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FCC to Push VoIP 911 Requirements
maotx writes "Originaly declared a regulation free area, VoIP is going under a new look. With complaints against it, the FCC has decided to move forward with its original plan to require VoIP providers to provide 911 support. This brings up interesting questions on how they're going to know where in the world your VoIP enabled laptop is when you call 911."
Traceroute? :p
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
With the universal adoption of GPS, it wouldn't be hard to put a GPS receiver on a USB key-fob and relay the information in some standardized fashion.
;)
It's being bundled into cell phones these days for the same purpose.
Just don't bundle it into the computer itself, or the conspiracy theorists may become the conspiracy realists.
I personally think this would be very helpful for those who only have voIP at home.
Well, what about when you use your VoIP through a VPN that is piggy backing off the business next door's wireless?
What does it matter where you are specifically? Sure they can find you from a landline, but cell phones can dial 911 and they can't trace you with that either...
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
Now I have to wonder, where in the world are the 911 prank callers? Since we have a 911-enabled VOIP network with no trace feature, how are we to stop all the pranksters who like to call 911 with fake calls? AND, lets not forget the legitimate calls being ignored or suffering from the DDoS they're encountering. Are the people who are really being raped, murdered or worse, going to get through to the 911 ops?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
This brings up interesting questions on how they're going to know where in the world your VoIP enabled laptop is when you call 911.
Your billing information should be able to be used for that purpose. Just redirect to the 911 service local to the billing address. Granted, it won't be too helpful for people who move around a lot, but it should be sufficient 99% of the time.
this is/was the same problem with 911 on a cell phone. they can get a general idea of where you are (check what tower/service its coming from) but who the hell knows where i really am. unless they get all sorts of big brother on you, how else would they know where you are?
How do 911 calls currently work from cellphones? Never had to call myself...
This looks like a decision passed to kowtow to the region bells who think they're unfairly harassed by providing 911 services.
With wifi, ssh tunnels and unspecified internal deployment of handsets in a corporation it's ridiculous to expect vonage et al to provide 911 services comparable to the regional bell.
I fully expect 911 calls to end up getting into a frenzy for an incident that is eventually located in bombay.
IIRC This is still a problem that people run into with Cell Phones.
Not sure if the built-in GPS is used to automatically re-route the call to the correct 911 once you connect, but I'm doubtful.
If they follow the original proposal, there will not be a location requirement for 911, just a requirement for 911 connectivity. That is, if you dial 911 on a VoIP phone you will get a 911 operator...but you will still need to tell that operator your location. Some VoIP vendors may impliment a primary residence that gets displayed to 911 operators, but this would be optional. Currently if you dial 911 on a VoIP phone, you will only get a 911 operator if your VoIP vendor has implimented the feature voluntarily.
White female in trouble! Please send help!
*fire department, ambulance, police all arrive within a few seconds*
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I just got Vonage, and it has pseudo 911. You activate it by entering your address.
p hp?article=394
It's not real 911 because it connects to an intermediary service that then connects you to the real 911.
http://www.vonage.com/help_knowledgeBase_article.
Example:
"To enable 911 service, click YES.
Please enter your location below"
Just don't make the default "Off."
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I think everyone should be responsible for his own safety. I am using a VoIP phone and I have the five most important local emergency numbers taped right next to it. Is it that hard? We can't assume responsibility for any idiot out there and burden companies, technology, and ultimately our ecomony with something like that.
Since the inception of VoIP, I have not had a problem with subscribers not being able to access the 911 emergency system. They are still able to call directly to their police or fire department. I was surprised to find, however, that the typical VoIP user doesn't understand that the phone (which looks like any other phone) is fundamentally different in the way it handles information and can't reach 911. This can lead (in my mind at least) to a lot of confused subscribers at a time of crisis
Regardless, the in the end, the call quality is low enough that the dispatcher probably won't understand what you are trying to say once 911 access is engineered.
--
Ask and your request will be answered. People who call 911, usually can speak and usually can tell where they are. That should take care of 99.9% of the problem.
Oh well, what the hell...
Worse? You mean like having their intellectual property rights violated? Wha? Oh. never mind. You must have been reading some RIAA press releases.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I would think an easy solution would be to REQUIRE that a person signing up for VOIP service provide their address for 911 service before even turning on their access to the network. This was prompted because of problems with people who were too ignorant or lazy to submit this information even when prompted several times to by the provider. (Specifically- Vonage.) If the information was required prior to service activation- it wouldn't be a problem.
It will still be an issue for people who travel with their VOIP boxes, and there probably isn't a solution without going to GPS and making the whole thing more expensive than a regular POTS line.
Once again- we are looking to legislate (or at least regulate) personal responsibility.
And there we have it, VoIP vaporizes with a small puff of white smoke. The fact of the matter is that it is not possible to provide a reliable 911 service with the present VoIP implementations.
