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