Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 01:58:07PM -0800, David Barak wrote: --- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, and I think the distinction is pertinent to this discussion, if the car has no seatbelts, you can drive it just fine -- as long as it came that way. You can't *sell* a car without seatbelts, anymore. That may be the rule in Florida, but in DC, MD, and UT (the states in which I've lived in the past 2 decades), you can be be ticketed if you are driving a car and not wearing a seatbelt. I'd have to check, but I believe the exemption for cars not originally equipped in in the Federal Uniform Model Traffic Statues, which I think the majority of states have adopted, at least in substantial part, though IANAL. Nope: Maryland makes the exception: http://mlis.state.md.us/cgi-win/web_statutes.exe?gtr22-412.3 If it wasn't manufactured with belts, you're not required to install them, but if they're there, you do have to wear them. I rather suspect the other jursidictions are similar. To make this a little bit more relevant to our VoIP/911 discussion, would we allow a startup car company to sell something which looked like a seatbelt, but was not crash rated above 5 mph? No, of course we wouldn't. Would that be anticompetitive? No, it just means that to be a startup car company, you have to meet the same safety standards as the existing car companies. Indeed. If we want to take the analogy away from something which is a direct safety issue, the exact same argument applies to emissions standards. They're standard for a reason: they apply to everyone, and every car maker must comply. (SUVs are classified as trucks, and comply with the truck rules). Actually, I believe most SUV's are *not* classified as light trucks, with the exceptions of the Excursion and Hummer. Why would these arguments not apply to VoIP? At this point, of course, I've lost track of what the argument is, in the delightful littls side trips. :-) pinch Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth AssociatesThe Things I Think'87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
VoIP is great. VoPI (Voice over Public Internet) is great when it works, but I wouldn't bet my life or my business on it. Who says that you have to disconnect your home phone just because you use VoIP? In fact, one of the advantages of DSL over cable, is that the phone line is still there. Buy a bright red hot-line phone, put a sticker on it that says For Emergencies Only! and another one with 911. Place it in the front hall so that any visitors to your home see it when they enter. Disconnect the ringer on the hot-line phone so that you aren't disturbed by wrong numbers and telemarketers. Then use VoIP for all your regular calls. Why can't the parasitic phone companies like Vonage tell their customers stuff like this. If they can't provide real E-911 service then they should make it clear to subscribers that they need to keep a real phone line in place. It would help if telephone set manufacturers would start supplying hot-line emergency phones with a ringer-off switch and the warning notice embedded in the plastic. They could be sold in a set with a new-fangled SIP phone. --Michael Dillon
P2P Usage Increases was: (Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance)
My guess would be that PtP is a much bigger bandwidth hog than gaming, especially for the people who have high upstream capacity (10meg+). the seven biggest isps in japan recently cooperated on a really good paper measuring a lot about broadband use in japan. it is in the most recent ccr, v35n1 jan 05. sorry, siteseer seems not to have it yet. I haven't seen that issue of SIGCOMM CCR, however I suspect that the slides at this URL are related to the paper since they give thanks to seven organizations on the last slide and the graphs show recent data http://www.iijlab.net/~kjc/papers/srccs-rbb-traffic-2up.pdf The paper itself is also available at that site, at http://www.iijlab.net/~kjc/papers/ivs-rbb-traffic.pdf Andrew Odlyzko
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 05:06:00PM -0800, Bill Nash wrote: I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Why exactly are networks taking this stance to QoS VOIP traffic, generated by their customers, into uselessness? Oh, c'mon, Bill; you *know* why. :-) This goes back to when I ran a Teeny Tinytm ISP in '95 on a 256K DSL link and 40 modems, and got massacred by iPhone: The carriers based their provisioning, and thus pricing, on a traffic engineering model that was reasonable *until the Big New Application became a runaway hit*. You're not paying (at least at the lower levels of the food chain) for what you *could* utilize, you're paying for what you're likely to utilize, *given what the people who set the pricing knew at the time*. Pricing depends on oversubscription; safe oversubscription depends on having a pretty decent handle on the traffic patterns, at the macro level. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth AssociatesThe Things I Think'87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Thus spake [EMAIL PROTECTED] VoIP is great. VoPI (Voice over Public Internet) is great when it works, but I wouldn't bet my life or my business on it. Who says that you have to disconnect your home phone just because you use VoIP? In fact, one of the advantages of DSL over cable, is that the phone line is still there. Buy a bright red hot-line phone, put a sticker on it that says For Emergencies Only! and another one with 911. Place it in the front hall so that any visitors to your home see it when they enter. Disconnect the ringer on the hot-line phone so that you aren't disturbed by wrong numbers and telemarketers. Then use VoIP for all your regular calls. So you're saying everyone should continue paying $30/mo for a POTS line just for 911 calls? A typical Vonage customer buys the service to replace, not supplement, their POTS line. Frankly, I'm fine with 911 not working on VoIP lines; I have a cell phone for that when needed. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever actually dialed 911 from a land line. I understand the woes of mixing 911 and VoIP myself, although I'm not a Vonage user. The VoIP phone on my desk connects 911 calls to the Vancouver, BC, PSAP (since it's off a PBX at work), but I also know the direct-dial number for the local Dallas, TX, PSAP -- the emergency line, not the administrative line that Vonage uses -- and if I bothered, I could easily set the PBX to reroute 911 there instead. Location information is tougher, but I have to tell the operator my location on a cell phone too, so it's not a deal-killer. S Stephen Sprunk Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do. K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Stephen Sprunk wrote: I understand the woes of mixing 911 and VoIP myself, although I'm not a Vonage user. The VoIP phone on my desk connects 911 calls to the Vancouver, BC, PSAP (since it's off a PBX at work), but I also know the direct-dial number for the local Dallas, TX, PSAP -- the emergency line, not the administrative line that Vonage uses -- and if I bothered, I could easily set the PBX to reroute 911 there instead. Location information is tougher, but I have to tell the operator my location on a cell phone too, so it's not a deal-killer. It kinda makes you wonder how people contacted the police in the early 80s, completely discounting that people had even conceived of the notion of 'emergency' before the 70s. When I was a kid, I was made to memorize my home address, my phone number, an emergency contact number, and the local police number. 911, while a great idea, is a classic example of the desire to let technology replace basic common sense. I don't mean to get off on a rant here.. - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Frankly, I'm fine with 911 not working on VoIP lines; I have a cell phone for that when needed. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever actually dialed 911 from a land line. You're lying on the floor incapacitated and in agony, suffering from some acute and life threatening medical condition. Your neighbour finds you. He picks up your landline phone, dials 911 and hears 911 service is not available from this phone please use another phone He goes looking for another phone while you die and rest in peace. Adi
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Frankly, I'm fine with 911 not working on VoIP lines; I have a cell phone for that when needed. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever actually dialed 911 from a land line. You're lying on the floor incapacitated and in agony, suffering from some acute and life threatening medical condition. Your neighbour finds you. He picks up your landline phone, dials 911 and hears 911 service is not available from this phone please use another phone He goes looking for another phone while you die and rest in peace. And let's not forget the: You collapse from a heart attack at 1:00 AM, dial 911 on your cell phone and go unconscious before the operator answers. You die because the operator doesn't have your location auto-magically popping up on his/her screen. And for the record, the GPS locators currently in cell phones tend *not* to work indoors, so even if you are lucky enough to live in an area where E911 is plugged into your cell phone carrier's locator service, you still have a high probability of being screwed. /Alex K.