Wire line services can provide 911 location service because the phones are physically wired to a specific location. A number cannot move without the phone company knowing exactly where it has moved to. This is not possible with the present incarnation of VoIP. In fact, the only way that reliable 911 location service will ever be possible is if every VoIP device has a GPS receiver in it and transmits the location information when the VoIP terminal registers with the PBX. Any other way WILL fail.
This will require an all new VoIP implementation/protocol, as well as new VoIP equipment to make it work. Now, I just have to figure out how to make an ATA with GPS receiver embedded in it receive the GPS signal while under a desk indoors.
If VoIP is regulated, the baby Bells will won it. Do you feel pown3d?
Considering that traditional land-line phone service companies pay for 911 service provisions through a per line charge, I am almost certain that the RBOCs are not going to allow access to the PSTN without VOIP customers paying a similar per line fee.
That could also give them an inroad to force other fees and taxes on VOIP customers (rural phone subsidies etc..), taking away the main reason most people use VOIP - because it costs less.
It seems to me the hardest lobbying for this decision probably came from the phone companies themselves, to curtail migration to VOIP.
There are alot of people who would like to be me. I just haven't met them yet.
Yes, and if the govt. et al require 911 service of VOIP providers, then get ready for static IP's and IP V6 requirements, and all sorts of nonsensical BS about the Internet and regulations.
Trust me, once they get even one regulation passed regarding the use or configuration of the Internet, it WILL snowball...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There are a few ways to do this;
1) Use the callerid # to lookup the address in a database which is *required* to be accurate. By law. This would be a step big companies take care of for you, transparently, while the smaller of us who buy our numbers from places like voicepulse would fill out a form when we purchase a number
2) e911. Make it universal.
I like option 1 myself, but I could see logistical problems, not to mention abuse problems, were it not handled correctly.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It is so outrageous to make the VoIP companies direct the 911 call to a center that services the address you specify, then make it your responsibility to make certain your account information is up to date?
I have Verizon Fios internet service, along with Sunrocket VoIP service. I was quite interested in finding out if 911 even connected me to the right place, as several people said it did not work w/ VoIP providers. So I called the non-emergency number in Rowlett, Tx. They answered my call, and I let them know I was going to test my 911 service as I had a new phone provider. I hung up, dialed 911. It took maybe 3-4 seconds to get a ring tone, and the emergency operator in Rowlett, picked up the phone, and asked what my emergency was. I told her that I just called the non-emergency number, and was testing 911. She then informed me my name, and my address came thru with the call. So looks like I don't have anything to worry about. :)
Also make sure if you are testing your 911, you call the non-emergency number first, although you never know where you might wind up.
"Help! Help! Janet Jackson has had a wardrobe malfunction! on my TV!!!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As I see it, one of the problems with this is simply determining where "phone" services begin and end. For example, while Vonage or Lingo may be a real 'phone replacement' and for 99.9% of users should be able to do 911 service, how about Skype? If you only use Skypeout and you only use it via a headset on a laptop, is that VoIP? It certainly *is* "Voice over IP", but does that make it a phone service that should need 911 service?
If they start classifying things like Skype as a voice telecommunications service and requiring 911 calls to function, then what's next? 911 requirements for Teamspeak?
Maybe a VoIP "phone" is one which can place a call which eventually gets circuit switched on one end, even if 99% of the transit is packet switched.
It seems to me that what really needs to happen is a revamping of the 911 system to deal with the portability of numbers. You want 911? Fine, go somewhere and configure your address any time you move the phone around. When you dial 911, it transmits your entered address. Possibly the hardware/software acting as your phone also monitors the MAC address of its default gateway after you change the address associated; if the MAC address changes but the address has not, a warning goes out to emergency services that notes that there is reason to believe the address may not be completely reliable (and thus, hopefully an emergency operator can confirm it with you when you call).
Lots of little things rely on the phone network. My house alarm, for example, will freak out completely if I cut my phone service entirely, because it uses the phone line to keep in touch with the alarm monitoring service.
triangulate your rough position with the broadcast towers.
You leet haxor, you. You've figured out how to triangulate a position with VoIP broadcast towers?
I am not worthy.
I am not worthy.
One way this could be done is if all of the 911 services also have a full (area)-xxx-xxxx phone number. You would then alias that to "911" in your VOIP hardware.
Cable companies and DSL providers of VoIP services offer 911 location service. They can do this because they have a fixed cable going to a fixed installation. In other words, their wire runs from your house to their office so they know exactly where you are. But, with services like Vonage that don't actually own the cable or provide the last mile service, this is not an option. Vonage and the like have no way of reliably determining the VoIP caller's exact location.
I am quite sure that cable, DSL and regular phone companies will push very hard to require VoIP to support 911 location services because it will give them back the control over the consumer that is presently slipping away with VoIP.
I think the market was already demanding the 911 access and that it was going to work itself out anyways, but now big brother has stepped in and we can be assured it will be more expensive, and take 5 years to implement.
