The Best days of Voice-over-IP Telephone Service May Already Have Passed
By Robert X. Cringely
These are heady days for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone services. From Vonage to Packet8 to Skype and a hundred more besides, several million people around the world are enjoying really cheap phone calls that are carried primarily over the Internet. But that fun may be diminishing soon because the big Internet service providers, which is to say the big telephone and cable TV companies, are about to start taking back that third-party VoIP traffic, leaving Vonage and the others at a distinct disadvantage.
Here's how they plan to cripple the Vonages and Skype's, according to friends of mine who have spent 20+ years in engineering positions at telephone companies, cable companies and internet service providers. As the phone and cable companies begin offering their own VoIP services in real volume, they plan to "tag" their own VoIP packets so that at least within their own networks, their VoIP service will have COS (Class of Service) assignments with their routers, switches, etc. They also plan on implementing distinct Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) for the tagged packets.
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Tagged packets get both less restrictive rules for passage and a private highway lane to drive on.
The net effect is that any packet that isn't tagged will only get "best effort" service, which means whatever is left.
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Your grandmother wouldn't understand [NB="VOIPFreak"]und die RegTP auch nicht[/NB]. Or she might if she's Bulgarian.