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
--On 01 April 2005 10:05 -0800 Alexander Kiwerski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And for the record, the GPS locators currently in cell phones tend *not* to work indoors, so even if you are lucky enough to live in an area where E911 is plugged into your cell phone carrier's locator service, you still have a high probability of being screwed. No idea why this is relevant to NANOG, but cell phone location works by cell triangulation, not by GPS. So if the cell phone is working indoors, the locator service should work. Alex
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 04:56:27PM +1000, Jamie Norwood wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving? No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Actually, and I think the distinction is pertinent to this discussion, if the car has no seatbelts, you can drive it just fine -- as long as it came that way. You can't *sell* a car without seatbelts, anymore. Cheers, - jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth AssociatesThe Things I Think'87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
--- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, and I think the distinction is pertinent to this discussion, if the car has no seatbelts, you can drive it just fine -- as long as it came that way. You can't *sell* a car without seatbelts, anymore. That may be the rule in Florida, but in DC, MD, and UT (the states in which I've lived in the past 2 decades), you can be be ticketed if you are driving a car and not wearing a seatbelt. To make this a little bit more relevant to our VoIP/911 discussion, would we allow a startup car company to sell something which looked like a seatbelt, but was not crash rated above 5 mph? No, of course we wouldn't. Would that be anticompetitive? No, it just means that to be a startup car company, you have to meet the same safety standards as the existing car companies. If we want to take the analogy away from something which is a direct safety issue, the exact same argument applies to emissions standards. They're standard for a reason: they apply to everyone, and every car maker must comply. (SUVs are classified as trucks, and comply with the truck rules). Why would these arguments not apply to VoIP? David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com __ Yahoo! Messenger Show us what our next emoticon should look like. Join the fun. http://www.advision.webevents.yahoo.com/emoticontest
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
David, While it's true that you must wear seatbelts in most states *IF THE CAR HAS SEATBELTS WHEN MANUFACTURED*. As far as I know, no state requires the installation of belts in a 1929 Ford Roadster or any other car that predates the use of seat belts. NOTE: This is NOT going to NANOG. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Oops! Very sorry. (Man, this is embarrassing!) -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:09:08 -0800 From: Kevin Oberman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David, While it's true that you must wear seatbelts in most states *IF THE CAR HAS SEATBELTS WHEN MANUFACTURED*. As far as I know, no state requires the installation of belts in a 1929 Ford Roadster or any other car that predates the use of seat belts. NOTE: This is NOT going to NANOG. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 510 486-8634
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Also, as a former medical professional who has some actual experience with these scenarios, I'd like to point out that the percentage of times that people are _NOT_ screwed, even if the location pops up and EMS gets there as absolutely fast as possible is less than 1%. That's right... If you are having a serious heart attack, and, are to the point where you are unconscious before EMS arrives, your survival probability is less than 1% with BLS capable EMS. If you are fortunate enough to live in an area where ACLS is provided on the EMS rig, that probability rises to something on the order of 3-5%. So, let's look at this somewhat in perspective. Owen Apologies... I've resisted the desire to post to the off-topic parts of this as long as I can. pgpIku9keXKIW.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Thus spake Adi Linden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Frankly, I'm fine with 911 not working on VoIP lines; I have a cell phone for that when needed. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever actually dialed 911 from a land line. You're lying on the floor incapacitated and in agony, suffering from some acute and life threatening medical condition. Your neighbour finds you. He picks up your landline phone, dials 911 and hears 911 service is not available from this phone please use another phone He goes looking for another phone while you die and rest in peace. Hopefully he'll pull a cell phone out of his (or my) pocket and not leave my side in such a dire emergency. Or he might run across the hall to the cop that lives there. After noting there's no phones anywhere in the living areas, he'll probably get the hint I don't have a phone line, which is becoming common at least within my social group. I certainly hope he doesn't dig around in my office; there's half a dozen VoIP phones in here, most of which don't work at any given time since I'm constantly futzing with them for work. However, in case someone might chance upon a working one before giving up, I'll go figure out how to make the PBX to route 911 and 9911 to my PSAP instead of one in Canada. Or maybe I'll just put it in an on-screen speed dial. Hmm. S Stephen Sprunk Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do. K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
That may be the rule in Florida, but in DC, MD, and UT (the states in which I've lived in the past 2 decades), you can be be ticketed if you are driving a car and not wearing a seatbelt. This is true in CA, too. However, the law in CA specifically provides that if you are driving a car first registered before XXX (I don't remember the exact year in which seatbelts became mandatory), you are exempt as the car is not required to have seat belts. There are many other lesser known exceptions to the seatbelt law. These are likely true in those other states as well, but, I confess I haven't done detailed legal research outside of my own state. To make this a little bit more relevant to our VoIP/911 discussion, would we allow a startup car company to sell something which looked like a seatbelt, but was not crash rated above 5 mph? No, of course we wouldn't. Would that be anticompetitive? No, it just means that to be a startup car company, you have to meet the same safety standards as the existing car companies. Yes... It is indeed unfortunate that the VOIP providers are choosing to look like telcos, and, more unfortunate that they are providing a service that looks like telephony instead of some of the real possibilities of VOIP. Why would these arguments not apply to VoIP? VOIP without 911 is not creating toxic emissions that are harmful to the people around them. VOIP without 911 is simply another form of communication. I haven't heard anyone demanding 911 service for IRC or Email. Why should it apply to VOIP? Just because it's a voice service? 911 service is not a standard feature of many voice appliances availble today. Various two-way radios, for example. VOIP is VOIP. It is _NOT_ the PSTN. It may be that the PSTN loses many of it's customers to VOIP. It may be that the best services available are those that integrate the capabilities of VOIP and the PSTN, but, in the end, it still remains that they are different services and should be subject to different requirements and regulations. Owen -- If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me. pgpJljFmfhNSm.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Owen DeLong Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 7:08 PM To: David Barak; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance [ SNIP ] Email. Why should it apply to VOIP? Just because it's a voice service? 911 service is not a standard feature of many voice appliances availble today. It has nothing to do with the appliance. Various two-way radios, for example. VOIP is VOIP. It is _NOT_ the PSTN. It's not VoIP either, it's a protocol that is transmitting a voice call in a non-traditional manner and making them any-to-any connections. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't have traditional services. Many State PUC's agree, but they were pre-empted by the FCC Pulver Order. It may be that the PSTN loses many of it's customers to VOIP. It may be that the best services available are those that integrate the capabilities of VOIP and the PSTN, but, in the end, it still remains that they are different services and should be subject to different requirements and regulations. 911 is a hot competitive issue. It'll get worked out. -M
