Vonage Files Regulatory Complaint Over QoS Premium 160
xoip writes "A Recent CBC report says that Vonage Canada has filed a complaint with Federal Regulators over a New $10.00 per month Quality of Service Premium that Broadband Internet provider, Shaw Cable has begun charging customers of VoIP.
Noted Internet Legal expert Michael Geist has written an excellent review of the complaint Vonage made to the CRTC and highlights the point made in the Vonage filing, 'that not enough is known at this point about the Shaw service in order to formulate an appropriate regulatory response.'"
As someone directly affected by this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually what you don't know about Primus, is that its not their fault; but Bell Canada who hasn't been maintaining their ATM cloud that interconnects YOU and Primus together.
So, you can put the blame on the ISP, however, the true blame is the "behind the scenes" carrier that is good old Ma-Bell.
I've had soo many problems related to Bell's deficiencies, and its nothing that can be easily resolved. I've heard stories as amusing as a remote DLSAM having all of its's subscriber ports FULL, causing a waiting list for ADSL subscription in the area, and, to top-off the frustration, the 45mbps ATM link tops the 100% usage during the evening.
So, how does the enduser perceive this? The ISP is shitty as hell, tech support is incompetent, so the enduser switches DSL provider to only realize that the crappy speed continues. Next thing you know, he's subscribing to Cable where its suddenly "fast" again.
There's a lot of the voip glitches that are associated to the back-end carrier that manages the ATM cloud that interconnects the subscriber (you), and the ISP (primus). You can't see it with regular web browsing, but the second you start using realtime protocols, you'll notice it.
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:1, Interesting)
So I can say with some experience/confidence that you are 100% correct about the pathetic Bell Canada situation. I had never seen such a disaster.
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:2)
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:2)
Re:TCP/IP unsuited for phone (Score:2)
IF however, it's because the ISP is degrading the traffic, or putting it at a lower priority than other types of data, then they deserve to be fined and/or regulated. It's not up to an ISP to determine the priority of data that users transfer any more than a phone company should be determining what topics people talk about during their phone calls. I'm paying for my raw data to
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:1, Informative)
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:2)
1. If you call in and mention VoIP, that will be the very first thing they suggest that you purchase.
2. People had "extreme" speeds in the past (actually, faster than what "extreme" is currently). Shaw crippled people's connections, and then had the gall to ask $10 a month to bring them up a little bit. Speeds were better and prices lower in 1998, and have gotten worse and worse since.
3. Isn't it funny how they offer this right as they unveil their service? We, of course, can't say for sure that they a
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:2)
1) they are stupid and think no one will notice
2) they are really stupid and their marketing and marketing departments don't talk to each other.
Either way, they are stupid.
-nB
Re:As someone directly affected by this (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2, Informative)
> telco. Sasktel is a crown corporation, and own the lines in Saskatchewan.
Of course. They put them in the ground, they own them.
> It was only recently that other providers were permitted to sell long distance there
No. It was only recently that SaskTel had to sell them at cost to other providers.
> and Saskatchewanians can't get a VoIP phone number with their local area code
> because Sasktel charges Vonage too
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2, Informative)
You may be able to get a local area code with Vonage, but at least around here, you can't always get your local exchange prefix. This means I could sign up tomorrow for Vonage and get a number, but when the school calls me to fetch my son, or work calls me in after hours, it's a long distance call for them. This is a major sticking point for me. As near as I can tell, local prefix's are generally only availible in major urban
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah right. Most VOIP providers will not provide a local number in 613 area code for anything other than the Ottawa area. Those of us in Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall (St. Lawrence Seaway) cannot get a local number. The only one providing local numbers are the ISP based numbers (cable and Bell).
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:1)
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
I think a little more dilligence in your research is in order.
