Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: rpm on August 26, 2005, 10:47:34 AM
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WASHINGTON (AP) - A coalition of Internet phone providers is concerned a looming federal deadline could lead to loss of service for tens of thousands of customers next week.
It's asking the Federal Communications Commission for a 90-day extension of the deadline for customers to acknowledge their understanding of possible problems making 9-1-1 calls using the Internet.
Providers of Voice over Internet Protocol service, also known as V-O-I-P, are expected to disconnect service to people who have not responded.
The providers, which include A-T-and-T, M-C-I, and T-Mobile U-S-A, say the F-C-C order could leave customers stranded in an emergency.
The F-C-C issued its initial order in May after a series of highly publicized incidents in which V-O-I-P users were unable to connect with a 9-1-1 operator. The commission ordered the companies to provide full 9-1-1 capabilities by late November.
Puts those "people do stupid things" commercials Vonage is running in a whole new light.
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Two words - Cell Phone
If you're in too rural of an area to get cell phone coverage, it is unlikely that you'll have VOIP through a broadband connection.
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I can only hope those VOIP companies fail. They sure make a mess of the Internet. It was a bad idea when it started, and it is still a bad idea.
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I use skype to communicate with my dad. Works great but we both have to be on the puter with the software running.
Would never consider it as my only phone tho.
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I used to use Net 2 Phone to make long distance calls way back when it was free and the call quality was roughly the same as shouting through a length of PVC piping (ok, maybe not that good), but stopped when it became a pay service.
Recently, because almost all of our extended family lives in different states and overseas, and we have the local emergency #s of the Police and Fire on Speed Dial, we considered going to a broadband phone service, but rejected the idea precisely because ultimately we think its a pernicious misuse of the bandwidth set aside for the internet.
To me, as Spam is to email, Vonage is to bandwidth. Call me crazy, but I believe that this was not part of Al Gore's initial vision. ;)
- SEAGOON
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Well I have to admit I use Skype to phone home to landlines in the UK while I'm abroad using Skype Out and it's saved me a fortune. Quality is fantastic. In the last 6 weeks it's only cost me about 35 Euros for hours and hours. Skype to a mobile (cell) is a bit more pricey but still nothing like the £1 a minute I have to pay to use my mobile.
FWIW Vonage in the UK has 999 (emergency) so it's no problem. When all is said and done ALL comms will soon be staright digital so I don't see what the problem is.
For me VOIP is :aok
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I've been pretty pleased with Vonage thus far.
I've also made sure to have a battery backup on the router/cable modem and have a cell phone as a secondary.
$27 to call anywhere in the USA or Canada....versus my old Verizon line which was $51 + whatever toll calls, etc.
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Digital is not at issue here. Using the Internet for VOIP is. It takes an enormous amount of bandwidth away from the data portion.
Using the TCP/IP transport over the Internet means everyone is paying for these damn VOIP companies.
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Originally posted by CMC Airboss
Two words - Cell Phone
If you're in too rural of an area to get cell phone coverage, it is unlikely that you'll have VOIP through a broadband connection.
Wireless broadband here...and can't get a cell signal worth a crap.
My brother has use Vontage on my connection here and said it worked fine.
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Just did a study (work related) on VOIP,.... to have true voice quality the you need a at least 64Kb per Chan. and to connect you have 2 Chan's open so that means you need 128Kb of bandwidth per call, and people wonder why the internet is slowing down....
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OK I admit my ignorance here but why has simple voice transmission become such an issue ??. It's not even video calling ?? We have been told for years that the internet will provide streaming video into every home, client based computing where ISP' hold the apps on remote servers - any number of bandwidth hungry services and we have always been assured that bandwith can always be found.
If I am on a 1Mb adsl connection and only using 128k for the phone why is that worse than downloading a dvd at the full 1Mb ?? I don't understand ..........
For me as a numpty consumer who travels a lot Skype has been a breath of fresh air. I have a UK number which can find me anywhere in the world as long as my laptop is hooked on a highspeed line and I can call home for a fraction of the cost of my cell phone.
