What is Digg?138 Comments
- t0ny, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Don't you need a phone line to get dsl? Defeating the purpose of voip?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10It realy gets down to this:
You pay your provider a monthly fee for an expected speed connection. Thats that.
They should have NO SAY whatsoever in what you use that speed for, be it VoIP, BT, whatever unless jerks like the RIAA coerce them into stuff.
If they are scared that you'll not use their own VoIP service then they NEED to drop their prices so you will use it instead of skype etc. Not degrade the bandwidth you have paid for to make it infeasible to use skype.
You paid for it, they are obligated (ethically, but perhaps legaly too) to provide you with that bandwidth 'NO MATTER WHAT' you choose to use it for. - carpespasm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9ahh, i see we have a non-american here. in soviet america, you get two choices for broadband internet. your local cable monopoly, or your local phone monopoly. they're both 40 a month for their best consumer grade connections, they're both slower than most other 1st world nations, and they'll both charge you another 10 dollars a month if you don't bundle with their other services.
- henrysmith1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Are you kidding? ISPs have no business screwing with your internet connection. They're starting with this harmless stuff so that nobody can complain. Then, once people are used to it, they start altering other ports as part of the War on Terrorism or some *****.
Other ISPs have already demonstrated their desire to curb bittorrent traffic, for example. With the amount of piracy over bt, they can easily sugarcoat the news for 'Mom and Dad' who are paying for the connection.
Fortunately, it's *just* a greedy profit-based lunge for money, which in the long run is less sinister than other things being sought after by the US govt., for example. And since this kind of filtering will only encourage things like encrypted connections through other ports, that more sinister kind of monitoring will become more difficult as a result.
I'd accuse iamnos and kefs of astroturfing if they hadn't been registered for a while. - freexe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+93MBps isn't that fast (I relise B and not b), well maybe in America, but some places are way ahead of you guys, 100mbits is not uncommon.
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I think the main concern here is that they may "tinker" with their networking bandwidth (and Shaw has already done that for bittorrent, capping users at 5k/sec in some cases), to degrade competitors' VOIP offerings.
I wouldn't put it past them to set competing VOIP data at the lowest priority in their routers, below even normal web traffic, email, gaming and such... - teknotant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I want my Mother F*n fiber to my Mother F*ing house.
I was ecstatic to get 4mbps down (it goes fast enough for web browsing but not torrents) but then I see other countries getting 400mbps for a little more then what I am paying for cable. - Phil246, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@remcgregor
Are you by any chance using one of the latest torrent softwares out there which use encryption to deliberately get past any traffic shaping? :) - andreo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@iamnos
You should read the story again. They are not selling VOIP for $10 they are charging you an *extra* $10 if you are using a VOIP carrier other then them.
To put it in a bit different light... How would you feel if you were paying for cable Internet access and you were told by the cable company we need to charge you 5 bucks extra because your using gmail for you email. Or 5 bucks extra because your using easynews for a newsgroup service instead of ours.
I believe that this type of behavior is considered as anti-competitive. It was considered a bad thing when Microsoft was being sued for it. So it should still be considered a bad thing.
The cable company should not be charging extra for something like this. They are there to provide us with access to the internet. If they want to sell us something to enhance our experience that's fine. But if we decide that we want to go with some other company for a service then so be it. - CandySnatch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yup - IMHO, *that's* what it boils down to. I'm pay my ISP for a pipe. What I choose to throw up and down it is *my* business.
- clickmyface, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm curious about the legal implications here.
One company charging people for using others products? Another purposely degrading line quality for use with other products? If proved, it seems like they could get in trouble for this. - Midnightbrewer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7First of all, they supposedly *are* penalizing you if you don't opt in and try to use a different service instead. Secondly, paying for traffic prioritization is the "two-tiered internet," which is a Bad Thing. You're already paying for your network connection to work right. You shouldn't have to pay more to get the service you're supposed to have in the first place.