On the other hand, even if it is reflected in higher rates I am not going to compain about the results. I was contemplating getting the cheapest possible land line (limited calls, etc) for my PBX to allow 911. Any increase in rates will most likely be less than the $10-15 I was going to have to pay.
I know I wasn't the only customer thinking along these lines. Many VoIP carriers have been working on providing 911 service because it would help them compete.
If this regulation forces the iLECs to open up access to the 911 network for VoIP carriers, then at least something good will have come out of it, but I would far prefer a market based solution.
I don't see why VOIP people should have to do this. As long as it's clearly stated and agreed to by the consumer, if they take a full VOIP solution as their ONLY telephone service at their location, they accept the fact that there's no 911. Make people take responsibility for their own actions. I mean, does this mean that to use Skype in the US, that they would have to provide 911 capability?
If the first requirement is that 911 (or 112 in europe) works, then you can regulate that a best-effort location guess should be attempted. Most people will be able to tell the operator where they are. Some might not. Is that "some might not" reason for not requiring 911 service at all?
The comparisons with cellphones (and there lack of 911 location information) needs to take a few point into consideration:
1. Calls from cellphones to 911 typically go the State Police dispatcher who will then have to contact the local dispatcher to actually send someone (other then the state police) to the caller. This takes extra time and puts one more person in the game of 'telephone' that is played from 911 requester to 911 provider.
2. Adding VOIP to the State police dispatcher will make them even more overwhelmed when the majority of VOIP calls are going to be made from a fixed location and as such should be routed to a local dispatcher.
3. Many times when someone calls 911 they give a poor, incomplete or inaccurate assessment of what the problem is (and where they are), ask any first responder how many calls are completely different from what they get dispatched as (As a volunteer ems provider, I experience this all time).
This gps talk is cute, but how about we simply add an address that needs to be associated with the VOIP account when its opened but can be disabled by a user if they want, so the small minority of VOIP users that are moving it around can 'opt-out' of it while grandma has it in place for here vonage account her grandson set up for her at her home.
They can just include a little card for subscribers to carry around in their wallet that says, "In case of emergency, shout 'Someone call 911' until help arrives".
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
IIRC the problem is that 911 call centers use an enhanced caller-ID with the caller's address, and are reluctant to give VOIP operators the appropriate access to it. Without a doubt, every VOIP operator would provide this service if given the chance.
Do you simply have no idea what VoIP is and how it works?
VoIP has two benefits or advantages. One advantage is taht it offers dirt cheap longdistance phone service by carrying the calls over the internet.
The other major advantage is that VoIP is completely portable. It is not tied to any specific location. If you can get internet access, you can use VoIP.
So, if you are driving down the highway, passing a truckstop with a wi-fi hotspot, and you decide to use your laptop or palm top computer to place a VoIP call, you can do just that. But, how can anyone, let alone your VoIP longdistance provider, know that you 100 feet east of the truck stop on highway 99 in Hicksville Arkansas and connect you to the local 911 service. How can they know that you are not in fact sipping a mai tai on an Indonesian beach? They can't! And that is why 911 location service cannot work reliably with any present day VoIP implementation.
Not everyone in the world uses 911 :)
Some have suggested that having a "good enough" 911 service for VOIP is acceptable. In other words, if 95% of VOIP users are actually just using it as a cheap local phone replacement, then it's OK to have the other 5% die because the paramedics can't find them. I disagree with this line of thinking. This kind of emergency service needs to be either 100% guaranteed, or advertised as not available at all.
I would prefer to see legislation that demanded truth in advertising. Customers should be required to sign a release that says (in a 24-point font):
"911 DON'T WORK ON MY NEW PHONE. I CAN'T CALL THE COPS ON MY NEW PHONE. I CAN'T CALL AN AMBULANCE ON MY NEW PHONE. I CAN'T CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT ON MY NEW PHONE."
If people have been hurt because VOIP providers didn't GUARANTEE that their customers didn't understand that the new technology could put them at risk in an emergency, then I'd say hang the CxOs from the nearest telephone pole as a warning to the rest. If customers knew EXACTLY what they were getting, then the government is interfering with the private business of consenting adults.
The fact is, VoIP is going to blow the phone paradigm away in about 30 years. Right now, home networks are getting VoIP boxes and software, and users are providing addresses for these home networks because those boxes are stationary. But what about people who are smart enough to take their VoIP box with them? What about the posibility of VoIP over wireless in 30 years?
The copper wire switched networks have specific addresses they can link to nodes because the network was proprietary and controlled. Now that the network (the internet) is open, it doesn't yet have this feature that can tie an IP address, particularly a roaming IP address, to a location.
The only thing I can think of right now are GPS locators on all phones which have a frequency only the 911 operators can access... but that could be abused way too easily.
For now, asking the VoIPs to provide 911 service like vonage does is enough for the time being, but soon they'll have to solve this problem for VoIP roamers, and that will require a "think-outside-the-box" solution. As VoIP evolves, 911 will have to be completely redesigned.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I don't know about all VOIP providers, but with Sunrocket you log on to your account(via their web site) & specifically record your location. I know that while shopping for a provider this seemed to be the technique that a number of them used.
