Hi
i was looking into a model where ISP may charge (SBC is already thiking of charging Vonage :-)), now if an ISP wanted to charge, all they would need is to extract the INVITE, BYE and all the stuff in the middle, to do some billing per VoIP provider sending traffic on there network, is anyone aware of any sniffers which could do this not from a proxy, but from the network level at a ISP end.
Iqbal
Hello
Interesting thought, but I dont see why there would be a need or even a wish to charge once for the Internet access with an agreed Speed or data transfer limit, and then again for the type of traffic unless that specific traffic is treated differently in the ISP network, as wth higher CoS. Why else would they care what kind of traffic you are running on your connection as long it is kept within the agreed speed/data transfer limit? But giving voip traffic different CoS over the providers network as a differentiator to enable voice traffic billing does not seem logical unless all providers on Internet do the same, and map the CoS between the providers at peering points.
I do not see how the VoIP providers would ever accept such an approach from any ISP.
IP traffic is IP Traffic! You pay for the amount of traffic you send and receive. More traffic equals higher revenue for the ISP, no need to charge traffic differently just because the traffic happens to be VoIP and the ISP has its roots in Telecom industry. I believe that the natural development of this would be that most of the ISPs also start to offer the VoIP services. It make a lot more sense to use the ISP as the VoIP provider than any remote provider, since that will increase performance, reliability and make the whole 911 issue and technical troubleshooting a lot easier. I strongly believe that the ISPs at all levels will most likely replace the old PTTs over the next 5-10 years. And in the case of PTTs also being an ISP, lucky them.
I think, Companies like Vonage probably will be outrun by ISPs providing VoIP in the long run, but they will stay behind as alternate providers or as gateways to the old pstn networks.
Regards Roger
-----Original Message----- From: Iqbal iqbal@gigo.co.uk To: "serusers@iptel.org" serusers@iptel.org Cc: "users openser.org" users@openser.org Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:54:35 +0000 Subject: [Serusers] voip charging by ISP's
I think that would get a LOT of pushback and may end up really screwing SBC. If they begin to self-regulate the TYPE of traffic going over their connection, they open themselves to a tremendous number of legal hurdles not the least of which being the fact that they're trying to live as an unregulated service provider.
That being said, they COULD keep track of Vonage traffic in that they can keep track of any traffic going straight to Vonage's servers, but as Vonage doesn't care a) whether or not the traffic passes through SBC's network in order to reach them and b) likely hasn't signed any sort of agreement which would ALLOW them to start charging, then SBC simply can't charge Vonage without a contract no matter what they'd LIKE to do.
Now, they could say that unless Vonage starts paying them fees for additional usage, that they're going to cut off access to Vonage's equipment, but they have to be VERY careful going down that road. If they don't have an equally viable and effective product set up for people, they're shooting themselves in the foot. There's also the negative stigma that advertising could very easily put on the move "SBC is trying to keep you from making cheap phone calls." "If SBC does this, you will still be required to live out your contractual obligations to Vonage (and yes I know they say there are none, but you didn't read the fine print :) )! Switch to XXX Internet provider so this doesn't happen!" Etc, etc.
If SBC has a lot of Vonage users, they might find themselves having a drastic reduction in userbase on such a move. If they DON'T have a lot of Vonage users, Vonage isn't liable to care too much, but the media war that would ensue with the information that SBC doesn't let people get inexpensive phone service might still put a huge damper on SBCs growth.
I'm not sure they've throught that one through very carefully.
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:13:01 +0000, Iqbal wrote
Easy enough dependent on the traffic model for Vonage. I'm not sure how they work their phone traffic. I assume that all traffic goes through a Vonage media server of one sort or another (likely balanced for locality).
In such a case, it's a trivial matter to determine where traffic is going and monitor it. They don't have to know the TYPE as long as they filter out the obvious things... http traffic to a webserver, for instance. If they just target traffic to media servers, it's cake to monitor that through a network.
Very similar to when we charge for bandwidth of a particular client... we monitor the data from their network (doesn't even have to be straight to the port to which they're connected) segment. Just a matter of juggling rules to monitor traffic TO their network segment. If you control the routers that all your customers use, you can very easily monitor the amount of traffic going to particular locations.
N.
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:28:34 +0000, Iqbal wrote
On Wednesday 02 November 2005 14:28, Iqbal wrote:
I think the ISP should not care what it is transporting. The snail mail also does not look into what they are devlivering to charge you differently (except express delivery but thats another story).
As soon as an ISP starts to look into the traffic from the user, the users will invent uncounted ways of fooling the ISP (use non-standard ports; use standard ports for the "wrong" service; use proxies; encrypt the traffic; and finally combine all this). All I can say to the ISP: happy debugging! And in the end I would be interested in how a court would judge about the outcoming bills (who has to prove what?) :-)
Nils
Well, i think the ISP may care if they are also providing similar bussiness. They won't probably be able to charge neither the voip user or voip provider, but they can do some harm. Identifying the rtp streams and sip signalling is not sooo difficult ... then, block a few messages, add delay and jitter to the rtp (or udp in general ...) and you've got a bad service, aparently coming from the voip provider. There is software to detect and do all the above (one was presented in VON this fall) ... There was an article in IEEE Spectrum (sept, october, nov ... can't remember). And all the tricks Nils mentions ... hey, maybe the advanced user, but my mom, no way! And then you need software that supports all those tricks ... that is even further away. In this sense, i think carriers have the winning side ... Regards, Cesc
On 11/2/05, Nils Ohlmeier lists@ohlmeier.org wrote:
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Cesc -
Iqbal -
Nils Ohlmeier -
Roger Lewau -
sip