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you write: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving? No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo, retrictions were placed on it. Basic SMTP is fine. You all use it today. I will use it to send this message. SMTP is not better or worse than the postal service in identifying the sender and we have lived with the possability of fraudulent mail for centuries. People have this idiotic expectation that because the mail is being delivered by a computer rather than a postie that the identity of the sender is somehow magically authenticated. The real issue is that it is hard to police customer machines and it is cheeper to turn off SMTP than it is to identify, inform and help fix customer machines. Sooner or later ISPs will have to start doing this as the people compromising machines have shown a long history of getting around all the blocks put in their way. Spam is just a minor annoyance compared to what they could potentially be doing with the compromised machines. As was mentioned, my point was just that the question posited was flawed. SMTP isn't restricted for competition and money-making reasons, but because to not restrict it can have quite undesired implications. The question was why was one ok, and the other not. The answer is because of spam. Jamie
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo, retrictions were placed on it. Basic SMTP is fine. You all use it today. I will use it to send this message. SMTP is not better or worse than the postal service in identifying the sender and we have lived with the possability of fraudulent mail for centuries. Yes and no. It is significantly different from the postal service in that the arrival of postal spam costs me nothing. The additional bandwidth it consumes does not delay my other email or interfere with other uses I have for my household. It doesn't prevent my postal mail from getting out to others. It has the additional advantage of actually costing the sender something, thus reducing the number of senders. People have this idiotic expectation that because the mail is being delivered by a computer rather than a postie that the identity of the sender is somehow magically authenticated. I don't think this is particularly true. I think that the bigger issue is sender pays (postal spam) vs. recipient pays (email spam). The real issue is that it is hard to police customer machines and it is cheeper to turn off SMTP than it is to identify, inform and help fix customer machines. Sooner or later ISPs will have to start doing this as the people compromising machines have shown a long history of getting around all the blocks put in their way. Spam is just a minor annoyance compared to what they could potentially be doing with the compromised machines. True... One of these days, I keep hoping that people will wake up and demand less vulnerable operating systems for their machines. Until that happens (and no, the changes Micr0$0ft has made recently don't really create an improvement in this situation, as, their blockades are so obnoxious and so hard to selectively work around that most users just turn them off completely), this will continue to be an issue. The reason, however, so many of these machines are being used for spam instead of other nefarious purposes is that there is more money in spam at the moment. Owen -- If this message was not signed with gpg key 0FE2AA3D, it's probably a forgery. pgpTdhOuwB2CB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Who said it was QoS? - ferg -- Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why exactly are networks taking this stance to QoS VOIP traffic, generated by their customers, into uselessness? -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Bill, I understand completely what you are saying, but QoS is not ubiquitous in the end-to-end sense in the Internet. And that is a problem. Once _any_ traffic which you might deem quality leaves your administrative control (e.g. the boundaries of your network), you have no guarantee that the quality handling of that traffic will be honored (or, in this case, carried at all). I agree with whomever said it earlier -- remember that the global Internet is nothing more than a bunch of interconnected private networks. - ferg -- Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Obviously VOIP needs QoS to function well on oversold, commodity broadband networks. Why not just paint VOIP with a broad QoS brush (as in, prioritize all of it, not just your own service) and defang the folks just looking for an excuse to step in and take the option away from you? - billn -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On 3/30/2005 9:36 PM, Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? It's not SMTP or even Internet mail that people are blocking, it's just the server-to-server transfer part, not the client-to-server or any of the other components. And the reason the server-to-server transfers are being blocked isn't because of competition with those other servers, it's because of harrassment of those sites by ~your customers. This is all pretty different from blocking ~NNTP because you're mad that ~SuperNews is using your network to make money. -- Eric A. Hallhttp://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Who said it was QoS? Blocking is QoS. ;) - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Brad Knowles wrote: [Deleted] What I really think we need here are some truth-in-advertising laws which are applied to oversubscription rates. That'd solve the problem really quick. How about we regulat the Internet like the Electric Utility and charge per byte transferred? :) That would shut down Peer To Peer traffic rather quickly, and it would ensure that everyone pays a fair amount for what they use. I'm only half serious here.. However, I do agree that truth in advertising is a good thing. On a different tact, where I -THINK- the market will eventually end up is w/ different classes of BroadBand service, whereby QOS and priority will be given to those that wish to pay for it. The $14.95 services will be a best-effort, and the $59.95 services will have priority. -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On 3/31/2005 9:25 AM, Greg Boehnlein wrote: On a different tact, where I -THINK- the market will eventually end up is w/ different classes of BroadBand service, whereby QOS and priority will be given to those that wish to pay for it. The $14.95 services will be a best-effort, and the $59.95 services will have priority. We've there already. When I had my home-office DSL package from XO it was much more expensive than consumer DSL from pacbell, for example, but gave me the ability to run local servers, non-blocking network ranges, etc. Meanwhille, cable contracts are pretty much written such that the service is only supposed to be used for ~web browsing and other basic tasks, and if you want reliability or better bandwidth then call the business service number. I don't see this much in the local provider market though. -- Eric A. Hallhttp://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: [Deleted] I agree with whomever said it earlier -- remember that the global Internet is nothing more than a bunch of interconnected private networks. Yep.. And when you are dying of a heart attack in your house, and every second counts, how are you going to feel when the 911 operator says.. P...e.a...s...ca...y..sa..d..a? Or better yet, when you get a fast-busy because your Cable Modem is down? VoIP is great. VoPI (Voice over Public Internet) is great when it works, but I wouldn't bet my life or my business on it. -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:25:56 -0500 (EST), Greg Boehnlein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about we regulat the Internet like the Electric Utility and charge per byte transferred? :) You know, that's already happening Korea Telecom recently decided to scrap its flat rate high speed [1] broadband offering and move to a traffic based charging plan - must be because most korean broadband gets used for online gaming, which is as high bandwidth use an app as you can get ... and they're hit by the same situation, which does start to bite when a few users start maxing out their pipes, and really begins to hurt when few suddenly becomes most srs [1] (and I mean really high speed, compared to what gets sold as DSL stateside, and way, way over the $75 a month, 3 gig transfer capped 512K dsl line I use in India)