If I recall correctly, in the old times there wasn't a way to find out where a call came from.
Maybe they'll just be required to have a forwarding service that simply asks, "Where are you calling from?" Then just route the call from there to the proper 911 service. I dunno, sounds simple enough.
centralized VOIP companies may have some problems, but people who just make client software wouldn't require this. so Skype would be fine.
Just have a file with your information sent to to the VOIP 911 system. If it's out of date, sucks to be you.
no, I don't feel pown3d. I eel like some people are trying to get some sort of emergence services set up for an emerging technology. It's called forward thinking. I actually try to stay involved in politics, so I can write letters and discuss this sort of thing with elected officials.
Also, its' not pown3d, its pwn3d
finally, it's not pwn3d, it's owned.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
While you are at it, why not mandate that an email address of "To: 911" (or some other number for other countries) always goes to your local emergency center and report your location, even if you are on a jetliner 30000 ft above ground!
You can't call 911 if your Internet is down!
Just so everyone knows, 911 can work on VoIP. My provider, Speakeasy, requires in their terms of service that the adapter be used at the location to which it is sent, the address on the agreement, so that 911 services can work. One of the first things I did was to test it - I called the cops first and they said it was OK; I called 911 and the same guy answered and read back my name and address from the screen.
IPv6 would allow you to deduce the geographical location, as the IP address is a function of the logical location, which can then be used to infer the most probable geographical location. However, IPv4 has nothing that allows you to infer location by address. This may actually be the driving force for IPv6, given that none of the other reasons (privacy, addressability, etc) have ever worked with people.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
of Canada and the US, I'm going to buy a privacy-enabled laptop in Canada that registers it's VoIP 911 location as at the North Pole.
And since I'll buy it in Canada, that's a legitimate location, no matter what the USA says. My Privacy Rights under the Electronic Privacy Act override Big Brother (TM).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The difference is that cellphones already have RF processing elements etc and adding GPS is not a big deal. Adding GPS to all VoIp phones is going to cost...
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As such, all the VoIP software needs to do is report the current IP address, and things will be fine.
Well, except that this won't work with IPv4, as most such systems use NAT to get round the lack of addresses. IPv6, on the other hand, uses IP addresses derived from the router you are connecting through, and therefore your position in the network can be determined.
Actually, IPv6 allows multiple addresses and multiple paths, so if you can "see" multiple networks, you will have an IP address from each network. As such, your location can be much more precisely identified by looking at the intersection of the coverage areas of each network you are on.
So, yes, it can be done, and done easily, with existing technology. Well, existing in the sense that it exists and is "out there", just not in the sense of being deployed.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So how about people that aren't in planet USA? In Britain, its 999 (and many people don't know 911). In Australia, its 000. In Europe, its 112 (and many people can't speak 911). Shouldn't this bill provide for all of these "international" emergency services numbers?
Providing 911 location is a very hard thing to do with VoIP. By pushing hard on this, it could almost become a fatal flaw in VoIP. It makes you wonder whether this is just a ploy by existing cariers to stomp VoIP.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As I understand it, they want to put both E911 and universal access surcharges on VoIP phones. The big telcos want this because they have to pay them and they are a barrier to entry for small companies.
But what do you regulate? SIP phones? There is a SIP phone in every copy of Windows XP, and freely available ones for all OSs. They can all register with proxies and make VoIP calls. They have to pay to go out to the PSTN right now, though.
Instead, they are putting the regs if the service gives you a phone number for incoming calls. Ie. it's backwards. If you can _receive_ calls (without necessarily the ability to make them) from the PSTN, then you have to be able to make an outgoing call to 911.
But anything can be a phone now. It can look like an old phone or it can be a piece of software. Anything can be set up to receive calls, or make them, or both. Or not talk to the PSTN at all. Or talk to it in limited ways (for example there are dial-in numbers that let you call from the PSTN and then enter a Free World Dialup number, making every FWD phone able to receive a call from the PSTN.)
This is a dangerous rathole. Accept that voice != emergency service path and find a better way.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Actually, there is no GPS unit in "GPS" e911 cell phones. Each tower has a recorded GPS position, and your position is triangulated and converted to GPS coordinates by the tower then sent down to your phone.
I don't remember H.323 needing a 911 number...err..."911" IP address?
Would it be unicast, broadcast, or multicast?
If you make it look the same then how will they know the difference? If a neighbour picks up the phone to dial how will they know?
People using technology should not have to be burdened with how it works, and most people don't know how their stuff works (do you know how lag and advance work in your car's ignition?). Most people see their PC + Google + internet + the rest of the web as "the computer" and don't know what lives where. That's why you get calls like: "If I sell my monitor will people be able to read my email?"
