« The Value of Commercial Database in Fighting Terrorism Port Blocking: A Slippery Slope? »
Killing VoIP
Posted March 3, 2005 – 2:53 pm by Yakov Shafranovich in TechnologyCringely has an interesting column this month describing how incumbent carriers can kill VoIP without violating any laws:
As the phone and cable companies begin offering their own VoIP services in real volume, they plan to “tag” their own VoIP packets so that at least within their own networks, their VoIP service will have COS (Class of Service) assignments with their routers, switches, etc. They also plan on implementing distinct Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) for the tagged packets.
Tagged packets get both less restrictive rules for passage and a private highway lane to drive on. The net effect is that any packet that isn’t tagged will only get “best effort” service, which means whatever is left.
“Best effort,” as defined by IETF RFC 791, makes almost no guarantees. The packet may arrive damaged, it may be out of order (compared to other packets sent between the same hosts), it may be duplicated, or it may be dropped entirely. And that was in the good old days.
Now imagine “best effort” transport on a backbone that is already clogged with tagged traffic that gets preferential treatment. Where previously all packets got “best effort,” in this new system some packets get better than best effort, which means the remaining packets will effectively get worse than best effort.
The telco and cable guys know enough about their networks that they can throttle their network capacities up and down so that “best effort” service is going to be pretty awful. But have the magic tags on your packets and you’ll have decent service.
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.
Tags: law, network neutrality, voip —
Permalink | Trackback URL | This post has
One Response to “Killing VoIP”
Why should phone companies and the cable companies allow 3rd party VoIP over their infrastructure? The phone company & cable companies have paid for the infrastructure and continue to maintain it and money making scheme firms like Vonage do not contribute one dollar to supporting the infrastructure!
One of two things will happen.
1. A Federal law will be enacted forcing Vonage to pay an infrastructure access charge thus paying their share to maintain the infrastructure that is maintained by the phone company or the cable company.
2. Vonage will be forced out of business by better technology such as Verizon FiOS and the cable companies bundle deals thus 3rd party VoIP will be insignificant.
By Prof. John Schafer on Oct 27, 2007