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Undertoad · 09-06-2018, 09:21 AM

Swing and a miss. I'll try to make this entertaining and informative.

In 2009, there was a lot of network congestion. Comcast attempted to manage it with throttling.

But if they wanted to subvert Skype on a congested network, they wouldn't have had to. It's very simple. On a congested network, voice over Internet won't work.

Telephony is not real time, but very close to it. In general, internet voice connections (i.e., VoIP) are only possible where there is no network congestion. If there is congestion, it quickly starts to sound terrible. Doesn't take much to be unusable. Did you ever hear the person on the other end of the line sounding a little like an alien? That is VoIP with just a little congestion.

Most data doesn't mind if network packets are dropped, and retransmitted 100ms later out of order. But audio DOES mind!

In 2009, the Internet was not really VoIP-ready yet; and congestion caused all kinds of issues. VoIP was kind of sucky, no matter who your provider was. That's why the competition was "As Seen On TV" -- Vonage and Magic Jack.

But, at this very same time, Verizon was giving up on VoiP services. Well, dang! Why would they do that, if they knew they could just fuck up their competition? Fudzilla from Jan 2009: Verizon to shut down Internet phone service

Maybe they understood, even with shaping, they still only controlled their network; that means they controlled less than one half of the connection between the two sides of a VoIP conversation. And so it was impossible to guarantee quality of voice...

The FCC had means for concern here. But this doesn't mean Comcast was throttling VoiP specifically. And I'll wager anything they weren't, because -- it's very simple -- you wouldn't throttle Skype/VoIP in order to manage network congestion. You'd throttle services that were bandwidth-heavy. I have developed a table for our understanding:

HD video signal: 2,500,000 bits per second
SD video signal: 1,200,000 bits per second
VoIP signal: 12,000 bits per second

The FCC wanted to know how Comcast could provide quality voice during throttling. The story makes it clear. Comcast provided their own pipes to their own VoIP product. Their own network. Q.E.D. they weren't giving priority to their packets on the regular old network. They just built their own.

09-06-2018, 09:21 AM	#69
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Swing and a miss. I'll try to make this entertaining and informative. In 2009, there was a lot of network congestion. Comcast attempted to manage it with throttling. But if they wanted to subvert Skype on a congested network, they wouldn't have had to. It's very simple. On a congested network, voice over Internet won't work. Telephony is not real time, but very close to it. In general, internet voice connections (i.e., VoIP) are only possible where there is no network congestion. If there is congestion, it quickly starts to sound terrible. Doesn't take much to be unusable. Did you ever hear the person on the other end of the line sounding a little like an alien? That is VoIP with just a little congestion. Most data doesn't mind if network packets are dropped, and retransmitted 100ms later out of order. But audio DOES mind! In 2009, the Internet was not really VoIP-ready yet; and congestion caused all kinds of issues. VoIP was kind of sucky, no matter who your provider was. That's why the competition was "As Seen On TV" -- Vonage and Magic Jack. But, at this very same time, Verizon was giving up on VoiP services. Well, dang! Why would they do that, if they knew they could just fuck up their competition? Fudzilla from Jan 2009: Verizon to shut down Internet phone service Maybe they understood, even with shaping, they still only controlled their network; that means they controlled less than one half of the connection between the two sides of a VoIP conversation. And so it was impossible to guarantee quality of voice... The FCC had means for concern here. But this doesn't mean Comcast was throttling VoiP specifically. And I'll wager anything they weren't, because -- it's very simple -- you wouldn't throttle Skype/VoIP in order to manage network congestion. You'd throttle services that were bandwidth-heavy. I have developed a table for our understanding: HD video signal: 2,500,000 bits per second SD video signal: 1,200,000 bits per second VoIP signal: 12,000 bits per second The FCC wanted to know how Comcast could provide quality voice during throttling. The story makes it clear. Comcast provided their own pipes to their own VoIP product. Their own network. Q.E.D. they weren't giving priority to their packets on the regular old network. They just built their own.