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"Buy it or don't."
If this is violating competition regulations, the "but the customers choose how to have it" isn't really a valid excuse. The competitors could then argue that they're charging extra for people to use competing products better, and this is used to supress competition. - Dgen_X, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5wrong...with sbc/at&t yahoo dsl you are REQUIRED to have phone service with sbc/at&t
and luckily I'm about 6-8 miles from the sbc hub...so I get 2.8Mbps/475kbps with the 3Mb/512k package
and it's constant...no "peak hour" slowdowns - MichaelW2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+83MB per second?
Thats blaaazzzinn! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6highly misleading headline, no cable company has ever said they will kill VOIP.
no digg for misleadingheadlines linked to some ***** blog. just say no to blog links. - nogami, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Not necessarily - I use ADSL and have a regular phone for local calls, however I use VOIP (Skype-out to be exact), for all of my long-distance calls.
Also, I occasionally need to make calls to people who I don't particularly want calling me back at home or on my cell, so I can skype-out to them and prevent them from getting my home/cell via callerID - it doesn't show as "blocked", so it doesn't get nailed by people who screen calls. - iamnos, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9I don't understand the complaint. Shaw is offering a service for $10/month. Buy it or don't. They're not restricting your VoIP traffic if you don't opt in. If you do subscribe, they'll make sure your VoIP traffic gets higher priority over your other traffic. Why is this such a bad thing? Sure, you could produce the same effects yourself, but some people aren't interested in do-it-yourself type stuff.
- MetaDude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@t0ny: no
- loker269, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3this is inaccurate! Comcast is working with Vonage to fix the problem....Vonage even says Comcast is not doing it!
- Jason.Tapp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Okay everyone seems to be reading this wrong.
Shaw is not forcing people to pay the 10$ a month, they are offering to add QoS to your connection if you are having problems with using other VoIP services. You do not have to pay it, its an option.
I have a friend in a region where they do not have upgraded equipment yet and he needed the QoS, to use Vonage. Myself on the other hand live in a major sector and use Shaw's Xtreme-I service which is 7Mbps/1Mbps and I have no problem using Vonage and do not have to pay the 10$.
Its just an option you can choose if your connection is bad.
And please remember Shaw's Home Phone is not VoIP, yes it is a IP based system but does not use the Internet, the information travels over a separate channel on the cable infrastructure.
Links
Shaw http://www.shaw.ca
Shaw Xtreme-I http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/ShawHighSpeedXtremeI/
Shaw QoS http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/ServiceEnhancement.htm
Hope that helps. - Radon22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Vonage even says Comcast is not doing it"
Ah, but why let the facts stand in the way of a good story? Just throw in the word "allegation" a few times, and facts don't matter. - gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually I can name one application that I'd really really like to use at home that would benefit enormously from a 45mbit connection: Remote backup. Even though I have 6Mbps cable, my upstream is limited to 1Mbps which is good neither for the initial (huge) backup nor incrementals, even with the thinnest protocols possible (such as rsync). I'd also like it for remote access of files.
Don't assume that everyone wants or needs a fast Internet internet connection because they want to 'surf the web' or download a crap ton of music and movies legally or illegally -- yes the connection I have is fast enough for that (for now). It's also worth noting that a lot of surcharges you pay on all your media bills are supposed to be going to giving you this faster tier service anyway, so you really should be complaining about not getting what youre paying for anyway.
As for the rest of this article, it's fair to say that 99% of users on the end of these VoIP connections (and particularly on cable networks) have a very flawed understanding of how networks are built and/or operate:
There's not as much bandwidth on the wire as you'd like to think with cable networks. You might be sharing spectrum capable of carrying say 40mbps of traffic on your local node with 100 or so people. Add to that that the head end connection to the internet is oversold by 100:1 or more as well and you create an inherent problem for VoIP traffic.