Same goes for a phone. If it looks like a phone, and for 99% of use behaves like a phone, then in an emergency (== time when people are not thinking), it should also act like a phone.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It will be a couple more months before the deadline passes that voip providers in Canada have a 911 service. http://voip.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000930038950/
--- to swing on the spiral...
not if you'te having a heart attack and the last thing you can do is call 112.
not if your friendly armed neighborhood thief decided to clean out your dvd collection while you're at home.
Privacy is terrorism.
That's a misconception. No one said "customer location" has to be automated like on new cell phones with GPS units.
The VOIP companies can just require that the users login and tell the company where the phone is located whenever they move it.
The only thing that's going to be required is that VOIP services offer real, direct 911 access. And that's just cool.
So you say, all we have to do is get the entire planet to switch to IP V6, promise not to ever use NAT again and, provide a real-time physical map of every router on the planet, or the US at the very least.
Hmmmm. Let me think. Hmmm. I don't foresee any problems with this. As you said, it can be done easily.
You have my permission, implement this plan immediately. </SARCASM>
Personally I like to make my self as anonymous as possible... I spoof my MAC (like I have now 00-00-00-00-00-01), spoof my IP or use an open access point 99% of the time. ( the connection I'm using now isn't even mine. (Yes I'm paranoid) So if I'm using all of these things (in paticular an open access point not to mention that my p3 cpu has the id disabled). Should I have to woory about a GPS keyfob? NO! Would I consider buying a computer with GPS integrated? What do you think? Not bloody likely.
Also, its' not pown3d, its pwn3d
finally, it's not pwn3d, it's owned.
Thanks. Perhaps I should study.
I really dont see why you shouldn't just have to input your Location when you sign up for the phone service.
If you Move (house, or the phone in general), then you change the location, no big deal. Just like with a wired phone, if you move, you sign up agian.
If you forget to change your address, that is really completely your fault, I mean with a wired phone, you sign up agian once you move. Why should IP phones have the disadvantage of having to monitor where their phones are at all times, while wired phones get off scotch free?
)
Your welcome.
The only thing that's going to be required is that VOIP services offer real, direct 911 access. And that's just cool.
While I agree that there is a lot of merit to the idea that every type of phone should have 911 service, last I checked the taxes and mandated fees that pay for 911 services are still left only to more traditional telco services. There is some justice in getting what you pay for.
Secondly, if any given home is allocated about four billion more addresses than the entire Internet has at present, can you PLEASE tell me why anyone would even remotely want to use a technology that obstructs the use of inbound connections?
Thirdly, the entire planet wouldn't need to switch to IPv6 - only ISPs that provide VoIP would actually need to use IPv6, and then only for systems that have IPv6 installed. It would be trivial to require that ISPs interested in VoIP provide IPv6 connectivity and then require that VoIP software use the IPv6 protocol. Anything beyond that would be unnecessary and would evolve just fine in its own time.
Fourthly, if you're going to be sarcastic with a Slashdot user with a UID in four digits, know the subject first.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cell phone companies made the same complaints. The found a solution and implemented it.
I don't understand the argument about calling 911 from you laptop if it is from your primary location that should be on record. If it is some hot spot at a coffee shop I am sure the guy (or gal) next to you has a cell phone.
There needs to be improvements on tracking IP locations. If the IP is located in Seattle it gets routed to the Seattle 911 center. If you are overseas it gets routed to the local emergency contact.
If you are paranoid and spoofing your IP I am sure you won't call 911 anyways, because then the 'government' can find you and conduct those 'experiments'.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
While you deserve both funny and interesting upwards moderation, several forms of torture and mutilation might reasonably rank worse than rape and murder. One might also argue that having such inflicted on one's loved ones would rate worse too.
After all, who here wouldn't rather be shot dead than have someone assail their mother with a DRM'd Windows Media version of Micheal Bolton's "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You"?
look all they need to do is tell people when they sign up that voip has no 911 service. then if people accept that and use voip as their only means of telephone communication i dont see the problem.
im so tired of legislation to "help" protect people from themselves, ESP when its OBVIOUSLY ignorant. 911 is LOCATION based, voip is NOT.
seriously if you're willing to forgoe telephone service, then its YOUR fault if you need 911 and you dont have it.
simple solutions for simple problems...let people know that without some telephone service they wont have 911!
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
Laptops with GPS: Dial the local emergency number for the country, or nearest equivalent.
Laptops without GPS: Attempt to dial the emergency number for the default or most recent location/country. If this does not answer, ask the user to pick a location.
Everything else (location of laptop etc) can be handled at the end of whoever's providing the connection, should they wish. ISPs (or whoever's providing the first decrypted stage of the VoIP session) should be able to use a traffic analyser to pick when a VoIP call is being made, and check if it's to 911. They can then tag the call with info saying that it's a VoIP call and the best guess at the dialler's location - the dispatcher will need to confirm exact location.
IPv6 addresses are derived from the upstream router, always. So long as you have the physical location of key routers, the rest can be derived with a high level of probability. That's good enough.