Google query [google.ca]
VERY first hit [voip-info.org]
Unlimitel Inc. [unlimitel.ca]
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
The very first hit (sponsored, main text): Vonage - no Kingston/Brockville
The very first hit (non-sponsored): A brockville company providing software, but not a voip provider
The very first hit (sponsored sidebar): Irstel - no Kingston/Brockville
You are right: unlimitel is there, and unitz and I missed those. But the main players such
as Vonage (the one with the ubiquitous annoying, but effective, commercial) , Primus,
Irstel, and others are Ottawa only.
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
I transferred my existing Ottawa number to them half a year ago and have been pleased.
-b
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
Who else would? They built the infrastructure, they should own it. Seems simple, no?
It was only recently that other providers were permitted to sell long distance there
Well, considering that other providers selling long distance means buying it from SaskTel at cost, selling it at a profit, and not having to build any infrastructure themselves, do you think this is fair? Add to that the fact that the CRTC made SaskTel RAISE their rates to m
Re:I hope Vonage knocks over some walls at CRTC (Score:2)
a whole town gets NXX- ?? Why? there aren't too many towns in sask with more than 9999 people!
Shaw Cable's competition? (Score:1)
With higher quality home routers we're going to start seeing groups of people using a single line instead of each getting the service.
Re:Shaw Cable's competition? (Score:2)
Re:I thought rogers bought shaw (or vice versa) (Score:2)
Follow the Leader (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so fast (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll dare to take a contrarian view here on Vonage's position, as well as Shaw's. Having dealt with at least a few dozen Vonage customers who have been escalated to second level support and gotten me, I've encountered a rather consistent situation where nearly every customer was told by Vonage support technicians that "their ISP was having problems - call them" yet the real problem ended up being in
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
Not that the LAN is the province of the ISP, necessarily. It's one of the grey ar
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
Re:Not so fast (Score:1, Troll)
This was in downtown Hamilton, which should be a large enough city to have decent service.
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
It isn't like Shaw oversells their service and ignores the obvious QoS problem that could easily be solved by buying a bit more bandwidth (but, you know, that would cost Shaw money, which, seeing as a Tier 2 "tech" apparantly costs C$75/hour, they don't exactly spend it wisely)
It isn't like your upstream rates - even without the QoS problems - are a fucking joke - and when people call in with problem
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
in the day tho because there arent that many of you during the night
one day i hope god answers my prayers
Re:Follow the Leader (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Follow the Leader (Score:2)
Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Easy solution (Score:2)
Right now the network companies enjoy "common carrier" status. If you download child porn, or transmit a virus to another person's computer, or even run a botnet, the network operator isn't responsible for your actions. You are, because the network isn't really equipped to censor all inappropriate messages.
Well, now Shaw Cable is saying "hey, look at this VOIP call, we think it's 'bad' data, so we're going to slow it down."
Re:Easy solution (Score:2)
Minor problems:
1. They are a cable company which means that they do not have a common carrier status in first place as they are an information service provider, not a telecoms provider. Dunno who are their lobbyists, but they are bloody good.
2. They have a solid technical ground to stand on I am afraid. Besides the bandwidth limit the cable networks also have an uplink packet per second limit because of the way DOCSIS works (look for MAP in the DOCSIS) documentation. So they have technical ground
Re:Easy solution (Score:2)
FYI (Score:2)
Slightly off topic datapoint (Score:2)
Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a Vonage and Shaw customer, having moved last fall to the Victoria, BC area from Toronto, and want to comment on this.
First off, while I'm as irritated and confused as everyone else, this fee is optional. Shaw isn't automatically charging people who use VoIP this extra fee. Apparantly, this is an added fee that VoIP users can pay to get better guaranteed QoS for their voice data packets.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this, and at this time have no intention to pay the fee. On one hand, giving voice data network prioritization isn't necessarily a bad thing -- most home VoIP NAT routers provide a QoS service to do just this so downloads don't obliterate your ability to use your phone. At the same time, nobody else is charging these fees, and respecting QoS for VoIP packets isn't going to cost Shaw anything, so why should the consumer pay for such a service int he first place?