The solution, QoS is a double edged sword. Either you can respect QoS data from users (and allow them to abuse this by tagging all of their packets), you can flag everyone's traffic on certain VoIP ports for QoS and still allow them to abuse it, or you can put very expensive SPI firewall equipment in every cable node to verify that you really only flag real VoIP traffic for QoS, or you can simply charge people a small surcharge to flag their traffic.
DSL circumvents most of the problem by providing the customer with (essentially) unshared bandwidth allt the way to the CO, where there is typically 100mbit or 1gbit ethernet to carry it internally within the ISP. The route to the internet is still very oversold, but it is still a lot easier to manage the traffic centrally in this situation than it is with cable companies having to manage it at each remote node.
Although I think that none of this is particularly fair, I do have to say that at this tier of service, you're simply not paying enough for what you want to ask of your ISP, period. If you want to see what a 'real' 6mbps link costs, call up Qwest or whoever and get a quote for 6mbit on a fractional DS3. Buy that link and plug your Vonage ATA into it. - daemonx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They have 35Mbps d/l and 1Mbps u/l in singapore....
- Tezkah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The reason why people are blaming comcast is because on Vonage's site, they state that people have been having issues using vonage with comcast, please contact your local comcast office".
They call us, we do ping tests, speed tests etc, everything works perfect except for connections to the vonage servers. We're not blocking them.
Also, why would cable companies want to kill VoIP? Wouldn't something that weakens the phone companies make them extremely happy?
also, @ bloodylip, if it is intermittent call them and complain. It'll get things fixed faster than posting on Digg about it. - Jason.Tapp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Shaw's Home Phone is not VoIP, it runs on a separate IP network from Internet traffic. So yes it is a IP based service but the phone calls never reach the Internet.
Just like Shaw's Internet which runs on cable frequencies 14 and 62 I believe, the phone is on another one. - Zephyrspecial, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Generally I believe a 45Mbps connection in Japan is of similar price to a 3-6Mbps connection in the US. What's worse is that US telcos got lots of PUC's to allow them to raise prices based on the promise to build a last-mile fiber network that never appeared.
- Phragm3nt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To the author:
Get your facts straight, the "Canadian Company" doesn't charge 10$. It offers a 10$ premium for reduced packet loss that is completely OPTIONAL. - Kriz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Some random guy submits his techblog, and everyone diggs the crap out of it?
it's spam. - n8r0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am content with my 3MBps connection with AT&T for 26.99/month. It is fast enough for me and I keep a land line just for convenience and local calls. I use DirecTV and the cable company does not get a dime from me. Their services are very overpriced and lack quality. I mean $39.99 for Voip?!? That is how much Time Warner is charging here for Voip, not to mention their high priced broadband offerings. I live in San Antonio, TX and we are the corp HQ for AT&T, so it seems like we are a test be for them and I have never had better service or quality support that I have had with them.
Another reason I appreciate having AT&T and DirecTV over a consolidated Cable package is because yesterday I was at my neighbor's house and there was a cable outage for most of the weekend in our area, and she was complaining that due to the outage she did not have phone, internet, or television service until the outage was resolved, and to top it all off Time Warner told her she would have to make an appointment for them to come out and resolve the issue because they could not classify it as an area wide outage until the received a certain number of calls. How is that for service? If there is a rare occasion where the power might go out, at least I will still have my land line and I can use my dial up option I have with AT&T in conjunction with my laptop if I absolutely need to get online. And I cannot recall the last time there was an outage with my phone line or DSL, as a matter of fact I don't think I have ever experienced one. - R4wBon3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2DSL plays into the hands of the telcos; it may be a quick fix for some, but it's time has passed for being a solution to solving the broadband equation (for many reasons besides physical limitations)
This whole issue of broadband providers (the telcos in the end) forcing what types of packets can go across thier network is complete ***** and it is linked to so many other similar companies realizing that they are old, the other young pups are coming of age and ready to challenge them for the seat at the head of the pack.
