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How ISPs May Quietly Kill VoIP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the poor-kids-never-had-a-chance dept.

ravenII writes "PBS's i'Cringley's informative piece gives an eye-opening look at the anticompetitive behavior of some ISPs who are showing up late to the VoIP game. This is not something that could be easily mandated, and the beauty of this approach is that they're not explicitly doing anything to the 3rd party service applications. They're just identifying and tagging their own services, which is within their rights."

25 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Verizon by manual_overide · · Score: 1, Interesting

    didn't the FCC lay the smack down on some ISP for doing this? Verizon maybe?

    --
    If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
    1. Re:Verizon by Corydon76 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Actually, I don't think it matters. While the courts are notoriously difficult to predict, if past actions hold, I think we'll find that once the courts hear that prioritizing the ISP's VOIP traffic effectively de-prioritizes other VOIP packets from competing providers, the courts will at some point strike that prioritization as anticompetitive and illegal.

      It doesn't really matter what the technique is; if the effect is that the ISP's VOIP works better than third-party VOIP due to an action taken by the ISP, it's going to be seen as anticompetitive.

      As usual, Cringely is splitting hairs to get traffic on his column.

    2. Re:Verizon by jrmetc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It looks like this started happening in parts of Mexico about two weeks ago. In Mazatlan, Vonage, Skype, Mediaring, etc no longer function. Tests to www.testyourvoip.com fail badly on the upload(well over 50% loss). Calls to tech support at Telmex Prodigy DSL have not been useful. Some users have even reported that tech support admits they're degrading voip upload traffic. Oddly, Telmex Prodigy DSL does not offer their own voip option at this time. Cable internet is still working fine....for now.

  2. Begs for direct oversight by DavisNet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is a good example of where letter of the law and spirit of the law collide. The FCC lacks the expertise too adequetly monitor their charge. There needs to be another solution. Perhaps, more openness?

  3. It's going to be bad, in theory by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So the main point seems to be that there will be a preferential class of packets that will be guaranteed to have some level of service such that the packets arrive quickly and in order. The bad part is that all other traffic will remain at the same old unguaranteed service level.

    Well, that's what we have now.

    Face it, the reason people use VoIP is because it is cheap/free, not because it has superior QoS than POTS. Throw in compression and encryption and you're talking about some pretty serious degradation of service.

    So, in summary, nothing to see here.

    1. Re:It's going to be bad, in theory by m0rningstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well... VoIP technology is inherently extremely sensitive to both latency and jitter; this is why Cisco is trying to work with ISPs (their 'V3PN program', which always sounds like a Star Wars driod every time I talk about it) to get them to listen to QoS/DSCP values as set by the customer in their network. (Or to route DSCP tagged traffic into the appropriate MPLS TE 'VPN', or whatever you choose as a methodology)

      This, of course, raises huge issues for the general consumer, since those willing to pay what's probably a premium to NOT have their DSCP values stripped off at the edge of the network get further stomped, even without any form of 'anti-competitive' prioritisation -- the end users get squished first as they don't have a 'business class' service and the only real way for a backbone provider to make money is to over-subscribe their backbone and rely on the bursty nature of IP traffic to handle it. (At least, that was the plan when I was working with VERIO engineering a few years back; now I'm just a conslutant on the Cisco side... )

  4. I use VoIP for business. by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When our call service can't reach me in order to help the world's largest retailer (you figure it out), then we'll see what ISP gets what heated phone call from whom. Hint: it won't be me, rather someone at bit less friendly with a much bigger bat.

    1. Re:I use VoIP for business. by MBCook · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Yep. A friend's boss (who controlled one of the largest cell accounts in town) had his signal get dropped on the way to work every day, which caused him problems. So he called them up and said "fix it or we change providers." They put up a cell tower, "just for him." If you control money, they'll fix it for you.

      The problem is, you have to control money. They won't screw with "world's largest retailer", or if they are dumb enough to do it, they'll learn the lesson and from then on make sure their computers are nice to "world's largest retailer's" traffic. The problem is that when it's just grandma, they'll say "Hmm. That's too bad." or "We'll look into it" and nothing will ever happen.

