At 09:46 AM 3/2/2005, you wrote:
advancedIPpipeline is running another article this morning in their series of articles covering the Vonage service disruptions that [allegedly] invlove an ISP "port blocking" SIP connectitity between Vonage's client equipment and Vonage's servers. While there is a bit more decriptive detail in this article involving the nature of the service interruptions, Vonage's CEO, Jeffrey Citron, is trying to make a [in my opinion] weak argument that this type of traffic blocking is akin to censorship.
Actually, anticompetitive, and restraint-of-trade come in as better arguments. They go along with blocking port 587/110, keeping users from getting at legitimate, well-run remote mail servers. The end user paid for packet service, and the Internet generally permits any protocol to be run. ISPs legitimately block traffic at various protocol levels to deal with security and abuse matters. That's unlikely with VOIP. Blocking for dealing with security issues is one matter. Blocking to purposely harm competition is another, and will indeed open a can of worms if it persists.