Here are some similarities:
- the MP/RIAA ripping off artists/consumers and then crying when they start to get pushed away
- the press/media companies getting pissed off about portals stealing their info
- Localized economies griping about globalization and outsourcing
Back to topic. I pay for packets to come in and out of my home/demarc over some type of medium. (see that, it is a period, there is no comma.) PERIOD.
EVOLVE DAMMIT! If you build something cool don't bitch when people figure out creative ways to use it. We'd still be living in caves if one of us hadn't sharpened a bone and hit someone else on the head with it. - gdog05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd say it's a legit question. I hear it all the time. And in some areas, most in the past this was the case.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7They may advertise 3Mb/s but you AINT gettin it. Your DSL modem IS capable of it, but unless you are right next door to Ma Bell, you aint gettin it!!
- dusoft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2that's 3 megabits per second, not megabytes. see wikipedia for more info.
- bloodylip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've had some sort of Comcast service as long as they've been in northern Delaware. Service (TV & Internet) is intermittent at best. Goes out at least once a month. Back when I had them as a TV service, maybe 8-10 years ago, cable was constantly out.
Then again, no utilities are good in my neighborhood, or the surrounding ones. So it may just be a case of no companies caring for my area. - RichCoder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"We'll kill VoIP"
Is that a quote or something you made-up? Digg headlines are getting more and more out of touch with the story. I figured this was a quote from the story. Nope. - thomashallock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Shaw isn't charging customers to use competing VOIP servicges, it is actually offering a service that helps make other services better. However, can't you do the same thing with no monthly fee by placing one of those VOIP optimizer boxes hooked up between your modem and router?
The author completely mis-represents a packet prioritazation service and suggests that another company might be degrading the quality of VOIP, but can't prove it. It's a possibility, but I don't think the article has merit... yet. No digg. - Jason.Tapp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Synthtik you may want to look at there service agreement.
"Data Transfer Limit 100 GB/month" - dwbell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@remcgregor
I talked to shaw tech support about how they throttle bittorrent traffic before I switched from telus. According to him torrents are only throttled in sections of major urban centers where their network can't support the traffic. I live in a town of 1500 people and was assured my torrent downloads would not be affected nor would I need to worry about the bandwith cap because there were so few users here it's not a concern, after a year of heavy use I can say he's right. - gorkish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well it is actually still the case today, you DO in fact need a regular analog phone pair to obtain DSL service (and you have to cover the requisite loop charge as well). You do not, however, need to have dialtone on the line, and generally you can get better class service by NOT sharing the same loop with voice.
The argument is extremely valid and relevant in my neck of the woods where people have to evaluate their Internet connectivity options by what services are physically possible at their location. People who can't get phone service out in the middle of nowhere should not automatically assume that they can get DSL. Likewise, people who can get Internet service via satellite should not automatically assume that they can get VoIP service to work well if at all. - PerlJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When is America gonna wake up and just DROP these kind of vendors on the spot for this kind of garbage? In most metro areas, there are plenty of options. Companies pull these kinds of jobs because we let them get away with it. Just drop 'em cold. Everyone. If Comcast is doing this, everyone needs to drop Comcast on the spot. People don't do it because they are willing to "live with it" -- they don't want to drop cable TV and go satillite or whatever.
It's the *principle* of things that matter. If they could figure out a way to screw you over for cable TV, don't you think they would be doing that too in addition to the VoIP or [fill in the blank]? When companies do this, they are showing their true colors. Who cares if they are still offering you "good cable TV" service, so you "live with it?" DROP 'EM. If everyone got violently serious about this kind of thing (cell phone service, cable, VoIP, etc.) companies would stop doing it.