Perhaps probability is good enough for you but, it isn't good enough for me when my life hangs in the balance. Fortunately, it isn't good enough for the FCC as they require far greater accuracy than "high probability", even for cell phones. When the router in question is serving a small town of 5,000 people that covers 100 sqare miles, how do they find you? The "highly probable" location may be 10 miles away from your physical location.
can you PLEASE tell me why anyone would even remotely want to use a technology that obstructs the use of inbound connections?
Because, it "obstructs the use of inbound connections". In other words, NAT is the beginning of a great firewall. Additionally, there will still be cases where it will be undesirable for a host to be directly addressable. NAT is unlikely to go away with IP6. Translation gateways may not be required but, they will not be eliminated.
Thirdly, the entire planet wouldn't need to switch to IPv6 - only ISPs that provide VoIP would actually need to use IPv6, and then only for systems that have IPv6 installed.
No, in order to have reliable 911 location capability by using IP6, it will be necessary for every possible client host connection point to be both, IP6 enabled and on an extremely accurate and up-to-date physical map so that the VoIP provider will know which 911 PSP to route the call to and so that the 911 service can respond to the correct location. Remember that the likes of Vonage do not provide internet connectivity. They only provide PSTN termination services. Also, the client host could be mobile as is the case of VoIP WiFi phones.
Fourthly, if you're going to be sarcastic with a Slashdot user with a UID in four digits, know the subject first.
Kahn. I am laughing at the superior UID! And after you said that, everyone else is too.
If they maintained a list of what area each IP range is in it wouldn't be too hard. They would simply have the computer look it up and direct your call to the right spot. The only problem is that they might be going through an international proxy in which case it would be harder to detect.
In this case couldn't they make a slight modification to the standard to have something that sends the IP of the person calling when the conversation starts. I wouldn't think that it would be that hard to make it backwards compatable so that old software still works but have all new software with the new standard.
Anther thing that could be done is to have localised numbers to call for various countries.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy my rights. I can bring my Linksys PAP2-NA box with me when I'm travelling and use my phone just as if I were at home... quite useful. I have no intention of ever signing my right to move my equipment.
Oh, I also own my own cable modem. If necessary, that can move anywhere my ISP has service also.
Luke-Jr
They have a billing address.
Nothing stops me from moving my cable equipment to another part of the country and using it there.
Luke-Jr
Lingo does this ... but their service only works with their modem, and they warn you ahead of time that if you happen to take the modem somewhere NOT matching the address that you register on your account (via their webpage, it doesn't have to be billing address) that you'll be screwed.
Why don't they just make it so whenever you start your VOIP software/hardware, you have to input your current location for 911 compatibility?
This would be a MINOR inconvenience as well as a BIG BONUS to those who need 911 from VOIP.
Dial 911, while overseas. ...."
"Bobs Pizzeria how may I help you?", Bob
"I am bleeding to death."
"We use 000 in this country, redial for an ambulance"
Dial 000
"Bobs Pizzeria how may I help you?", Bob
"I am bleeding to death"
"Oh it appears your VOIP provider has mapped all international emergence numbers to 911"
"aaarghh
As everyone realizes, 'knowing' the location of a voip user is problematic.
Here is my suggestion - require the land-line telcos to offer an 'emergency only' service, which would only support calling 911, and to charge a bare minimum for this service. Either that or require that any line that has ever had phone service, always work for 911, even if no other service is active. (Modern cellphones *do* work that way - I have an old cellphone from a previous employer that the service has long been disconnected on, and it is still able to call 911)
Better one of his "original" numbers than one of the re-makes. How can anybody think themselves able to surpass Percy Sledge?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Given that all VoIP users (obviously) have internet access, why not avoid the regulation by just creating a website, 911.gov, that allows ALL internet users to communicate with 911 operators over an encrypted chat. This would even handle the somewhat unusual case that someone has internet access but not a phone.
Sure this might seem more inviting for pranksters, but is it really any more anonymous than VoIP?
For VOIP to provide any 911 service, there has to be recognition that there are two principle forms of VOIP. While there is no meaningful technology distinction between the two, there are substantial implementation distinctions for 911 purposes.
The easy category which should be the target of FCC and other requirements is the traditional fixed-location telephone replacement. This service is a device (hardware or software) which is not generally mobile, and, which operates from a fixed location like a traditional land-line phone. Registration of the location and appropriate 911 connectivity for these devices should be a simple matter and isn't an unreasonable requirement for VOIP service providers.
The other category is location-independent VOIP. This could be an 802.11 based SIP cordless handset, a laptop running a soft phone, or any number of other such VOIP devices which can and often do change location on a regular device. These devices present multiple nearly insurmountable challenges for providing 911 service over VOIP, and, should not be required to do so until a practical alternative to them can be determined.
It should be up to the consumer to determine which category their particular VOIP account will fall under, but, providers should be required to make full disclosure of the tradeoffs prior to the consumer making such a decision.