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Are you saying XO is giving your biz DSL higher QoS than consumer DSL? I can see them providing the premium services (unblocked ports, etc., higher CIR between POP/gateway and CPE), but be surprised if they're giving your traffic priority on their backbone. At least that's not typical (Genuity, VZ, BA, SBC, L3 history). _ David Landers IP Operations Engineering Level 3 Communications _ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric A. Hall Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 8:32 AM To: Greg Boehnlein Cc: Brad Knowles; Bill Nash; Fergie (Paul Ferguson); nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance On 3/31/2005 9:25 AM, Greg Boehnlein wrote: On a different tact, where I -THINK- the market will eventually end up is w/ different classes of BroadBand service, whereby QOS and priority will be given to those that wish to pay for it. The $14.95 services will be a best-effort, and the $59.95 services will have priority. We've there already. When I had my home-office DSL package from XO it was much more expensive than consumer DSL from pacbell, for example, but gave me the ability to run local servers, non-blocking network ranges, etc. Meanwhille, cable contracts are pretty much written such that the service is only supposed to be used for ~web browsing and other basic tasks, and if you want reliability or better bandwidth then call the business service number. I don't see this much in the local provider market though. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Once upon a time, Jamie Norwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:36:19 -0600, Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? Heard of a little thing called a 'rhetorical question'? Who decides that it is okay for ISPs to block SMTP and not okay for them to block VoIP? If it is okay to block SMTP because people do bad things (i.e. spam), how long will it be before RIAA/MPAA/etc. demand ISPs block P2P programs for the same reason? If the a government gets involved and says it is illegal for ISPs to block VoIP, how long before a spammer tries to use the same ruling to say it is illegal to block SMTP? -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Korea Telecom recently decided to scrap its flat rate high speed [1] broadband offering and move to a traffic based charging plan - must be because most korean broadband gets used for online gaming, which is as high bandwidth use an app as you can get ... and they're hit by the same situation, which does start to bite when a few users start maxing out their pipes, and really begins to hurt when few suddenly becomes most Actually, gaming usually isn't a high bandwidth app, it's merely sensitive to latency. The flows are longer, and I'd imagine with Korea's gaming addiction, highly numerous, but really only large when taken in volume. Now, downloading large patches or entire games.. that's another story, of course. This is one of the problems things like BitTorrent is designed to tackle. A time-lapse flow matrix demonstrating the effects of BitTorrent on egress traffic would be an interesting project. - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Korea Telecom recently decided to scrap its flat rate high speed [1] broadband offering and move to a traffic based charging plan - must be because most korean broadband gets used for online gaming, which is as high bandwidth use an app as you can get ... and they're hit by the same situation, which does start to bite when a few users start maxing out their pipes, and really begins to hurt when few suddenly becomes most My guess would be that PtP is a much bigger bandwidth hog than gaming, especially for the people who have high upstream capacity (10meg+). Seeing IX traffic exchange between local 10meg full duplex providers and ADSL providers is kind of fun, with traffic ratios of 1:5 or worse not being uncommon. -- Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Nor would I, and thank you for making the distinction. $.02, - ferg -- Greg Boehnlein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree with whomever said it earlier -- remember that the global Internet is nothing more than a bunch of interconnected private networks. VoIP is great. VoPI (Voice over Public Internet) is great when it works, but I wouldn't bet my life or my business on it. -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Korea Telecom recently decided to scrap its flat rate high speed [1] broadband offering and move to a traffic based charging plan - must be because most korean broadband gets used for online gaming, which is as high bandwidth use an app as you can get ... and they're hit by the same situation, which does start to bite when a few users start maxing out their pipes, and really begins to hurt when few suddenly becomes most My guess would be that PtP is a much bigger bandwidth hog than gaming, especially for the people who have high upstream capacity (10meg+). the seven biggest isps in japan recently cooperated on a really good paper measuring a lot about broadband use in japan. it is in the most recent ccr, v35n1 jan 05. sorry, siteseer seems not to have it yet. randy
RE: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Are you saying XO is giving your biz DSL higher QoS than consumer DSL? Dunno what they're doing today, but when I had that package (several years ago) there wasn't much need for QoS and as far as I know they didn't use it. They might have, or they might be today, dunno.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On 31 mars 2005, at 10:36, Greg Boehnlein wrote: VoIP is great. VoPI (Voice over Public Internet) is great when it works, but I wouldn't bet my life or my business on it. I've been using voice over the public Internet for a long time, and the only times it has been unavailable (at a time that I tried to use it, and hence noticed) has been when my DSL has been down. When my DSL has been down, by and large, my analogue Bell Canada line has also been down. When I get around to plumbing in the $24/month cable modem in my basement in a half-sensible way I'll be multi-homed, and I predict that in terms of availability the VoIP phone will then be more reliable than the analogue Bell Canada line. The requirement for QoS is over-stated by most people, in my opinion. Extreme example: I made several SIP calls from Uganda over a congested satellite link during one of the AfNOG meetings within the closed INOC-DBA network, and the call quality was perfectly acceptable; wildly better, in fact (even with 20% packet loss) than using a GSM phone to call the same people over the PSTN. It had the additional benefit of not costing about $10/minute. I wouldn't bet my life on the availability of VoIP service from my home office, but I wouldn't bet it on the availability of Bell Canada's analogue service either. Fortunately, probably like everybody else here (and, increasingly, most people within the likely demographic to which VoIP service is marketed) I have a cellphone. The next time someone melodramatically collapses in my living room clutching their chest and mouthing call an ambulance I suspect we will be ok. Joe (No disrespect intended towards Bell Canada, who are probably the best local phone company I have experienced to date, based on personal experience on three continents. It's no accident that all telcos exclude the copper residential access network from their declarations of five-nines reliability.)
