Cobol - Re: Skype and the world Skypes with you...

Author

Re: Skype and the world Skypes with you...

Oliver Wong

2006-07-18, 6:55 pm

"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:4i16r7F1l9slU1@individual.net...
>
> 3. There are rumours that some ISPs who are also telecomm providers, are
> so worried by this that they are deliberately giving VOIP packets a lower
> priority on their networks, in the hope of degrading the service to the
> point where people won't want to use it.

The rumours are true: it's the meat of the discussion on "Net
Neutrality" in the states. There's an infamous speech on Net Neutrality
which can be viewed (in video form) at
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SIn_J_jxf-o in which Senator Stevens speaks
against NN (supporting a tiered Internet where some packets have higher
priority than others). He gets some of the terminology wrong which leads to
hilarity, and his speech got satirized, which is why almost everybody in
North America is now aware of the issue.

- Oliver

Pete Dashwood

2006-07-18, 6:55 pm

"Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com> wrote in message
news:_T9vg.52937$B91.19374@edtnps82...
>
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:4i16r7F1l9slU1@individual.net...
>
> The rumours are true: it's the meat of the discussion on "Net
> Neutrality" in the states. There's an infamous speech on Net Neutrality
> which can be viewed (in video form) at
> http://youtube.com/watch?v=SIn_J_jxf-o in which Senator Stevens speaks
> against NN (supporting a tiered Internet where some packets have higher
> priority than others). He gets some of the terminology wrong which leads
> to hilarity, and his speech got satirized, which is why almost everybody
> in North America is now aware of the issue.
>
> - Oliver

Like I said, if this is actually occurring, I haven't seen it affect any of
the conversations I've had so far. The quality is superb.

It is good that the issue has been raised to public awareness (at least in
North America...).

Pete.

Oliver Wong

2006-07-26, 6:55 pm

"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:4i50guF27h0hU1@individual.net...
>
> "Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com> wrote in message
> news:_T9vg.52937$B91.19374@edtnps82...
>
> Like I said, if this is actually occurring, I haven't seen it affect any
> of the conversations I've had so far. The quality is superb.

Saw this article the other day:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060725-7348.html
<firstTwoParagraphs>
Has VoIP quality been getting worse? Yes. That's the conclusion arrived at
by Brix Networks, and it has real implications for the current debate over
network neutrality.

Brix runs a web site called TestYourVoIP.com. As the name suggests, it lets
people test the quality of their VoIP connection by placing a simulated call
from the user's computer to one of several verifiers located around the
world. Brix then lets customers know how well their connection works (they
also offer a Google gadget that can display a "weather map" of current
worldwide VoIP conditions). The company has archived all the data generated
by these tests (nearly a million of them in the last two years) and
yesterday released a report based on those numbers.
</firstTwoParagraphs>

Perhaps the issue is mainly in the states?

- Oliver

Michael Wojcik

2006-07-27, 9:55 pm

In article <12Rxg.133605$A8.18923@clgrps12>, "Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com> writes:
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:4i50guF27h0hU1@individual.net...

The meat of the NetNeut "discussion" is technical ignorance. This
has been nicely documented by the _Register_, including particularly
the insightful analyses by Richard Bennett - who has far better
credentials than most of the vocal NetNeut proponents. See for
example:

- Bennett's excellent technical analysis, at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/0...eut_slow_death/

- Andrew Orlowski's political analysis, which quotes Bennett's nice
summation of the motivations of NetNeut proponents, at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/0...vism_is_a_game/

In short, most of the NetNeuts don't know what they're talking about,
either technically or historically. (This is particularly true of
the Blogger Horde.) There are some who do, most notably Vint Cerf,
but frankly Cerf has been rather unreliable since his ascension to
the heavens, aka the ICANN chair; and now he's at Google (motto:
"Fooling some of the people all of the time is damn profitable!"),
which has rather an enormous vested interest in NetNeut.

It is perhaps ironic - and perhaps not so ironic - that when Cerf was
a lobbyist for MCI, he was one of the biggest proponents of VoIP. Bet
he liked QoS then.

(And I'd be curious to know what evidence substantiates the rumors
that "some ISPs" are deliberately downgrading VoIP packet QoS.)
[color=darkred]
> Saw this article the other day:
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060725-7348.html
> <firstTwoParagraphs>
> Has VoIP quality been getting worse? Yes. That's the conclusion arrived at
> by Brix Networks, and it has real implications for the current debate over
> network neutrality.

It's a decent article, though it's far less informative than what
the _Register_ has been running. I don't generally read _Ars
Technica_ - maybe they do better than El Reg on other matters.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@microfocus.com

You have Sun saying, "Who needs Linux? We have Solaris." You have
Microsoft saying, "Who needs Linux? We have Windows 2000." Then you
have IBM saying, "I think we all need Linux." Only the greatest
sinners know how to really repent. -- John Patrick, IBM VP

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