Slashdot Mirror
How ISPs May Quietly Kill VoIP
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."
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
"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.
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