Friday, March 04, 2005
Short Vonage!
This week Cringely has really interesting article where he points out that:
"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.
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."
Legal, and scary for the likes of Vonage. There is no legal basis (yet - who knows what Congress might to) for common carriage of packet data traffic. Cringely mentions that the opportunity lies with the hyper-innovators, like this little genius company from Canada: TheSwitchboard. I won't tell you what they do. Check out their site for yourself. I bet you they got 20 reverse pitches from VCs wanting to fund them today.
"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.
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."
Legal, and scary for the likes of Vonage. There is no legal basis (yet - who knows what Congress might to) for common carriage of packet data traffic. Cringely mentions that the opportunity lies with the hyper-innovators, like this little genius company from Canada: TheSwitchboard. I won't tell you what they do. Check out their site for yourself. I bet you they got 20 reverse pitches from VCs wanting to fund them today.