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Randy Bush wrote: Korea Telecom recently decided to scrap its flat rate high speed [1] broadband offering and move to a traffic based charging plan - must be because most korean broadband gets used for online gaming, which is as high bandwidth use an app as you can get ... and they're hit by the same situation, which does start to bite when a few users start maxing out their pipes, and really begins to hurt when few suddenly becomes most My guess would be that PtP is a much bigger bandwidth hog than gaming, especially for the people who have high upstream capacity (10meg+). the seven biggest isps in japan recently cooperated on a really good paper measuring a lot about broadband use in japan. it is in the most recent ccr, v35n1 jan 05. sorry, siteseer seems not to have it yet. randy that would be: The impact of residential broadband traffic on Japanese ISP backbones Authors Kensuke Fukuda NTT/WIDE Kenjiro Cho IIJ/WIDE Hiroshi EsakiU. Tokyo/WIDE http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1052820type=pdf if the ACM link doesn't work, try: http://www.iijlab.net/~kjc/papers/srccs-rbb-traffic-2up.pdf
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Not proportional to the potential cost of providing the service. I have no idea what my cable company pays for their bandwidth, but I am certain it's more than the $40 per month I pay for my 3Mbps down/256 Mbps up... and I am able to actually *get* 3Mbps on many occasions, and I average between 1 and 2 (on HTTP/FTP transfers, fwiw). Yes, I know the connectivity cost is shared between several thousand customers in this area, but what happens if large numbers of customers start using VOiP on a regular basis? -- JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED The wisdom of a fool won't set you free --New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
I've been using voice over the public Internet for a long time, and the only times it has been unavailable (at a time that I tried to use it, and hence noticed) has been when my DSL has been down. When my DSL has been down, by and large, my analogue Bell Canada line has also been down. just last eve, we noticed that voip from our hawi line was dead, allison did not answer our hawi phone. investigation (dialing the fax number:-) made us suspect that all phone lines were out. but users complained that voip was the problem! they did not seem happy when i said that, considering it was verizon phone lines out (both lines, voip and fax), it would still have been dead without the voip kit. verizon fixed the lines this morning at 06:30 hst. Fortunately, probably like everybody else here (and, increasingly, most people within the likely demographic to which VoIP service is marketed) I have a cellphone. The next time someone melodramatically collapses in my living room clutching their chest and mouthing call an ambulance I suspect we will be ok. i also have the voip adapters' dialplans (that's bellhead for configurations) set so 911 and 411 short-circuit directly to the local pstn. this lets the blame fall appropriately, and also means that 411 will get local directory assistance, not the one from nyc. my son, a luddite, got rid of his pstn voice and took his ip provider's voip service. he did the install using their csr support, and even got his 802.11 network back up. so it can't be all that bad. a few years' experience, from my very small view of the world, is that voip is about as reliable as pstn, except o be careful of layering, i.e. pstn-voip-pstn etc. adds the unreliabilities o it was all designed by bellheads, so it is disgusting to configure but o it can be really cool, like being able to make essentially free calls from my laptop in very strange places in the world o it sure lowers the costs, e.g. six cents a minute to china without even hunting for prices so, i am sure it does not meet everyone's needs, seems poor quality to some, ... but it's deploying at least a decimal order of magnitude faster than ipv6. so, rather than pretend it sucks so badly it can be ignored, i suggest we work on what it needs to be better and to scale really well. randy
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Bill Nash wrote: I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Wow - your ISP charges 10% of your income for Internet service? And I thought *my* T1 was expensive. -matthew christopher +God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.+
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Steve Sobol wrote: I have no idea what my cable company pays for their bandwidth, but I am certain it's more than the $40 per month I pay for my 3Mbps down/256 Mbps up... and I am able to actually *get* 3Mbps on many occasions, and I average between 1 and 2 (on HTTP/FTP transfers, fwiw). Oh, you might be surprised how cheap transit is when you're buying it by the multigigabit/s. Also, I know that at least some of the bigger cable co's peer with each other...and exchange large amounts of traffic. Couple that with the fact that most customers are not geeks/power uers (i.e. our parents who do some light web surfing and email) and most of the customers use no noticable bandwidth, subsidizing the ones who do. Yes, I know the connectivity cost is shared between several thousand customers in this area, but what happens if large numbers of customers start using VOiP on a regular basis? VOIP with the better codecs doesn't use PIPE. It's just lots of PPS, which may require provider hardware upgrades to deal with the PPS. I've done VOIP over v.90 dialup using older Multitech proprietary gear which I think was doing some flavor of g.723. Quality wasn't perfect, but it really did work. As others have said, PTP is what eats PIPE. -- Jon Lewis | I route Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are Atlantic Net| _ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Completely agree with [1] ...deploying faster than.., and [2] ...suggest we work on what it needs to be better Additionally, it would be also be wonderful if the nasty business of VoIP service providers playing both sides of the current regulatory issues (or lack thereof, or both) didn't come into play, but I guess you can't win 'em all. - ferg -- Randy Bush [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so, i am sure it does not meet everyone's needs, seems poor quality to some, ... but it's deploying at least a decimal order of magnitude faster than ipv6. so, rather than pretend it sucks so badly it can be ignored, i suggest we work on what it needs to be better and to scale really well. randy -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Steve Sobol wrote: Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have no idea what my cable company pays for their bandwidth, but I am certain it's more than the $40 per month I pay for my 3Mbps down/256 Mbps up... and I am able to actually *get* 3Mbps on many occasions, and I average between 1 and 2 (on HTTP/FTP transfers, fwiw). Yes, I know the connectivity cost is shared between several thousand customers in this area, but what happens if large numbers of customers start using VOiP on a regular basis? Not to be cynical, but if large numbers of customers start using VOIP on a regular basis, I imagine regulation will happen, especially if ISPs keep trying to inhibit consumer choices. Vonage is in the right place at the right time, I think. They're a notable pioneer for consumer VOIP services, and it puts them in a good position to supply meaningful insight into what it takes to make VOIP work for the consumer. Chances are, if you're a VOIP customer, you're some form of digirati. That means email, IM, and a cell phone. I'm more enamored of my Vonage service for the simultaneous ringing feature than I am of having a home phone. Self-enabled number portability is a huge win for me as well. My actual VOIP traffic use is pretty minimal. As was mentioned in another post, being able to fire up a softphone on my portable hardware, anywhere I can get packets, is pretty much the holy grail of nerd mobility. I don't think this evolutionary marriage of data and voice is a surprise to anyone, and these conflicts are growing pains. The incumbent telcos see it as a threat, which they should, but my personal view on this is like monkeys trying to fight against walking upright because it violates the existing natural order, nevermind the benefits of opposable thumbs. There's already too much momentum, and too many options to completely circumvent even the ISPs. Hell, even Cringely gets it. - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Steve Sobol wrote: Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Not proportional to the potential