      PS: As a side note, I've heard of the new boom business for VoIP: telemarketers. No long distance to anywhere, and you could call from your call center in India to Seattle for the same price you'd pay if your call center was in Wala Wala. At least the national Do Not Call list works (for the most part).

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  5. I don't quite buy his argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The argument he makes is that big providers will offer their own VoIP offerings, and will give their VoIP traffic precedence on their networks, in turn degrading service for all other traffic (and thus, competitor's VoIP traffic).

    However, without realizing it, he also explains why it won't happen. He argues that currently, all traffic is routed using "best effort". His argument then sxtends that these large organizations will effectively restrict other VoIP traffic as they give priority to ther own. I don't see how this necesarilly holds, though.

    Imagine a high bandwitch connection. A certain percentage of that bandwidth is the used to service the "preferred" VoIP traffic. This leaves the remainder of the bandwidth to be divided amoung the other traffic. For this to actually affect the competitor's VoIP traffic, the amount of preferred traffic must be large enough to use enough of the available bandwidth that the remainder is unable to service the remaining traffic effectively.

    Thus, this practice would not have a significant effect until a large amount of the VoIP traffic is "preferred" traffic - which supposedly would be the goal of starting to do so in the first place.

    The only effect that creating "preferred" traffic will have is to provide better service for that traffic. I think that the actual effect on other traffic (even competitor's VoIP), will remain small.

  6. This indeed disproves the myth of capitalism by Travoltus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The propaganda that capitalism is the most powerful medium for innovation, falls on its face here.

    Capitalism with sensible government regulation is indeed the best path to rapid innovation.

    Uh oh... did I just say that?!!

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
    1. Re:This indeed disproves the myth of capitalism by FleaPlus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Anarcho-capitalists would argue that the combination of anarchism and capitalism is the most powerful possible medium for innovation. ;)

    2. Re:This indeed disproves the myth of capitalism by hany · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, IMO capitalism is good but has one quirk which nobody solved yet:

      Capitalism stops working well when "the thing" stops growing because there is no space to grow left anymore.

      There are stages (but beware, I'm not economist, that's just my observation or my opinion, whatever):

      1. While "the market" is in development and there is a lot of "land not taken", there are lots of businesses wich are growing and "taking the land". And there is competion and all the "fruits of competiton" which are good for customers.

      2. Once "all the land" is occupied, bigger businesses start to either eat or kill smaler ones. At this stage there is still competition but it's dissapiering as the number of businesses is dropping.

      3. Finaly "all the land" is occupied by one or very few businesses and that's when "the shit hits the fans". And that's what have to be solved somehow.

      One obvious and "easy looking" solution is to make "the land" bigger. But that (at the end) effectively means to make more people for which we need to expand into space. With that approach we can solve, mitigate or avoid "stage 3" till we reach another limit (like we fill all the glalaxy).

      Another ideas?

      --
      hany
    3. Re:This indeed disproves the myth of capitalism by Acy+James+Stapp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That limit is called light speed. Our population grows exponentially but the volume we will be able to populate is a light-sphere whose area grows cubically.

      --
      -- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
    4. Re:This indeed disproves the myth of capitalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The difference is that no one really wants Laissez-faire capitalism ... especially big business. As soon as the marketplace is truly free there aren't laws against general strikes, there aren't laws that prohibit labeling your brand of milk as BHG-free, etc. What big business wants, and what most conservatives are referring to when they say "free market," is a system where the consumers and laborers are regulated to protect the producers, but the producers are in no way regulated to protect anyone else. They mean free for them, not for you.

      Businesses currently complain about regulation, and then they want to use the roads that our tax dollars built to ship their goods and transport their employees to and from work, they want to use our court system to enforce their patents and copyrights, they want to use our police and firefighters to protect their property, they want our public handouts in the form of food stamps and AFDC to subsidize their low wages, and on and on. Then, when we say, "as a condition of receiving these services from the community, you must do X" they get all bent out of shape. Bunch of assholes they are.

  7. Begs for clear labeling by cait56 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This isn't an issue that requires direct oversight.

