NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP)
Hi: Without belaboring the point, our experience at ITXC was that the necessary QoS for VoIP could be provided from the edge. We didn't need MPLS or the like but we did need to have the kind of influence on routing which an endpoint can have and visibility into how various routes that our traffic took were behaving. We were able to do the 98 and 99 when bandwidth was more constrained and route choices fewer. Obviously we did need to make sure that our own last miles had the capacity we needed and we're sufficiently few hops away from the tier one backbone. By 2003 we were carrying almost five percent of the world's international toll traffic as a middleman between PSTN carriers. Customers on both ends were on ordinary phones and had no idea they were using VoIP for the international portion of their calls. Major carriers would not have bought call termination from us if their customers were going to be disappointed by quality. Today, just by using good codecs and smart jitter control, Skype delivers consistently better quality than the PSTN even over residential grade last mile and middle mile connections. mile Tom Evslin blog: blog.tomevslin.com novel: hackoff.com latest: The Interpreter's Tale -----Original Message----- From: Bob Frankston [mailto:Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com] Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 11:40 PM To: 'Fred Reimer'; nnsquad@nnsquad.org Cc: Tom Evslin Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP) I'm cc'ing Tom Evslin so he can give a direct response about whether VoIP and QoS. You can't rely on QoS if you don't have total control over the entire network. QoS is definitely NOT required for VoIP. An ocean of bits is relative to the traffic is required. -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Fred Reimer Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 19:52 To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP) Hmm. I have to agree with Brett on most of his comments. QoS is definitely part of the IETF RFC's. And QoS is definitely required for VoIP, in any network, for it to work properly. The problem is that there is no common global, or for that matter national, agreement as to how classifications and markings are done. Without that there would be little reason for the various network owners to trust each other. There may be one-off agreements between two ISP's or an ISP and a backbone carrier. However, unless there is a national/global standard then we would never get to the point where end-users can mark their own traffic as they see fit, and have those markings honored throughout the Internet as long as they complied with their agreement with their ISP. I disagree when it comes to the intelligence of the network, and whether network owners should be able to make policy as to what types of content is appropriate just because the routers and other network infrastructure devices have "intelligence." The Internet is an end-to-end network, not a client-server network. Fred Reimer -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+freimer=ctiusa.com@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+freimer=ctiusa.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Brett Glass Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 3:04 PM To: Bob Frankston; nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP) At 12:28 PM 2/29/2008, Bob Frankston wrote: >If you require QoS for VoIP then you have the PSTN not the Internet. Period. QoS was (and is) part of the original design of the Internet. Note the "Type of Service" fields in both IPv4 and IPv6, as well as the "push" bit. (Interestingly, there's no "shove" bit. Don't know why. ;-) ) >VoIP cannot rely on QoS because you don't have enough control over the >network. I do have control over my local network and over my interface to my backbone provider. And when I prioritize VoIP on those, it helps tremendously. >And VoIP does not rely on QoS -- I verified this with Tom Evslin >who supplied much of the backbone for VoIP. VoIP becomes nearly unusable in times of heavy loads without QoS. In fact, it becomes unusable when someone on the same node runs unthrottled BitTorrent. That's why we prioritize and do P2P mitigation. >Let's not base policies on misconceptions. I agree. Hopefully the above will clear up some of those misconceptions. >Yes you can build your own >intelligent network but let's not confuse it with the Internet. The Internet was never meant to be unintelligent. By design, it relies upon routers which have tremendous computing power and very large amounts of memory. (And it must. It can't scale or have redundancy without these things.) What's more, every end node is ITSELF a router and devotes intelligence to that. It is unreasonable to attempt to exile technology, innovation, or intelligence from any part of the Internet. >If VoIP fails it fails. You may be able to say that, but we can't. We lose the customer if he or she can't do VoIP. >And if you require real time HD streaming that may fail to. So what? I believe that it was you who, in a previous message, were voicing discontent with the performance of HD streaming on your FiOS connection. We can't support HD streaming on the typical residential connection, but we DO want to support it if the customer is buying sufficient bandwidth. If we don't, again, we're out of business. Or someone goes to the FCC and complains that we're not supporting that medium and must be regulated.... --Brett Glass