cost of providing the service. I have no idea what my cable company pays for their bandwidth, but I am certain it's more than the $40 per month I pay for my 3Mbps down/256 Mbps up... and I am able to actually *get* 3Mbps on many occasions, and I average between 1 and 2 (on HTTP/FTP transfers, fwiw). Yes, I know the connectivity cost is shared between several thousand customers in this area, but what happens if large numbers of customers start using VOiP on a regular basis? I'm replying to stuff on NANOG too much. I should stop... That said: This is really a matter of adjusting business models as the costs of providing various types of services change. As others have pointed out, all end user telecommunications networks that I'm aware of are based on some amount of oversubscription. This is not necessarily in the sense that pipes are full and users are getting poor service, but that it's assumed the users won't all use it at once. When doing flat rate, unlimited use, billing, the goal is generally to set the price such that each user covers the cost of serving the average user. Assuming the prices aren't excessively high, the ISP or phone company (or all you can eat restaurant, for that matter) probably loses money on its heaviest users, does quite well on the users who barely use the service at all, and in the end it all balances out. But if the average user starts using the service more, the cost model breaks. At that point the ISP or phone company needs to either find a way to lower the cost of providing the service, discourage people from using it, or raise prices. This isn't unique to VOIP or PtP; it's a general issue with flat rate business models. Another approach is to bill based on usage, in which case if you're not losing money on every bit, you've got an incentive to encourage your customers to use your product more. Even there, you've got oversubscription issues to contend with: If you're billing your customers per minute, or per megabyte, you still need to hope that they're not all going to use the same minute, or all send their megabyte at the same time. If they are, the model breaks and needs to be fixed somehow. What I generally see as I look at this industry around the world, is that pricing models adapt to fit local conditions, and continue to adapt as those conditions change. In the US, broadband providers tend to do flat rate billing because it's easy to administer and it works. Colo providers tend to do usage based billing, because the spread between the cost of hosting somebody whose website gets occasional hits versus the cost of somebody who is constantly saturating a 100 Mb/s pipe is just too big. Elsewhere, things sometimes work differently. Suresh was saying earlier that Korea Telecom is switching to usage based billing for broadband, presumably because they hope that will be a better fit for their market than flat rate. In Nepal, New Zealand, and Western Australia, all places where long distance capacity is very expensive, I've seen pricing differentiation between local and long distance Internet use. In Nepal and Western Australia, it's been flat rate billing for local use, and per bit billing for long distance, while in New Zealand there's at least talk of providing New Zealand only connectivity. In the US that sounds horrendously complicated, but where the wholesale monthly cost of international bandwidth is $5,000 per Mb/s and the monthly cost of handing traffic off to other local ISPs at the local exchange point is around $50 per Mb/s (Kathmandu), it makes a lot of sense. So, I don't know if VOIP use will measurably change the costs of broadband providers in the US. If it's only a few users, I suspect it won't. If it's a lot of users, and there's big market demand for it, I suspect the ISPs that survive will find a working billing model. -Steve
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
the seven biggest isps in japan recently cooperated on a really good paper measuring a lot about broadband use in japan. it is in the most recent ccr, v35n1 jan 05. sorry, siteseer seems not to have it yet. http://www.iepg.org/march2005/kjc-iepg200503.pdf has some data, jaap
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: regular basis, I imagine regulation will happen, especially if ISPs keep trying to inhibit consumer choices. There's a fine line between inhibiting consumer choices and ensuring that you don't end up spending more money than you're collecting for the services you provide. -- JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED The wisdom of a fool won't set you free --New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Steve Sobol wrote: Bill Nash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: regular basis, I imagine regulation will happen, especially if ISPs keep trying to inhibit consumer choices. There's a fine line between inhibiting consumer choices and ensuring that you don't end up spending more money than you're collecting for the services you provide. I'm not discounting that. It just doesn't seem to me that actual VOIP usage is significant enough, in existing billing models, to warrant the behaviour we're seeing. I'd be interested in seeing the figures surrounding this, if anyone has them. - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Tiered service is fine, but, charge per octet transferred will not work for me until I can have control over which octets are transferred. As long as I can't block spammers and abusers from adding to my bill without blocking services I want (email, web usage, the ability to host some small websites, etc.), and as long as search engines and such can generate traffic on my network without me having any recourse to bill them for it to recoup my costs, I think metered service is not a great idea, at least at the small-pipe (10mbps) end of the scale. Owen --On Thursday, March 31, 2005 10:25 AM -0500 Greg Boehnlein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Brad Knowles wrote: [Deleted] What I really think we need here are some truth-in-advertising laws which are applied to oversubscription rates. That'd solve the problem really quick. How about we regulat the Internet like the Electric Utility and charge per byte transferred? :) That would shut down Peer To Peer traffic rather quickly, and it would ensure that everyone pays a fair amount for what they use. I'm only half serious here.. However, I do agree that truth in advertising is a good thing. On a different tact, where I -THINK- the market will eventually end up is w/ different classes of BroadBand service, whereby QOS and priority will be given to those that wish to pay for it. The $14.95 services will be a best-effort, and the $59.95 services will have priority. -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST -- If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me. pgpV1U386YBDb.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Heard of a little thing called a 'rhetorical question'? Who decides that it is okay for ISPs to block SMTP and not okay for them to block VoIP? If it is okay to block SMTP because people do bad [snip] Well... Here's how I define things: 1. Blocking ports is bad. 2. Certain chronic abuses are worse. 3. When something is blocked because of chronic abuse, the following conditions should be met: + Any customer should have the option of having said block removed from their traffic upon request. + All customers should be informed of the block either at the time it is instituted or as an addendum to the contract for service when they sign up. + The block should be the least intrusive most selective block possible to reduce the abuse to a tolerable level (i.e. a level at which it is not preventing legitimate use of the network). + The block should be regarded as a temporary solution until a better way to resolve the abuse can be found. + The block should be removed at the earlist opportunity once the previous item has been accomplished. In this case, I can see reasons for blocking client--relay and/or relay--relay SMTP access as default under current circumstances. I can't see any such reason for SMTP. If you're running a network for $40/mo flat rate subscribers, then, I believe your cost model may require you to block certain broadband isochronous services (internet radio, voip, etc.) or at least QOS them to the point where they lose if others want the bandwidth in order to provide reasonable service to all of your customers without your costs exceeding your revenue. Customers who want these isochronous services have the option of paying more for the bandwidth they need, or, they can go to a provider that provisions for this (and will likely cost more). I don't see a case for blocking VOIP from