    It requires clear labeling of products so people know what they are buying.

    One set of ISPs offers "Internet Service", by which they mean access to the web, and then a collection of other services that they will offer.

    And there is nothing wrong with them offering that service. It is what many, perhaps most, customers want.

    The problem is that it is not the "Internet Service" that others want, including most slashdot readers presumably. Which is basically unrestricted access to the Internet with at most a total bandwidth constraint (and protect-the-net restrictions like no forged packets).

    If an ISP is clearly labeled as providing "Internet Access" then they could not violate their service guarantees to you to favor their own traffic. If you want to use Vonage, host a server, select your own email provider, or any of a number of things that "power users" find desirable you would look for an "Access Provider".

    If you only have a vague idea of what the difference between VoIP and email is, then you probably want a "Service Provider" who will provide you with services and take responsibility for integrating them.

    The key problem right now is the ISPs are bluffing at providing open access to the Internet. There is probably a strong case that stealing from the common pool of "best effort" capacity without explicit disclosure.

    But the solution is not to restrict what business Service Providers go into, it's to make sure they clearly label what business they are in.

  8. Gets Worse by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In his newest article, he talks about the Burst.com settlement, but in the last 3 or 4 paragraphs he gets back to the topic of this story... including this little titdbit:

    "And there are other dirty tricks available to broadband ISPs. Telecom New Zealand, for example, is reportedly planning to alter TCP packet interleaving to discourage VoIP. By bunching all voice packets in the first half of each second, half a second of dead air would be added to every conversation, changing latency in a way that would drive grandmothers everywhere back to their old phone companies."

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  9. Re:Encryption for VoIP traffic by pavera · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I actually engineer and sell Asterisk boxes to small businesses, providing VoIP inside the office, connecting to the pstn. Our device encrypts all voice traffic on the public internet (between offices, and from remote clients/road warriors).

    This article is of course mostly just stupid. Creating a vlan or QoS policy for VoIP will not cause the rest of the traffic to be crappy, not unless at least 50% of their actual traffic is voice traffic and that would require a whole lot of phone calls. VoIP is not really a broadband service per se.. it only takes 64kbps, my dsl service gives me 1.5mbps down and 1mbps up... I'd have to have 10 simultaneous calls up to use 50% of my bandwidth on voice...

    Even if this was the case, the ISPs can't let "all other traffic" suffer at the expense of voip, if their voip policies are being so generous to their voip traffic that other voip providers service suffers, guess what, internet traffic in general will be suffering, and people will certainly notice that and complain (Hey, my bittorrent is only downloading at 50Kpbs, it used to get at least 150Kbps... )

    Anyway, the article is idiocy, and people who know VoIP know how to secure it, and yes, I would never make a VoIP call over the public net without encryption.

  10. Re:If we had control of our politicians.... by LearnToSpell · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because you don't have any money. And if you don't have any money, you don't have any control. Your only other recourse is to vote, but with the Iraqi election turnout higher than the American, that's a longshot at best.

    --
    Haida Manga
  11. Uh-huh... by BobPaul · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When our call service can't reach me in order to help the world's largest retailer (you figure it out), then we'll see what ISP gets what heated phone call from whom. Hint: it won't be me, rather someone at bit less friendly with a much bigger bat.

    If you're using a home Cable or DSL Modem for a mission critical application like this then I think you have bigger issues to deal with (such as your ISPs TOS). Otherwise this probably isn't going to affect you a whole lot. I don't foresee this causing too much trouble on people with T1 and larger pipes supplying their connections...

  12. Re:And kill the net as a whole? by The+Vulture · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The best way to think of it is really like a FIFO queue, or standing in line at the Post Office.

    All packets that the ISP favors (their own VoIP packets) go first in line. All other packets have to fight for a spot in line. (Non-VoIP packets are treated the same as every other packet*).

    Now, assuming that there's enough spots in the line for all of the packets, nothing is dropped. The ISPs VoIP packets go out first, giving them a slight advantage, but everything goes out. If there aren't enough spots, then some of the packets get dropped.

