US slaps fine on company blocking VoIP

Fri Mar 4 22:39:27 UTC 2005

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Nathan Allen Stratton wrote:

>> The fact is, the company was preventing it's users from using technology
>> offered by said company's competitors.
>
> No, they are just preventing companies that are using port X, most
> providers have figured out how to make VoIP work on any port.

It's a portable scenario, and it doesn't matter which port you block.

Flip it around:
HTTP can transit on any port. Block port 80 and see how long you last.

Here's another take on it. Don't think of this in terms of tracing packet 
routes. Trace the path of SLAs, AUPs, and peering agreements between 
Vonage and those blocked customers.

Madison River buys transit from someone. At some point, their contractual 
obligations for that peering arrangement are passing on elements of other 
peering agreements, which in turn pass on still more. This is the 
essential layer of cooperation and good faith that make the internet 
work.

On the other end, Vonage, or any Voip provider, for that matter, has 
purchased peering and transit with the reasonable expectation that they 
can pass end-to-end traffic, unfiltered. It would not be entirely 
unreasonable to see a peering agreement terminated for this behavior. I am 
not a lawyer, and I am not privy to the details of the peering agreements 
for the networks between Vonage and their end customers, but it's their 
faith in the basic nature of peering agreements that make their entire 
business model viable.

- billn