-pj - RobotCitizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You're right, quality assurance isn't free. My "quality assurance" is bought and paid for when I pay my monthly broadband bill. It really amazes me that some people think it's OK that the provider of any type of service doesn't need to stand behind the quality of that service anymore. It's sad that this has become OK in America. If a bank said "we may lose some of your money unless you pay us extra" nobody would accept that.
And let's just cut through the BS, shall we? "Quality assurance" is a ridiculous euphamism and everyone here knows it. It simply means "we won't actively sabotage your service", nothing more.
This is a profit scheme plain and simple. They want to sell you their own VoIP service, but no one will buy as long as there are free or 3rd-party alternatives. So their answer is to actively cripple those alternatives if you don't pay or switch to their version.
I hope Vonage and Skype implement end-to-end encryption of some sort. I don't use any VoIP so I don't know if they have or plan to. - Synthetik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Looks like you're right. I remember that it used to be something like 3 down 1 up a month. I don't have Xtreme so I only have 60GB. Still it'd be hard to crack that limit.
Shaw High-Speed Lite - 10 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed - 60 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed (with Xtreme-I) - 100 GigaByte; SOHO - 90 GigaByte; SOHO (with Xtreme-I) - 130; Professional - 110 GigaByte; Professional (with Xtreme-I) - 150 GigaByte; Business - 175 GigaByte; Business (with Xtreme-I) - 225 GigaByte (combined download and upload) - Ambimom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here's the answer: http://theswitchboard.ca/ It works just like Skype but it's web-based. It's an alternative VOIP for those who are held hostage by their cable companies.
- Spud911, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The article is completely incorrect and the author needs to recheck his facts.
I have Shaw and use VoIP services. The charge is completely optional. The Shaw sales reps do push it (they are a business after all) but QoS is completely unnecessary unless you have your bandwidth maxed all the time. All this is, is a tier 2 service that will guarantee you will get the best quality on your VoIP service possible.
I have a good friend who works for Shaw and they call this charge the stupid tax, for people that do not know any better.
BTW I suspect that the rest of the ISP's in our area (Rogers, Telus, etc) are looking at implementing similar measures so I don't think that this charge is going away anytime soon. - Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IF, and that's a big IF, it got bad enough where cable providers were capping down to such an extent that the quality suffered, I would bet that a lot of VPN software solutions would crop up and would deal with that situation post haste.
- kefs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Also.. quick reminder. Do your research before commenting. Here's a headstart..
Shaw's Digital Phone service is technically VOIP, but it's packets never travel on the public internet. Not at all. Once it leaves your home, the packets travel to Shaw's headend via a seperately managed cable network. It leaves the headend via BCE leased telco lines.
Vonage is 100% VOIP. It's packets are sent via the public internet the moment it leaves the drop at your home. Now, you could purchase and install a hardware/software solution at the house, that will manage all of your internet packets (both data and voice). The hardware/software solution would look at your packets, and prioritize voice packets. This solution costs a fraction more than hardware/software with no prioritzation at all.
Or you could ask your broadband service provider to do the same for you. - Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't most of the internet run at 11Mbps so other than direct server to server, p2p apps (FTP, torrent) that's as fast as you're going to get downloads off of webpages?
- FrostyFire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/ServiceEnhancement.htm
It's an OPTIONAL charge, to ensure that your VoIP phones work without degredation. - nnonix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"3Mb..... I'm in Japan and have had 45Mb for 18 months now. :-) Granted, the real speed is down around 10Mb, but still... I'm tempted to upgrade to the Fiber-based VDSL service at 100Mb which will probably give me average 20-25Mb sustained.
USA, eat your hearts out... [reply]"
I would .... until I realized that the average download you get from most sites on the Internet is around 300kbps. Additionally, for the normal user a connection that big is a waste and potentially problematic if the user doesn't take care of their computer.
The bottom line is, if there was a demand for such a connection in the U.S. it would be offered by someone. The reality is that only the pimple faced wanna-be geeks who still get Mbps and MBps mixed up scream for such a connection. -
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