[78376] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel Senie)
Wed Mar 2 13:27:03 2005
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 13:20:27 -0500
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com>
In-Reply-To: <20050302.064707.7498.27041@webmail06.lax.untd.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
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.