To highlight the challenges presented, consider the following:
- Without any location data, it is virtually impossible to correctly route the call to an appropriate 911 provider. Afterall, my billing address may be in San Jose, my VOIP service may be based in Virginia, with a Virginia telephone number, and, I could be placing calls from that service while sitting at a Cafe in South Africa. What good is the dispatch center in San Jose or Virginia going to do me? Instead, the VOIP provider should route me to a recording that informs me I need to obtain local assistance and reminding me that 911 isn't available from this phone.
- It is hard (so far, impossible) to reliably obtain location data from such devices.
- There is no provision in the VOIP protocol for a standard way in which to provide location data even if it were available.
- GPS does not work indoors.
- Not all countries actually have 911 service. What does a VOIP provider based in Virginia do when they know their customer is trying to call 911 from South Africa?
- Any method of reliably generating location data has much worse privacy implications
I am curious as to how the Canadian requirements address these issues. If anyone knows, an email to owen at delong dot com would be appreciated.NAT as a firewall is stupid. Furthermore, if you'd bothered to do a little research on IPv6, you'd be aware that it mandates IPSec. This gives you much better control over who can access your machine than a firewall, because firewalls can be compromised. IPSec can't.
You do not need to know the path to the connection, because you don't care what the path to the connection is. You are interested in the location of the end-point, so only need sufficient information to determine that. A map of the physical location of the backbone devices is about as useful as a map of the storm drains in Italy for driving around the south of Florida.
Lastly, people have been laughing at my UID (and grotesquely high karma) for about a decade. I'm supposed to keel over and die because you're feeling like being snide, now? Uhhh, no. I'll pass on that. My suspicion is that you're trolling because you're bored, or because you don't understand the technology. Neither is a good reason to troll.
The reality is that Slashdot is packed full of geeks, nerds and egg-heads of all kinds. Some are going to say things that you don't like, and be right even so. I've been known to mod comments up that I don't like, simply because I think they have been valuable comments nonetheless. I pity those who reject views other than their own, because it is only be seeing views other than your own that you can learn anything new. Adding the same to what you already have adds nothing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
this actually makes me wonder how is America ever going to sentence someone from India who uses his American VoIP phone line (which btw has a valid American phone no.) to make a prank 911 call?
In this case, theres not much which can be done. At the max, the phone line might be withdrawn from the customer!
Then, there's the capacity to consider. There are wireless routers at truck stops and rest areas, which might easily have a few hundred people present. One wireless router wouldn't have the range to support more than a few at a time, but even so, it would be a horrible strain on all but the fastest hardware.
The line running out of the truck stop or rest area then has to support the bandwidth being consumed, of course. Most such areas likely have low-speed links, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests they'd need a full T1 at least, preferably a full T2 or T3, to adequately cover the throughput under load.
Ideally, to provide truly mobile VoIP, you'd have road-side WAP points (with mobile IP enabled) to allow people to use their VoIP phones in the car as they are driving. Now, I'd have no objection to a teleco running multi-line multi-frequency petabit black fibre down every street in the country. It would reduce unemployment and would put money into circulation. On the other hand, unless the teleco had a few trillion in spare change, I doubt they could afford to.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Consider what VOIP 911 (sure to be renamed V911 or I911 or something equally lame) will look like in five years' time:
- Standard home DHCP servers (i.e. those in boxes you buy from Fry's) will all issue a location attribute. They may be required to do so by law.
- ISPs will be required by law to issue these identifiers as part of a DHCP response to all customers who connect via DSL or dialup (since they will have the standard PSTN ANI info already anyway)
- Public WLAN operators will be required to provide this info.
- VOIP software will be required to use it for 911
Since most people will get VOIP service from a commercial provider and will use supplier-provided, OS-bundled, or hardware VOIP encoding, this will "just work" (ha ha).Oh, and in case this wasn't clear from the above:
wtf are you talking about triagulation. What are we, living in the fucking 80's
It doesn't make much sense. VoIP looks like it just might be the voice communication medium of the near future. It might even completely replace land lines.
Right now, the 911 system (and the other emergency numbers in other parts of the world, such as 112) is a very good system that does a lot of public good. It saves a lot of lives and is worth having around.
VoIP should work with 911 services. No, there isn't a clear solution to make it work well. That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Someone needs to figure out how to make it work. And it should be implemented. It's probably going to be difficult, but hopefully it's not expensive and doesn't require special hardware. Regardless, there is a public need for the 911 system to work extremely well with VoIP, especially with the rapidly growing popularity.
I would hope that a solution is found and that the government requires every provider that gives out US phone numbers to implement that solution.
... to use the international emergency number of 112 rather than 911?
try setting your MAC address to 69:69:69:69:69:69 and see if it works...
Would I consider buying a computer with GPS integrated? What do you think? Not bloody likely.
;)
That's fine--and it's your right.
Just know that when you call 911 from your VoIP line that the emergency services won't know where you are.
Personally, I wouldn't mind it one bit. I work for an ambulance service. They know where my radio is every second of the day--it has a GPS device in it. If I press "The Big Red Button", they know exactly where to send help. Of course I can always turn it off and then they can't find me.