Not getting at you here Skuzzy but maybe if the industry can't support it, it shouldn't have launched it ??
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Someone sees it as a cheap way to make a buck.
Sparks, I could explain it in detail, but experience has taught me, people do not care to hear about how downloading a DVD, or using VOIP is screwing up the Internet. Multiply that by a few million people and,...nevermind.
No one wants to hear the bandwidth between countries is already peaked and new cable infrastructures under the Atlantic/Pacific are not forthcoming. This is a big one.
VOIP is all about making everyone pay for it. It's a neat scheme. They only pay for thier local bandwidth while the rest of the world suffers the tanking of available bandwidth and is forced to upgrade. Pretty cool. Sort of like a long distance robbery scheme.
Anyway, I am wasting my time talking about this. I am sure there are many who will claim, "I can download all of Hollywood in 22 seconds with no problem." And I am sure they will proceed to do so.
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I'm not trying to justify it Skuz but at a consumer level I've never needed to understand it.
I can see what you are saying but in the end how does the major infrastructure get paid for - thats a real question - I have no idea :confused: Who puts in the big cables across the Atlantic ??
So how do companies like Skype get access to the network ? I assumed that the major back bones were held by the big boys and they sold off access and capacity as they felt fit - if they had spare they would sell it to companies like Skype. Clearly I don't understand the workings of it ...... How does a company get free access to bandwidth on hardware held by coporate entities
:huh
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I did not mean for that to sound like it was directed at you, personally, Sparks. It was a general rant, not aimed at anyone. Sort of like the village idiot standing in the middle of the square.
To answer your questions.
The Atlantic and Pacific cables were originally laid by AT&T. Since then AT&T has sold off all that type of work to other companies. Today it takes an international consortium willing to foot the bill for the laying of more cable.
The last time they tried, they could not come together on who should pay for what. And they have been stuck there for some time now.
Now, the VOIP thing, or anything Internet related. Say you are connecting to someone who happens to be on another ISP. You pay for your local connection (but not neccessarily the bandwidth) and so does the person you called.
Inbetween those two points are numerous routers.
Do a PingPlot, to our arenas. We pay Savvis (currently) for our Internet service. Yet, those packets take a little bandwidth away from every router they traverse.
Now, the ISP you go through pays the ISP they are connected to who pays the ISP they are connected to and so on. However, the pitance you pay for Internet service cannot cover the actual cost of the bandwidth you use in a VOIP connection.
Streaming data traffic is the worst abuse of the Internet. The resources involved are staggering and they are tied up until it is done.
This just touches on the overall issues.
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You simply don't know what you're talking about, Skuzzy. It took me at least an hour and a half to download all of Hollywood!
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Looks at AH voice comms... Looks at skuzzy... looks back at AH voice comms
;)
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Skuzzy is a hippy gone geek..>
whether you like it or not VoIP is the way its going.
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digital phone here
VOIP but only back to the teleco where we dump it off into the phone co wires
once the bugs were worked out of it, it works great
we had to upgrade our high speed network but now hsd has never been faster
the phone co's may win out in the end, once they get into the broadband video battle with fiber to the house but it wil be a bloody battle before it is over :)
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So how much as HTC paid to enhance the grid so players from all over the world can play online? :)
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Sparks, I could explain it in detail, but experience has taught me, people do not care to hear about how downloading a DVD, or using VOIP is screwing up the Internet. Multiply that by a few million people and...
...and it's still less than spam and web spiders. :)
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Originally posted by LePaul
So how much as HTC paid to enhance the grid so players from all over the world can play online? :)
Have to remember LePaul, the game can be played over a dialup connection, including VOX. In the overall scheme of things, we are a small blip on the Internet radar.
We work really hard to keep the data requirements, of the game, at a minimum.
VOIP is a pig.
Don't get me started about SPAM. Web crawlers are a pretty small lot though as they do not run continously and usually run off peak times.
P2P is the other pig.
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Heh, Skuzzy i was just stirring the pot a bit because I thought you were trouncing on VOIP a lil hard.