Shaw called me a few weeks ago asking me about my phone service, in an attempt to sell me on their new VoIP-based service. I told them I have Vonage. They asked me what services I was getting, and listed off the litany of services I'm getting. Then they asked me the price -- and suffice to say, I'm getting way more from Vonage, and am paying less. The phone jockey on the other end didn't know what to say about that, so just said "Uh, thanks, sorry for bothering you" and hung up.
As to the actual quality of service I'm getting -- I haven't had a single drop-out in my VoIP service in the two months that I've had it. Not a single blip. However, I also use iChat AV pretty heavily to take to family back home, and I have been having significant drop-outs in both audio and video conferences with family back in Toronto in recent weeks, where these problems didn't exist before. It's hard to say exactly where the fault lies, but I've been getting drop-outs galore in both audio-only and video conference mode between here and Toronto in the last month. I do have to recognise, however, that I do live on an island, and have no idea what the maximum bandwidth is like between the mainland and here. I can only believe that bandwidth usage is increasing, but at this time have no idea whether or not Shaw is working on running more underwater cabling between the mainland and Vancouver Island. It could just be because (due to time zones) my iChat AV conversations generally take place during peak hours.
So far, Vonage has been problem free, but I'm not a heavy phone user (I'm only paying for the 500 minute/month plan, with another 500 minutes through the soft phone option. I generally don't come even close to the 500 minutes per month). Perhaps I've just been lucky thus far. I have no intention to pay them another $10 a month just to get the service I'm already paying for, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my thus-far trouble free VoIP experience doesn't negatively change in the future.
Yaz.
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
I've stuck with Telus and avoided VoIP, because I have zero need for international calls. I mean, sure, maybe a discount rate to Malawi would be nice - but my sister's only going to be there for another two months. Shaw's offers all the features I would possibly want, but the extra monthly charge works out to more than or on-par with my Telus bill, so it's no
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Until I saw your post, I hadn't even noticed. Just call me "oblivious guy" :).
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Others are talking about charging fees like this. Also, QoS _does_ cost money. Even in a mythical "bandwidth is free" and "everything is connected with $BIGPIPEs" ISP, it would be nice to honor QoS to reduce jitter for VoIP, and that costs the ISP money. Some equipment can't handle it and has to be replaced (for i
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Why does VoIP run at bitrates very close to modem speeds, but require broadband connections? Because the extra headroom is usually enough to provide sufficiently reliable service.
Why is it that ISP's can usually support VoIP just fine, until the point that they implement "QOS"? Maybe because it's not abo
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2, Insightful)
As to why tehy would charge more, $10/mo is a bit steep, but implementing QoS for specific customers for vonage service is an added feature, and it does cost them extra administrative overhead.
This seems to me like a good move by Shaw that's being misinterpreted by everyone else.
I've often felt that ISPs like Shaw SHOULD offer several diffent types of QoS:
1) A basic package where you get to play
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only other case where the CRTC might get involved is if Shaw is misrepresenting the fee to their customers. I haven't been contacted by Shaw myself, but I've heard reports that Shaw has been calling some Vonage customers and telling them that th
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:1)
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:1)
The french metro system has a ser
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Yes, "optional" as in "do you want to use your voip phone or not"?
Before you start, keep in mind that Shaw cut (in damn near half) the service for all of their customers a few months ago.
The cut the speeds, they dropped the bandwidth limit to a paltry 30 gigs, and then - they offered to sell you the level of service you had 6 months ago for an extra $10 a month (and, actally, 6 months ago, the bandwidth cap was 80 gigs, so you can't get the same level of service).
They degraded your servi
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Bullshit. As others have said, they're not paying the fee, and VoIP still works.
keep in mind that Shaw cut (in damn near half) the service for all of their customers a few months ago.
What the fsck are you smoking? I've been a Shaw customer for 7 years, and their service has been the same as always (as a matter of fact, last year they replaced my working modem *for free* with a new model, and it's faster than ever - I'm getting 6Mbps down an
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
They're making money on the infrastructure Ma-Bell built.
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
Re:Some details from a Vonage/Shaw customer. (Score:2)
This is just a case of "gee, nice phone connection you got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it".
