From: Fergie (Paul Ferguson) ("Fergie)
Date: Wed Mar 02 2005 - 11:02:00 EST
One the points that I left unsaid, however, is that
there may be many, many reasons -- both technically
and business-wise -- why an ISP would want to port-
filter, or for a better generalization, "suppress"
some traffic. For instance, blocking p2p traffic,
or a known worm, whatever. And there very likely
may be busine$$ reasons, as well.
A corrollary: Is it a denial of service to suppress
(dampen) a BGP route when it flaps excessively? Or
perhaps an bloack-hole a RBL entry? Most would say
not, certainly depending on the reason (self- and
Internt-preservation and stability), but certainly
someone could arguably make a federal case out of
it (levity implied) or similar suppresssions or
blocking of traffic.
VoIP brings these issues to the forefront.
In any event, it's going to be interesting to see
how this evolves.
- ferg
-- "Church, Chuck" <> wrote:
Those are good points. Someone last week mentioned what I thought was a
great list of priorities for an ISP:
1. Keep the network running
2. Remove those violating policies
3. Route packets
(or something along those lines)
A 30/50/90 kbps unicast stream isn't going to affect #1. I
don't think any policies involved in #2 would cover a VoIP service
either. That should leave #3 as the default for this traffic. I can
picture a DDOS where infected Windows machines could send bogus SIP
traffic to Vonage servers; in this case temporary blocking might be
needed/justified. But until that happens, blocking SIP is just wrong.
Another thing for an ISP considering blocking VoIP is the fact that
you're cutting off people's access to 911. That alone has got to have
some tough legal ramifications. I can tell you that if my ISP started
blocking my Vonage, my next cell phone call would be my attorney...
Chuck Church
Lead Design Engineer
CCIE #8776, MCNE, MCSE
Netco Government Services - Design & Implementation Team
1210 N. Parker Rd.
Greenville, SC 29609
Home office: 864-335-9473
Cell: 703-819-3495
PGP key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4371A48D
-- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet or
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