I think GPS would be a wonderful solution to the VoIP problem--just use a USB dongle or something so paranoid psychos can unplug it.
There's no place like
Now SPAM calls can be shared with our local 911 operators.
... of 911 calls..
I for one welcome our new 911 SPAMING...
Imagine a
1.SPAM 911
2.Rob bank
3....
4. Profit!
But seriously folks this is a real bad idea linking the most insecure of networks with our Emergency 911 Life Line.
(Grain of Salt) With those boxes doing the linking being crappy consumer equiptment made in third world countrys, by terriost.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
We're all adults. If you want to be able to call 911, then keep your POTS line with minimal service. Install VoIP on line 2 of a two-line phone. Calling your girlfriend in Spain? Select line 2 and call for free. Accidentally dismember yourself? No worries. Just pick up and dial 911 on the default (line 1). CORDLESS PHONES are more dangerous than VoIP. Next time you're bleeding to death, see if you can find the handset!
Not necessarily. When Speakeasy set up their VoIP service through Level 3 recently, I wound up having to work with both Garden Grove PD and Speakeasy to make sure my address got transferred over. But, now my current side effect is that if I take my TA with me to (say) Chicago and use my 714 based phone number to call 911, I'm gonna get Garden Grove PD - not Chicago PD.
This sig no verb.
This topic has been discussed at great lengths on the Vonage Voip Forum for weeks: http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic3843.html
The international standard for emergency calls is 112. This is mandatory in GSM.
Up until GSM roaming, a phone was always fixed to a country, thus countries were free to define their own emergency number. In practice, most countries outside North America followed 112 or had a migration path to it.
When GSM roaming came in, phones could be used outside the country of origin so following the international standard became important.
All GSM countries either moved to 112 or ran it in parallel, for example, 999 is used in the UK in parallel to 112.
The North American code area (the 22 countries in the North America dialling plan) managed to avoid the problem because roaming was years behind the rest of the world and GSM was limited to a few cities (until recently).
As an aside, the GSM specification states that 112 must be handled as a priority, i.e if a cell is full, dialling 112 will disconnected someone else. This does not apply to alternatives numbers so there is no need for UK operators to treat 999 as a priority, although in practice they do.
Now that the US has joined the party, and VoIP joins GSM as a non-country-locked phone service, it will be necessary for the US to migrate to 112. As 911 is so ingrained in the culture (as is 999 in the UK) both 112 and 911 will probably run in parallel for a very long time.
So shouldn't the authorities/regulators be mandating 112 rather than, or as well as, 911 ?
I doubt you'd get far (or rather, I doubt that you'd get any responses) - that's a multicast MAC address (LSB of 1st byte is '1').
Put the 911 local call center info in the DHCP packet, which comes from the "local" network.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
I'm *PREFECTLY* happy keeping 911 emergency services *OFF* VoIP lines. If I want emergency medical or law enforcement services, I will call from a cell phone.
For 911 service to work (as per regulation) they have to know *WHERE* you're at when you call.
subject says it all
An email system is not required to interface with government emergency services. A Jabber client is not required to provide that interface. Somehow, phones (now including VoIP implementations) are different. But exactly what is it, about phones, that makes the rules different?
Here are a few possibilities:
- The human organs: The mouth, the ear. I guess the idea here, is that
a seriously injured person can often still speak. Get yourself really
drunk and then test to see which gives out first: your ability to yell vs
your ability to type.
- Wires in public space. The phone network used to (and most of
it still does) exist thanks to a bunch of physical copper wires, and these
wires crossed other people's property. It was a public utility that could
only exist thanks to special favors granted to it, by society.
Thus, quid pro quo, society may demand certain favors from it, in
return.
- Ubiquity and utility value. Almost every building has a phone and every
person knows how to use one, so tying emergency services to it, is simply
a "good fit."
- It looks like this law doesn't specify a rationale, but a criterion: a device that has a "phone number" and can thereby
receive incoming calls from the legacy POTS system, has the requirement.
- [Insert your rationale here.]
I hope everyone knows where they stand on that, and why.Personally, I think that the first idea is silly, the second idea is the only one founded upon an ethical principle, and the third is .. frustrating. And surely everyone can see how arbitrary the fourth one is.
The reason I hate the ubiquity argument so much, is that it means that any communication channel that gets popular, will eventually be regulated. It means that if, for some reason, people were to stop using phones and start using something else instead, government would demand that the "something else" have provisions for interfacing to emergency services, have provisions for wiretapping, etc. It means there will be no escape from encumberances.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This sounds like a good idea, and I'd like to do it, but I've always been taught "Never call 911 except in an emergency!"
Is there something official-looking that says it's OK to test 911?
(I'd feel like an ass if it bugged them, and all I had was "well some guy on slashdot said it would be OK". Especially if it meant somebody else couldn't get emergency help he needed as quickly as possible.)