Vonage Hits ISP Resistance

Greg Boehnlein damin at nacs.net
Thu Mar 31 01:28:43 UTC 2005


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=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.

-- 
    Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company
         http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place!
                             KP-216-121-ST






More information about the NANOG mailing list