I would understand for a video conference. But not voice.
I don't have a problem with this IF... (Score:4, Insightful)
I want to believe Shaw is acting in good faith and offering something to customers of value. Their Internet service has always been very good for me; their mail servers suck, but that's a different story.
As someone pointed out, if Shaw only dealt with the SPAM zombies and compromised Windows boxes on their network there would be plenty more bandwidth to go around for VoIP. I am currently on Telus and you wouldn't believe the number of intrusion attempts I receive from Shaw netblocks.
Re:I don't have a problem with this IF... (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said, it ain't that bad with Shaw. Thank god for the Asterisk jitterbuffer, though.
Re:I don't have a problem with this IF... (Score:2)
They have no qualms about using packet filters to cripple many other protocols, so I wouldn't exactly be surprised.
Priority- Pay for Performance (Score:5, Interesting)
What Vonage is claiming is that this is different than any other sort of service addition (and that this makes them priced higher than Ma Bell and hence can't compete, or can't compete with similar offerings in the area).
My argument is that they are saying "our service does not guarentee any latency, and we cater more to raw throughput, the traditional measure. We'll give you the possibility to have less latency, which is useful for real-time uses such as voice and video, but for a fee". How is this different than "we'll give you the possibility to have higher burst speeds useful for mass file transfers".
Users with specific uses that aren't a part of 'the masses' will get charged. I pay a few dollars a month extra on my phone line for touch-tone. I pay for the ability to use on-demand with Rogers. I pay a premium for GSM versus using EDGE/GPRS. This is life. You pay for what you use. When _everyone_ has a blackberry- then the standard rates will include it. Until then, the people who want e-mail will pay for it, so that those who don't won't have to.
This of course all assumes that they actually take these into account and that they do benefit their service. If it's a scam, then we have another story.
Re:Priority- Pay for Performance (Score:1, Interesting)
Rogers is also using traffic shaping technology to reduce (supposedly) upstream load on their network. This was introduced after their Digital Phone Service launched, DPS is not VoIP, it uses a seperate part of the cable spectrum. I don't know if the traffic shaping is affecting VoIP, it certainly hits p2p traffic, the timing is suspect though.
Re:Priority- Pay for Performance (Score:2)
Modern businesses seem very adept at chipping away consumer surplus... Anything you take for granted but don't have a legal claim on, they'll just take away and charge you to get it back. Like good QoS for your consumer broadband connection, absence of advertising before movies, ability to
Re:Priority- Pay for Performance (Score:2)
Technically there's nothing wrong with that. While it's shoddy business practice, that's no different than a cable provider packing more people onto their network, slowing your speed, shaping your traffic, and then offering a premium service... which is exactly what Rogers did (my area used to be so much faster, I used to get 6Mbit downstream for 20-odd bucks CDN a month, and I had no sha
Vonage Argument (Score:2)
Re:Priority- Pay for Performance (Score:2)
Question: (Score:1)
Re:Question: (Score:2)
This seems justified in a way... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the phone business goes away, telcos are going to have to make up for it somewhere, and the only place left will be bandwidth...that stuff that we get for a flat rate now.
Metered priority usage paid by the user is the only really fair way to do it. You need a lot of packets, you pay more. You need a lot of fast high priority packets, you pay a lot more.
Tracking all this is a another can of worms entirely....but dammit, this is how it SHOULD work.
Re:This seems justified in a way... (Score:3, Informative)
The problem in this instance being that Shaw is a cable provider, and not a traditional telco. Their own IP-based phone service is quite new (first offered only in the last 2 months I believe, at least here in Victoria), so they haven't lost any phone customers due to VoIP.
Yaz.
Re:This seems justified in a way... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The customer is using telco infrastructure, which he pays for monthly in the form of a service fee to his ISP, to undercut the absurdly high rates telcos charge for POTS.
Vonage is just an application. If Vonage has to pay the "using my pipes" fee, and Google has to pay the "using my pipes" fee, what the hell am I paying every month to my ISP?