competitors if you are selling VOIP. I see that as likely an antitrust issue. I don't see a case for blocking NNTP currently. Anticompetitive blocking is bad. Anti-abuse blocking is bad, but, not as bad as allowing the abuse to prevent the normal function of the network. Blocking of isochronous high-bandwidth services to support higher levels of oversubscription for lower-priced service is not unreasonable. Owen -- If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me. pgpB3kOHqWNLM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive VoIP services: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreadingdoc_id=71020 Hmm.. I was quoted in it. -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Adrian Chadd wrote: On Wed, Mar 30, 2005, Greg Boehnlein wrote: That is fairly entertaining. Perhaps you could provide the financial breakdown for ANY DSL business model that doesn't rely on over-subscription? Q. How many, full-on 6 Meg DSL subscribers can you put on a 45 meg ATM connection without oversubscription? ;) A. Depends on how many local services they're using. :) Hehehe... full-on means full capacity. Could be one service, but 6 megs is 6 megs! ;) -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005, Greg Boehnlein wrote: Q. How many, full-on 6 Meg DSL subscribers can you put on a 45 meg ATM connection without oversubscription? ;) A. Depends on how many local services they're using. :) Hehehe... full-on means full capacity. Could be one service, but 6 megs is 6 megs! ;) Ah, if you were referring to a 45meg ATM connection to the DSL cloud, sure, I get it. But heck, even Australian ISPs have bigger ATM connections to Telstra for onselling ADSL. Adrian -- Adrian ChaddTo believe with certainty we must first [EMAIL PROTECTED] begin by doubting.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005, Greg Boehnlein wrote: That is fairly entertaining. Perhaps you could provide the financial breakdown for ANY DSL business model that doesn't rely on over-subscription? Q. How many, full-on 6 Meg DSL subscribers can you put on a 45 meg ATM connection without oversubscription? ;) A. Depends on how many local services they're using. :) adrian -- Adrian ChaddTo believe with certainty we must first [EMAIL PROTECTED] begin by doubting.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:36:19 -0600, Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? Jamie -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Jamie Norwood wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:36:19 -0600, Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? SMTP and NNTP are an apples / oranges comparison. Email is well nigh ubiquitous, when people think about the Internet. NNTP, like IRC, is a niche subset compared to HTTP, SMTP, and IM. The long and short, is that popular services will remain largely unregulated, by ISPs or by government, until it's clear that they're being abused. Many ISPs did this with NNTP before they did it with SMTP, largely with the advent of higher speed connections facilitating shorter turnaround on warez traffic. Once spam took off, same deal. If ISPs can't play nice with third party service providers, I predict things will get ugly. Regulators are already sniffing around, both locally and internationally. VOIP is quickly becoming a hot item, and anti-competitive tactics that limit or remove the consumers choices are going to be blood in the water for politicos looking for something to gnaw on. Obviously VOIP needs QoS to function well on oversold, commodity broadband networks. Why not just paint VOIP with a broad QoS brush (as in, prioritize all of it, not just your own service) and defang the folks just looking for an excuse to step in and take the option away from you? - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
--On Wednesday, March 30, 2005 21:36 -0600 Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? Because by and large ISPs would rather not block SMTP, but, they basically have to to try and prevent massive DDOS. NNTP is not so widely abused as SMTP. Also, I would not patronize an ISP where the SMTP block was not optional, and, I encourage any of my consulting customers who encounter this and are unable to get their ISP to remove the block for them to find another ISP. Owen -- If this message was not signed with gpg key 0FE2AA3D, it's probably a forgery. pgp3YozVCC4GV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:36:19 -0600, Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Change that to SMTP and you'll get a bunch of yes answers. Why is one right and the other wrong? Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving? Jamie -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving? No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo, retrictions were placed on it. As was mentioned, my point was just that the question posited was flawed. SMTP isn't restricted for competition and money-making reasons, but because to not restrict it can have quite undesired implications. The question was why was one ok, and the other not. The answer is because of spam. Jamie
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Jamie Norwood wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Heard of a little thing called 'spam'? So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving? No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo, retrictions were placed on it. As was mentioned, my point was just that the question posited was flawed. SMTP isn't restricted for competition and money-making reasons, but because to not restrict it can have quite undesired implications. The question was why was one ok, and the other not. The answer is because of spam. Ah NANOG, where people ask rhetorical questions and get answers... It seems a bit simplistic (and misses the point of the original rhetorical question) to say that it's common to block the SMTP port because of spam. Having been involved in weighing that business decision a few times, it's tended to be more a matter of balancing the direct and indirect effects of being a spam source on an ISP's operations (lots of staff time dealing with spam complaints, bad reputations, ending up on blackhole lists) with the effects of turning off a service some customers find useful. In general, the people who will be upset by an ISP not blocking outbound spam are not the ISP's customers, while those upset about the ISP blocking legitimate outbound SMTP are. But ISPs sometimes decide they can't afford to make the customers who want outbound SMTP happy. That's why the rhetorical question asked earlier made some sense. ISPs aren't going to be blocking VOIP because of spam, at least not until they start getting bombarded with complaints about their customers using VOIP services for automated telemarketing. But they may block it because they think the benefits of blocking it (reducing traffic, keeping VOIP business to themselves) outweigh the costs of customers getting annoyed. If it's ok to block SMTP for that reason, why not VOIP, or why not the web? I'll note again that these are rhetorical questions. They don't need to be answered. Personally, if the colo provider who hosts my mail server were to block outbound SMTP, the service would become pretty useless to me and I'd have to take my (non-paying) business elsewhere. If my GPRS provider were to block it, I probably wouldn't notice. Likewise, if the colo provider blocked VOIP, I probably wouldn't notice, but if my DSL provider did, it would be a problem. An ISP who blocks VOIP is going to have some customers get upset, just like an ISP that blocks outbound SMTP. They may even lose some business. But will they lose enough business to offset whatever gain they think they're getting? I think I can guess the answer, but actual numbers from those who've tried it would be far more interesting than the speculation we've been seeing here. -Steve
