Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive
VoIP services:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=71020
- ferg
Hmm.. I was quoted in it.
Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive
VoIP services:http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_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?
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
>
>>Intersting article on ISP issues regarding competitive
>>VoIP services:
>>
>>http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_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.
> > 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?
Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall <ehall@ehsco.com> 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?
Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall <ehall@ehsco.com> 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
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
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
>
> Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall <ehall@ehsco.com> 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?
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
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
In article <a2937c33050330225673348cdf@mail.gmail.com> you write:
> 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.
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
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.
Once upon a time, Jamie Norwood <jamie.norwood@gmail.com> said:
> Once upon a time, Eric A. Hall <ehall@ehsco.com> 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?
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 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.
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