Re:This seems justified in a way... (Score:2)
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised service, from TimeWarner - RoadRunner (I understand the argument is for a different provider)...
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised servicer, from Vonage.
In all likleyhood, TimeWarner could be deprioritizing packets destined for Vonage, and offering me a fee-based system to allow these packets to make it where they are destined with normal priority. This is called extortion.
I have worked with Vonage in beta & support in the past to determine wether or not RR wa
They don't pay a dime??? (Score:2)
Wow, you mean Vonage gets free access to the Internet????? Amazing!
Look - the telco's ARE getting paid, and way more than a "dime". I'm paying $50 a month on my end to use the infrastructure, and God only knows how much Vonage is paying to use the infrastructure.
The telcos ARE getting paid.
Steve
Re:This seems justified in a way... (Score:2)
You the upthread who claimed Vonage was 'getting it all for free' is just plain wrong - however he was right in saying that they are cutting into the telcos traditional profit centers is right - think about it - if Vonage can charge you for all that and still make a profit then
Research the product (Score:3, Interesting)
Vonage is VoIP running over standard ethernet on the Internet. It's voice traffic competes with every other data packet on the Internet, no matter if it's on Shaw's network, or Telus' network, or the Internet in general. Vonage is portable and available on any high speed network.
Shaw Phone may technically be VoIP, but it runs on seperate hardware (an independant modem with no active data connections), on a seperate channel allocation than Internet (a managed voice network) and doesn't have to compete with Internet traffic. It's routed to the PSTN without touching the Internet so the voice packets don't require QoS. Shaw's telephony is NOT portable, its for home use only.
This is like comparing apples to oranges. I've tried Vonage and although it worked okay, at times the packet loss was unbearable. I don't care what the excuse is (overloaded nodes, Internet traffic spikes, etc), when I use the phone I just want it to work. Period. I also think that 911 is pretty much a required service and there are some significant differences between Shaw and Vonage in that respect, but thats a different debate. Shaw Phone isn't perfect, but its certainly better than Vonage in my experience.
The QoS service definitely isn't a tax because its not mandatory and Vonage works as advertised without it. Besides all that, Shaw can only offer QoS on their own network. Once the traffic leaves their network QoS is meaningless. Would I subscribe to QoS? Probably not, but then again I'm not using Vonage.
And to the earlier poster who suggested that Shaw should reduce the number of customer spambots on their networks to reduce traffic overhead - I couldn't agree more. Turn that bandwidth shaping towards the spam relays and cut their service until they correct their problems. They'd probably gain a significant amount of usable bandwidth for the effort.
On one hand (Score:1)
Here's what I'd like to know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Christmas, torrent traffic has been badly shaped on Shaw...when it takes 72 hours to download the just-released Gentoo install CD from their tracker, you know something's wrong. It's not like it wasn't well-seeded....
Re:Here's what I'd like to know... (Score:2)
I don't know - you might ask them, but even if they say "yes", it would be really, really stupid to do it.
QoS is (basically) designed to guarantee the packets arrive within a certain timeframe. It's goal is to make interactive traffic, well, interactive, regardless of congestion on the link. As bittorrent isn't interactive, there is no benefit whatsoever to giving it a higher priority.
Or can I use
RAS syndrome (Score:1)
I am not really a grammar Nazi, nor am i Trolling. Really. But "QofS Service" would be expandeed to become "Quality of Service Service", and I cant really completely RTFA while laughing remembering about the RAS Syndrome [answers.com]
shaw,qos (Score:5, Informative)
The QOS enhancement was hidden away inside of the Shaw website, and most of the customer service people I talked to had no clue what it was. This was about 4 months ago when I first signed up for it. I finally did find someone who knew what it was. They said:
- It enhanced service for internet. They didn't really say how much or what I would notice
- Shaw's internet phone uses a separate network or channel, and does not use their regular internet channels
- The QOS enhancement is only applicable to their internet service, and does not put your VOIP traffic over their separate network for Shaw internet phone.