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On 3/30/2005 11:27 AM, Greg Boehnlein wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive VoIP services: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreadingdoc_id=71020 Hmm.. I was quoted in it. Oh good, maybe you can clarify some things: | As much as I want to see VOIP survive and thrive, I also don't want | to bear the additional cost of my customers choosing to use a | competitor's VOIP service over my own, says Greg Boehnlein, who | operates Cleveland, Ohio-based ISP N2Net. | | Without control of the last mile, we're screwed, Boehnlein says, | which is why I can identify with Clearwire's decision and say | more power to them. Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? And if some other service used higher cumulative bandwidth than VoIP (say, Apple's music service) and didn't ~reimburse you for the use of your network, would|do you block that service too? For that matter, do you block the various P2P systems that don't make money but that generate massive traffic? What don't you plan on blocking exactly? -- Eric A. Hallhttp://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Eric A. Hall wrote: | to bear the additional cost of my customers choosing to use a | competitor's VOIP service over my own, says Greg Boehnlein, who | operates Cleveland, Ohio-based ISP N2Net. | | Without control of the last mile, we're screwed, Boehnlein says, | which is why I can identify with Clearwire's decision and say | more power to them. Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? And if some other service used higher cumulative bandwidth than VoIP (say, Apple's music service) and didn't ~reimburse you for the use of your network, would|do you block that service too? For that matter, do you block the various P2P systems that don't make money but that generate massive traffic? I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Why exactly are networks taking this stance to QoS VOIP traffic, generated by their customers, into uselessness? This will all be especially hysterical when it's done by an ISP that comprises 100% of it's local market's internet connectivity. Munn vs. Illinois, round 2! - billn
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Eric A. Hall wrote: On 3/30/2005 11:27 AM, Greg Boehnlein wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive VoIP services: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreadingdoc_id=71020 Hmm.. I was quoted in it. Oh good, maybe you can clarify some things: | As much as I want to see VOIP survive and thrive, I also don't want | to bear the additional cost of my customers choosing to use a | competitor's VOIP service over my own, says Greg Boehnlein, who | operates Cleveland, Ohio-based ISP N2Net. | | Without control of the last mile, we're screwed, Boehnlein says, | which is why I can identify with Clearwire's decision and say | more power to them. Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? Where the RBOC has us by the balls (ATM DSL Transport as an Example, where they refuse to provide Multi-Lata ATM interconnects and require us to put ATM circuits in each LATA that we want to service) we apply, at our discretion, rate-limits and IP Access lists to preserve and tightly control those resources. We attempt to balance the experience and utilzation for ALL the customers on those circuits against the one or two users who are beating the crap out of the interconnect w/ Peer to Peer or Usenet traffic. So yes, in some cases, we'll apply NNTP and other traffic shaping policies as neccessary to ensure that we are able to maintain low latency and a more equal sharing of bandwidth on those links. This really only applies to residential DSL subscribers. On DS1, Ethernet and DS3 circuits, we don't do anything. Those are treated as a different class of service, with a Service Level Agreement, and as such are only shaped at the customer's request. And if some other service used higher cumulative bandwidth than VoIP (say, Apple's music service) and didn't ~reimburse you for the use of your network, would|do you block that service too? For that matter, do you block the various P2P systems that don't make money but that generate massive traffic? What don't you plan on blocking exactly? The press always bends quotes to fit their story, and are easily taken out of context. You only have the benefit of seeing the quotes they chose to publish, and not the entire context of the discussion. ;) So, to clarify my position I don't block anything on my network for customers that are under a Service Level Agreement. In fact, we actually apply higher preference to VoIP traffic. However, it is MY network and I'll do whatever I please with it. If customers have an issue, they are free to contact me about it. However, If the FCC is able to dictate the types of traffic and the filtering policies of ISPs, this could have much broader, far-reaching impact on what we CAN do with our networks. Take the following ridiculous example; Assume that some SPAMMER is able to get the FCC to pass regulation that makes it illegal to block SMTP traffic, use RBLs etc. How well do you think that would go over? I'm all for network service providers having the ability to control what enters and exits their network. I'm against the Government stepping in and dictating what we can/cannot do with our networks. I'm an avid and active Asterisk developer. I want to see VoIP flourish and grow. However, anyone who has gotten into the ITSP business (Read Vonage et all) and has based their business plan on delivering service over a network they don't control has to have their head examined. VoIP makes a lot of sense, but over the public Internet? Pretty bad business judgement in my opinion. If you can't QOS both sides of the connection and control the packets between the PSTN and the End User, then you WILL have outages and problems that are beyond your control. That may be good enough for most people, but not for me. I wouldn't trust my family's life to a VoIP service when that 911 call has to transit the public Internet. -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Bill Nash wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Eric A. Hall wrote: | to bear the additional cost of my customers choosing to use a | competitor's VOIP service over my own, says Greg Boehnlein, who | operates Cleveland, Ohio-based ISP N2Net. | | Without control of the last mile, we're screwed, Boehnlein says, | which is why I can identify with Clearwire's decision and say | more power to them. Do you also block NNTP so that customers have to use your servers? And if some other service used higher cumulative bandwidth than VoIP (say, Apple's music service) and didn't ~reimburse you for the use of your network, would|do you block that service too? For that matter, do you block the various P2P systems that don't make money but that generate massive traffic? I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. Why exactly are networks taking this stance to QoS VOIP traffic, generated by their customers, into uselessness? Well, there is a whole other side to the arguement, which is why is your local ISP even providing you the DSL service when they don't own the last mile copper and pay 98% of the revenue that you pay them to an RBOC? :) Believe me, I ask myself this question every day: Why did I agree to provide DSL services through SBC and Alltel knowing how anticompetitive they are?. And the only anwer that I can come up with is: You are an idiot. ;) This gets at a bigger issue really, which is why anyone in their right mind is actually re-selling RBOC DSL products, but that isn't your concern. ;) As an ISP, I'd love to charge you (the consumer) on a per-packet or per-byte level for your DSL so that it would actually reflect the true cost of the service. Then, I'd like to charge you for all the technical support and billing overhead involved. At the same time, I'd like to see the RBOC's relegated to nothing more than wire-carriers and get them completely out of the Telecommunications industry. Let them run the COs and the Copper/Fiber networks, but truly deregulate the Telecom industry so that everyone is on a level playing field. Fat chance of that happening, though! ;) This will all be especially hysterical when it's done by an ISP that comprises 100% of it's local market's internet connectivity. Munn vs. Illinois, round 2! Why are RBOC's even providing Internet Transport to their customers in the first place? :) -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Brad Knowles wrote: At 5:06 PM -0800 2005-03-30, Bill Nash wrote: I find this to be entertaining, since as a VOIP consumer, I'm reimbursing my ISP for the cost of the traffic as part of my monthly tithe. No, that's not true. Not if your ISP has oversold their upstream bandwidth, and a lot of people start using VOIP. In that case, your ISP is dependant on keeping you fat, dumb, happy, barefoot, and pregnant in the kitchen, taking whatever semidigested pabulum they choose to feed you, and if you start getting uppity by actually thinking for yourself and using something like VOIP, then they're going to have to bitch-slap you back into your rightful place under their thumb. That is fairly entertaining. Perhaps you could provide the financial breakdown for ANY DSL business model that doesn't rely on over-subscription? Q. How many, full-on 6 Meg DSL subscribers can you put on a 45 meg ATM connection without oversubscription? ;) -- Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place! KP-216-121-ST
