[71635] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: [Fwd: [IP] Feds: VoIP a potential haven for terrorists]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Sat Jun 19 21:26:29 2004
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>
To: "Niels Bakker" <niels=nanog@bakker.net>
Cc: "North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 20:03:50 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Thus spake "Niels Bakker" <niels=nanog@bakker.net>
> * jeffshultz@wvi.com (Jeff Shultz) [Fri 18 Jun 2004, 21:42 CEST]:
> > Pay for it? If I remember from CALEA, the providers pay for it
> > (and eventually their customers), and as for "broadband Internet
> > providers"... I'm guessing anyone who offers end user customers
> > a circuit bigger than 53.333k.
>
> Pet peeve: broadband isn't a synonym for "faster than a modem."
> Cable and DSL are broadband due to those technologies using a wide range
> of frequencies. Ethernet is not broadband (but baseband).
Congress can define a word (in the US legal context) to mean anything they
want; whether such has any relation to its technical definition is
irrelevant. I doubt they care about the technology used to deliver IP
service, only the capabilities and typical users; defining "broadband" as
any circuit 56kbps or above would likely suffice for their intent,
regardless of how incorrect it is.
However, I fail to see how "broadband" or link speeds in general even matter
in this context; what matters is whether the link is of sufficient speed for
VoIP to be feasible, in which case anything from 9.6kbps cellular to WiFi,
from ARCnet to OC192/10GE might qualify -- or might not, if IP isn't running
over it.
S
Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