- Cable modems on shaw (at least mine) support DOCSIS 2.0, and apparently (I'm not an expert) it has QOS capability along with the rest of their network outlay.
QOS
- This QOS thing is technically possible from the Shaw end, but the question of performance is a large one
- I haven't really noticed either a degredation or improvement in voip... But then I haven't been monitoring carefully
- I think the time when I need it most -- when Shaw's network is otherwise saturated -- is when it will pay, but I suspect those times are rare.
The two big problems I see:
- The biggest problem I can see is that the QOS enhancement is only valid over Shaw's network, and if your voip provider doesn't peer directly with shaw, your voip packets will be at some other carrier's mercy once they leave shaw
- The second biggest problem is ping times. Some of my VOIP providers are 13 hops from where I am (and three network peering points away), and even with QOS there is no way to keep round trip delay to less than 100 milliseconds -- at which point the lag is noticable and gets irritating. No amount of QOS from shaw will fix the number of hops.
Conclusion
The lesson to learn is that QOS is useful if you are on a saturated part of the shaw network, you call during busy times of the day AND (this is important) your voip provider is a short number of hops from you AND ON THE SHAW NETWORK!
Otherwise save your money. Oh yeah, and write letters to the CRTC to get them to stop Shaw, Bell and Telus from doing this two tier internet garbage!
Reponse from Shaw (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.shaw.ca/NR/rdonlyres/A19222AC-750B-42C
From my interpretation, if you want better QoS, you pay the $10/month - so you get a less likely chance that your packets won't get dropped on network saturation.
Also they like to sell there own phone service saying it eventually connects to a phone line so it doesn't go over the internet but only there private manage IP network.
Re:Reponse from Shaw (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this part is pretty funny:
Re:Reponse from Shaw (Score:2)
It all comes back to the old adage "say what you mean, mean what you say". Not to appear to be a Grammar Nazi, but the spelling, capitalization, and grammar, of your post was terrible, and yet you were able to easily get across the concept. If this is what Shaw intended to say, what's so wrong with their press release authors that they can't use simple logic and explainations when a "lower lvl employee" can?
To my mind, it looks like Shaw was being intellec
Shaw is guilty of more than that. (Score:2)
Re:Shaw is guilty of more than that. (Score:2)
Go tell your conspiracies to someone else.
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:5, Informative)
In short: It breaks the end-to-end quality of the Internet, and betrays the very concept of the Internet. It's greedy telcos trying to double-dip on website owners: Owners already paid for bandwidth, and I already paid for DSL: These telcos want them to pay again for the continued non-suckage of their connection.
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:3, Informative)
I think another question comes to the service though. Should a internet provider really be giving priority to conversations? Normally if you want better service (for gaming as an example), you get the best package that your ISP will sell you. Norma
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:3, Informative)
VOIP does not take up significant bandwidth; usuallly only 8kbps per call (yes,
The main factor affecting VIOP quality is latency... high latency, or worse, fluctuating latency realy screws things up.
With QoS, you can still use your full 6mbps connection, it's just that the few voip packets you send out get priority, so the call sounds good.
Similarly, if I set up my network so that even when the internet connection is pegged, my SSH sessions ge
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason to get a faster connection is because you are already using all the bandwidth. Simple QoS on your home router can deal with prioritizing your own traffic, but only as far as your router. This works great, and lets you download like mad and still use voip or play counterstrike effectively.. . provided your isp's network is not saturated.
Shaw operates a cable network; segments get saturated easily, especially upstream. All they are offering you is the same QoS you do yourself a
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:2)
Either way, if in US data is not treated neutral, the internet will devolve in US.
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
See, cable companies can't compete with vonage on price. They actually pay for their infrastructure. What they can do is make Vonage b
Re:What are the 2-tier problems? (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't pay the "radio button and interactive HTML" fee!
Re:I *hate* Vonage (Score:2)
Re:I *hate* Vonage (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I *hate* Vonage (Score:2)
As a point, the Linksys
teliax? (Score:2)