[78481] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: US slaps fine on company blocking VoIP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Nash)
Fri Mar 4 17:38:41 2005
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 14:39:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Bill Nash <billn@billn.net>
To: Nathan Allen Stratton <nathan@robotics.net>
Cc: trainier@kalsec.com, nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0503041711160.16675@barney.robotics.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Nathan Allen Stratton wrote:
>> The fact is, the company was preventing it's users from using technology
>> offered by said company's competitors.
>
> No, they are just preventing companies that are using port X, most
> providers have figured out how to make VoIP work on any port.
It's a portable scenario, and it doesn't matter which port you block.
Flip it around:
HTTP can transit on any port. Block port 80 and see how long you last.
Here's another take on it. Don't think of this in terms of tracing packet
routes. Trace the path of SLAs, AUPs, and peering agreements between
Vonage and those blocked customers.
Madison River buys transit from someone. At some point, their contractual
obligations for that peering arrangement are passing on elements of other
peering agreements, which in turn pass on still more. This is the
essential layer of cooperation and good faith that make the internet
work.
On the other end, Vonage, or any Voip provider, for that matter, has
purchased peering and transit with the reasonable expectation that they
can pass end-to-end traffic, unfiltered. It would not be entirely
unreasonable to see a peering agreement terminated for this behavior. I am
not a lawyer, and I am not privy to the details of the peering agreements
for the networks between Vonage and their end customers, but it's their
faith in the basic nature of peering agreements that make their entire
business model viable.
- billn