You're right, HTC is playable over dialup, I've done so in the past and several of my squaddies are to this day.
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Geez Louise, Skuzzy...
I've been using Vonage for a year now, never considering the VOIP ramifications to the degradation of the internet. Now I go to bed feeling guilty and soiled.
DmdMax
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Skuzzy you old fart you do realize the bigger better faster networks are popping up all the time? That old cables are being given new life with CDWM?
NZ's Telecom has just revealed (worst kept secret) their new network plan, probably 100Mbps fibre to the home, VoIP, video on demand, VoIP superexchanges.
If done correctly you can squeeze more bandwidth out of old cables using data than you could with just voice these days. I can take a bit of copper cable and squeeze 10Mbps out of it, whereas an old voice circuit could only squeeze 33000bps fdx. If VoIP is clogging your infrastructure then you haven't invested in keeping your infrastructure up to date.
Even the price of routing and firewall equipment to slot into the networks has dropped dramatically. Look at the price of a Juniper M10i , its the same price you'd have paid for a 10Mbps (or less) router a few years ago (I hear Juniper are selling T640's as edge routers in Asia now - thats at least 40gbps coming into a building).
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The tightwads here in the U.S. do not upgrade anything until they absolutely need to, and then they wait a year after that to do it.
The infrastructure here is under incredible stress. You guys get a small taste of it with us using Savvis. Savvis is the sceond largest Tier 1 provider in the U.S. Sprint being number one. Sprint had been cuting data bandwidth to make room for long distance voice calls. In addition to that, they are now cutting data bandwidth further for VOIP as they are using it as well.
Neither company, which comprises about 80% of the Tier 1 bandwidth in the U.S., is upgrading thier infrastructure. The U.S. has the largest Inernet infrastructure in the world, but it no longer has the largest available bandwidth per client.
Several countries have surpassed the U.S. and the trend will probably continue.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Someone sees it as a cheap way to make a buck.
Sparks, I could explain it in detail, but experience has taught me, people do not care to hear about how downloading a DVD, or using VOIP is screwing up the Internet. Multiply that by a few million people and,...nevermind.
...snip...
Skuzzy, not menaing to stir the pot, but a question:
This sounds exactly like the sociologic question of "who takes care of the village commons". The brief answer is, when it belongs to everybody, nobody does the maintenenace and everyone considers its use a right. Traditionally, teh best answers to this kind of problem come when government -- for the common good -- takes on teh responsibilty and coordinates the cost sharing (like happens with fire deopartments, etc). Its less efficient than the private sector, but it gets a job done where none would be otherwise.
So here's the rub -- woudl it be in the internets best interest to have regulation of bandwidth infrastructure?
this question is posed merely for discussion purposes. Any resempblance to any troll, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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The problem with that approach, here in the U.S. anyway, is the government has proven time and time again they have no idea how the Internet works.
Thier idea of gathering experts to help is to get a bunch of AOL users together, which is no help at all.
The ignorance our government (at all levels) has about the Internet is frightening. I am afraid they would do more damage than good.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
The problem with that approach, here in the U.S. anyway, is the government has proven time and time again they have no idea how the Internet works.
Thier idea of gathering experts to help is to get a bunch of AOL users together, which is no help at all.
The ignorance our government (at all levels) has about the Internet is frightening. I am afraid they would do more damage than good.
Maybe true but you will be safe if you buy a tinfoil hat!
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Heya guys/girls
I pay about 30 bucks a month for a connection that allows me to download at a rate of about 7-16 (Megabytes) ((.. Yes, Megs)) a second, with an upload speed of about 1.5 megs ((upload))
When I lived in america, I NEVER saw anything like that with crappy comcast, or any other provider..
So skuzzy, what kinda connection would I have?? It's peaked my curiosity.
And yes... it is not mBits,.. i'm actually talkin Megs as in 1,024 kilobytes x 7 to 10 etc.
-Yeager :huh :)
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Why are you asking me? I have no idea what kind of connection you should have. Something being lost in translation?
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Oh, beleive me -- I agree that we should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups (an alternate definition of government).
