24. Re:server, really? by DDumitru · · Score: 5, Informative

    You dont understand how SIP works.

    VOIP calls run exclusively over UDP packets. There is not a TCP packet to be found. SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol is a UDP handshake that is used to setup a connection. With consumer VOIP circuits, the client will send a SIP registration request to the SIP proxy server (Vonage in this case). The proxy server will reply with an OK. The actual payload of the UDP packets looks just like an HTTP transaction (complete with a GET and headers) and ditto for the reply. It is just not in a TCP stream. If a packet gets lost, then it is lost and the transaction does not happen.

    The SIP client will nearly continually repeat this UDP registration followed by shorter "keep alive" exchanges. The idea is to keep any NAT router happy so that the channel now is end-to-end connected.

    If the server needs to ring your phone, it now has an IP address and UDP port number that it can send a packet to. This then causes the SIP client to setup an RTP "connection". Again, these are UDP packets and TCP is nowhere to be found. The RTP connection is basically a set of UDP packets sent out very quickly. For a non-compressing codec (like G711.u [aka ulaw]), this means 50 UDP packets/second of about 220 bytes each. The packets go both ways at full speed (which is why VOIP does not work over dialup). There is no error detection. If a packet is lost, 20ms of voice is dropped.

    So is a SIP client a server. I don't think so. I think it is wrong to describe a server as something that listens on a port. In the case of residential internet access, it is not the listening that the ISP does not like. It is the bandwidth and usage patterns. A better metric would be "is this a one to one communication". A web server is one to many. Ditto for streaming video. SIP is one to one. If you want to call SIP a server, then you should probably call an IM client a server as well.

    What the ISPs are really doing is trying to figure out how to charge some people "more" when they can get away with it. It is not just "usage", but also an arbitrary categorization of what is residential access. From a purely network and traffic point of view, bittorrent should be the first thing outlawed. A local webserver on port 80 is nothing compared to a good torrent.

    The other issue is "should an ISP be allowed to block competitors traffic". A lot of people argue against regulation of any kind. If you are one of these then you are a fool. If you leave a company completely without regulation, they will steal from you. There have to be limits to their behaviour. I have seen VOIP companies that claim, in the contracts, that they don't honor local number portability requests. They are saying that if you get a phone number from then that they will not give it up. Perhaps the regulations have not caught up to VOIP providers, but this policy is wrong, probably illegal, and the government should work to stop it. Similarily, if an ISP has a policy to hurt a competitors traffic so that their service works better, then that ISP is wrong. If this is not against the law, then the law should be enlarged to stop the practice. At the very least, this policy should be openly disclosed by the ISP to all of their customers up front.

    It is about time for businesses to provide service to their customers instead of feeling like their customers are their property to leverage.

  25. Re:In fairness to the cable companies... by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  26. Monopolies make the problem much worse... by evilviper · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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

    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
  27. There is, and it will bite them in the butt. by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  28. This is already happening in my country by pembo13 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  29. Re:server, really? by ptimmons · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  30. Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A nice Slashcode feature might be for every story to appear with a small random number of several standard first posts added programatically, before the story even appears to subscribers- like from among the following:
    • 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.
  31. Who owns the network? Who makes the rules? by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  32. Re:traffic shaping? by ray-auch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  33. Now you know why Skype do NAT/FW busting by lkcl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  34. Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along by FirstOne · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  35. Re:Can anyone explain this? by vacuum_tuber · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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"

    Not gonna happen.

    The correct assumption is that the traffic is not blocked, but assigned to a low priority class and throttled.

    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.
  36. Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along by windex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  37. Bad news for whomever is doing the blocking by EmagGeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  38. Re:"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along by fupeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.