Jeff Pulver makes a good point in a Forbes article
when he says "I believe it's a matter of when, not
if" providers start blocking VoIP traffic from
competitors across their own infrastructure, especially
on the heels of the Brand X SCOTUS ruling.
"If I'm a service provider offering my own voice
over broadband offering, and I've got the ability
to block my competition, why not?"
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/06/28/voip-cable-blocked-cx_de_0628voip.html
- ferg
Harold Willison, my peer and Director of HSI Transport, Design, and Engineering at Adelphia, explains exactly why that would not be a fantastic idea, in the following article:
http://www.ct-magazine.com/archives/ct/0605/0605_internetprotocol.htm
-MH
W. Mark Herrick, Jr.
Director - Data and Network Security - Adelphia Communications
5619 DTC Parkway, Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Its obvious Mr. Pulver doesn't operate a network.
It may be a good policy to generate interest in conferences to hear
speakers talk on panels about the potential horrible things. But
even a trivil amount of research (or Google if you consider that
research) would reveal the answer to his question "Why not?"
When people start to talk about blocking, just say no.
It took our politicians in Sweden approx one month to start trying to extend the child porn filtering some large ISPs agreed to implement, to also include trafficking and prostitution advertising.
you could engage the gov't of panama and the local PTT there (cable &
wireless) about their experiences in attempting to filter voip traffic...
or rather in forcing ISP's there to filter voip for them, to protect the
PTT's revenue stream(s).
-Chris
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Vonage can't give their
packets a high priority over a service providers network; only the
service provider can do that. If anything, the cards are stacked
against Vonage and its peers: they can only realistically compete on
price and customer service. An MSO or RBOC can easily provide superior
service over their own network without having to block anyone.
Now if its MSO/RBOC vs. Vonage, et. al on price, who do you think will
(eventually) win?
aaron.glenn