    *In practice, this isn't quite true. There are also packet priorities built into the IP specification, and it is likely that VoIP packets are using these as well. Therefore, the line would really look like this:
    1. ISP approved packets
    2. Non-ISP approved packets with high priorities
    3. Every other packet.

    Once these packets leave the ISPs network, it's "catch as catch can" again, however, it is likely that the ISP voIP packets have IP priorities as high as, if not higher than the non-ISP VoIP packets, causing them to still have a slight edge.

    -- Joe

  13. Only Works Within Same Network by JAB2611 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If ISPs use QoS to give preferential treatment to their on VoIP services, they can only do so within their own network, as mentioned in the article. If best effort carriage under such conditions results in degrading all other VoIP traffic, then the whole scheme seems doomed to failure.

    The special, high-quality calls promised you by ISPs engaging in this practice would revert to standard best effort calls the moment you reach out to touch someone who is using a different ISP. This scheme only supports high quality on something analogous to a local phone call. /jab

    1. Re:Only Works Within Same Network by DeepRedux · · Score: 2, Interesting
      An ISP can better control voice quality by avoiding using the public internet.

      Time Warner Cable's VoIP service only uses IP only over their own network. Their network delivers calls to Sprint or MCI. From then on the calls are handled just like "regular" phone calls.

  14. WRONG x2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I still say utilities should be government run and regulated. Let's see what's happened with deregulation:

    Savings and Loan: Ugh, I don't even need to recap this one.

    Phone Service; Payphone prices have doubled, my phone bills are now ridiculous and often miscalculated, and the bill has tripled.

    Power: I live in California. 'Nuff said.

    Things that every home needs I feel really should be government run, because companies are stupid. Yes, when you just give someone a company that they didn't build from the ground up and say "okay be creative" they screw it up 9 times outta 10. Especially when it's something that there is no negative recourse for. If I build a software company and own 50% of the stock, I'm not gonna try a hair-brained idea that might make billions, because I could lose everything. If someone gives me a company that say, provides people with phone service and I'm the ONLY company providing that to those people, I don't care if I bankrupt my company trying to make billions, because I know the government will just bail me out because people need phone service.

    Deregulation sucks. The solution is that things which are critical to the nation's success with high upkeep costs and needed by 90%+ of the population should be government run.

    What is government run:
    DMV (travel/commerce)
    DoT (Road building & maintaining)
    USPS (communication/commerce)
    Water/Gas (not sure about this one, correct me if I'm wrong)

    What should be:
    Basic local phone service
    Fibre-Optic Internet/Cable
    Cellular Phone Service/reception (why have 6 different towers beaming stuff through my body when we only need one? wasteful and pointless)

    Capitalism shot itself in the foot with deregulation and (as above posters have pointed out) allowing monopolies to run unchecked.

  15. Re:capitalism isn't dead by Tim+Doran · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hold on... while I agree with your point, Cringely didn't talk about ISP's quashing traffic - he talked about them enabling class-of-service for their OWN voice traffic and leaving foreign voip traffic in the best-efforts network layer.

    Engineering and maintaining a voice-quality COS on a network is expensive and difficult. Does anyone really believe that telcos or cablecos (having invested billions in building their networks) should hand this value over to Vonage etc for free? The reason Vonage can charge low prices is that it doesn't bear these costs - is it the ISP's job to bear these costs on their behalf?

    If Vonage wants COS on these networks, it should approach them and offer to pay the engineering, hardware and operational costs. If not, they should continue to enjoy the service they've received for free to date.

    My Internet connection is 5Mbps down, 800kbps up and capable of sustaining close to that for long periods of time. My Vonage phone works beautifully as long as I'm not hammering the network with Bittorrent. There's nothing to complain about here.

    Maybe the dumbest Cringley column ever.

  16. They are NOT handing it over for FREE! by Newer+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The last time I checked, I PAID my ISP EVERY MONTH for service!! THAT payment guarantees a certain level of service. If the cable company or other ISP deliberately degrades this service with malice, then I can SUE. I forsee BIG TIME class action suits over this... Unless of course, the FCC steps in (as they already did once for Vonage).