But how can individuals (and individual comapnies) be motivated to do things for the common good with only indirect benefit to themselves?
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Originally posted by Simaril
Oh, beleive me -- I agree that we should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups (an alternate definition of government).
But how can individuals (and individual comapnies) be motivated to do things for the common good with only indirect benefit to themselves?
I use random beatings.
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Sim, the Internet's major infrastructure growth happened at the hands of ISP's all over this country.
This was back when there was a ton of competition. That competition has dwindled to almost nothing today. Where there used to be 30, or so, nationwide Tier 1 providers, we now have 4 or 5 (if that).
Per region, there may be 2 Tier 1 providers. There simply is not enough competition anymore. No reason for them to bust a nut to make sure the infrastructure is properly extended.
The reasons for the death of the competition are many and complex. Some were just managed poorly. Some were run out of business by using legal loopholes. Some were closed due to not being able to take on a large legal battle to defend what they built. Some were victims of thier environments.
I ran an ISP business for 7 years. It was doing really well, until Verizon decided I was doing too well, and they offered all my DSL clients free service for 1 year and waived the switch-over fee.
Within 30 days, I lost 80% of my DSL client base. I closed my doors. Come to find out, Verizon and other telcos, had a pretty neat deal going on. Once every 6 to 8 months they would target an ISP and do the same thing.
What they did to me was illegal. I even called them and told them that, and they responded, "It is the way we do business now." The State Attorney never responded to my complaint. You see, Verizon's headquarters are based in Texas. One ISP took Verizon to court. Won a judgement. 9 years and 2 bankruptcies later he had not gotten one dime from Verizon.
The FTC has also ignored the complaints, as well as the FCC. This type of thing has been happening for the last 10 years, all over the nation, in a slow but sure takeover of the Internet by the telcos. Each year there are fewer and fewer ISP's.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Someone sees it as a cheap way to make a buck.
Sparks, I could explain it in detail, but experience has taught me, people do not care to hear about how downloading a DVD, or using VOIP is screwing up the Internet. Multiply that by a few million people and,...nevermind.
No one wants to hear the bandwidth between countries is already peaked and new cable infrastructures under the Atlantic/Pacific are not forthcoming. This is a big one.
VOIP is all about making everyone pay for it. It's a neat scheme. They only pay for thier local bandwidth while the rest of the world suffers the tanking of available bandwidth and is forced to upgrade. Pretty cool. Sort of like a long distance robbery scheme.
Anyway, I am wasting my time talking about this. I am sure there are many who will claim, "I can download all of Hollywood in 22 seconds with no problem." And I am sure they will proceed to do so.
Skuxzzy, I, for one, had no idea. What you just typed was very illuminating for me. Made me want to investigate this phemon.....phemimon...phenomi nium....problem.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Why are you asking me? I have no idea what kind of connection you should have. Something being lost in translation?
Sounds like he has DSL2.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
VOIP is all about making everyone pay for it. It's a neat scheme. They only pay for thier local bandwidth while the rest of the world suffers the tanking of available bandwidth and is forced to upgrade. Pretty cool. Sort of like a long distance robbery scheme.
I'm sorry Skuzzy, but it doesn't seem like it's the VOIP companies that have faulty business plans. I really can't blame them for taking advantage of someone else's idiocy.
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is VOIP the same as digital? I am using the digital phone service provided by my cable company. Just wondering if its the same or not.
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I'm wondering when I2 is gonna get corrupted with commercial buy-in for use with commodity internet.
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Originally posted by Dnil
is VOIP the same as digital? I am using the digital phone service provided by my cable company. Just wondering if its the same or not.
yes
your digital phone is using VOIP but like mine, probably only to the telco switch not like VONTAGE which stays on the internet the entire ride to the local switch of the number you are calling
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Originally posted by Eagler
yes
your digital phone is using VOIP but like mine, probably only to the telco switch not like VONTAGE which stays on the internet the entire ride to the local switch of the number you are calling
No, your digital phone is NOT necessarily using VoIP.
Voice over Digital does not mean Voice over IP.