RE: More on Vonage service disruptions...
Subject: Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...
Yeah, I forgot about the regulation thing. I suppose I'd give the ISP a call first, but I'd expect it to be working within a few hours. But now that cable modem providers themselves are providing VoIP/dialtone, wouldn't those be regulated by the FCC?
A few quick observations here (my own, personal opinion): To paraphrase an earlier comment " a 90K stream is not an issue" but what about 10,000's of them? In the circuit switched arena, the LEC's compensate each other for either originating (toll free) or terminating traffic (LD) in a regulated environment. Thus there is some business reason to build the network out to handle the level traffic. That is not the case here (with VoIP), as most ISP's are paying for transport, peering connections, backhaul circuits, internal network bandwidth, etc. The IP Phone providers may be paying THEIR ISP, but the $$'s don't nescessarily flow down to the ISP that the customer is connected to. That end user's ISP must now pay more for transit, plus beef up their internal network infrastructure to handle the additional traffic. That would result in having to raise rates, perhaps making the previously viable, dirt cheap, VoIP look like not so competitive a choice (vs. traditional dialtone) to the end user anymore. A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit switched voice traffic suddenly became ip?
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A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit switched voice traffic suddenly became ip?
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owner-nanog@merit.edu wrote:
Subject: Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...
Yeah, I forgot about the regulation thing. I suppose I'd give the ISP a call first, but I'd expect it to be working within a few hours. But now that cable modem providers themselves are providing VoIP/dialtone, wouldn't those be regulated by the FCC?
A few quick observations here (my own, personal opinion): To paraphrase an earlier comment " a 90K stream is not an issue" but what about 10,000's of them? In the circuit switched arena, the LEC's compensate each other for either originating (toll free) or terminating traffic (LD) in a regulated environment. Thus there is some business reason to build the network out to handle the level traffic. That is not the case here (with VoIP), as most ISP's are paying for transport, peering connections, backhaul circuits, internal network bandwidth, etc. The IP Phone providers may be paying THEIR ISP, but the $$'s don't nescessarily flow down to the ISP that the customer is connected to. That end user's ISP must now pay more for transit, plus beef up their internal network infrastructure to handle the additional traffic. That would result in having to raise rates, perhaps making the previously viable, dirt cheap, VoIP look like not so competitive a choice (vs. traditional dialtone) to the end user anymore. A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit switched voice traffic suddenly became ip?
I think you answered your own question. ISP's would have to raise rates, and voip may suddenly be not as attractive a choice for phone service. It seems to me that market forces will handle this "problem" rather nicely on their own. Right now VoIP providers and users are getting a bit of a free lunch. It's certain not to last. Andrew
At 01:24 PM 3/2/2005, you wrote:
Subject: Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...
Yeah, I forgot about the regulation thing. I suppose I'd give the ISP a call first, but I'd expect it to be working within a few hours. But now that cable modem providers themselves are providing VoIP/dialtone, wouldn't those be regulated by the FCC?
A few quick observations here (my own, personal opinion): To paraphrase an earlier comment " a 90K stream is not an issue" but what about 10,000's of them?
Did you (the ISP) sell customers a service saying they'd get 384Kbps upstream, 2Mbps downstream, or some such? And now you say that you can't handle that traffic load? False advertising?
In the circuit switched arena, the LEC's compensate each other for either originating (toll free) or terminating traffic (LD) in a regulated environment. Thus there is some business reason to build the network out to handle the level traffic. That is not the case here (with VoIP), as most ISP's are paying for transport, peering connections, backhaul circuits, internal network bandwidth, etc. The IP Phone providers may be paying THEIR ISP, but the $$'s don't nescessarily flow down to the ISP that the customer is connected to.
ISPs charge for a service of pushing packets around, and make commitments about the amount of that traffic. That it's digitized voice in those packets isn't really the ISP's business. If you can't meet your commitments to your customers for bandwidth, you need to buy more. Of course you oversell your bandwidth, but that's NOT your customer's problem, it's yours.
That end user's ISP must now pay more for transit, plus beef up their internal network infrastructure to handle the additional traffic. That would result in having to raise rates, perhaps making the previously viable, dirt cheap, VoIP look like not so competitive a choice (vs. traditional dialtone) to the end user anymore.
If the user is instead playing an interactive game with a friend in another city, do you wish to block that too? How about a PC-to-PC video chat? How about remote corporate offices using VPNs to push lots of traffic around? What are you selling your customers? If your rates don't cover your costs, then your business model is broken. You made a commitment to customers for an amount of bandwidth, and now the customers are actually starting to use it. The problem is one for your board room. If you built your network assuming the only traffic would be Email (to your own servers) and Web (which you cache on your own servers) then you are in for trouble. The Internet is not email and web. That many users are only recently learning that is not their problem.
A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit switched voice traffic suddenly became ip?
You raise good points, but I'd encourage you to decouple them from VOIP, as most any application could cause the same.
* kwallace@pcconnection.com [Wed 02 Mar 2005, 19:24 CET]:
A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit switched voice traffic suddenly became ip?
Jack all, as I expect the amount of Internet traffic to be quite a bit larger than voice. Especially for residential users. -- Niels. -- The idle mind is the devil's playground
participants (5)
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andrew2＠one.net -
Daniel Senie -
Jeff Rosowski -
kwallace＠pcconnection.com -
Niels Bakker