OT: internet phones

[Fairlight]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 05:00:57PM -0700, Enrique Arredondo may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> 
> VERIZON RIP, VONAGE Rocks

Let me know how that works out for you when a core router goes up and down
for the better part of 3 days, and you can't figure out why your phone
service doesn't work because, "[My] network connection is up..."  The
problem could lay at another carrier's core router either on a border or
deep inside their territory, FAR past your first NAP to that carrier, and
that multi-thousand dollar business call you just missed from the other
side of the NAP? -- "Oops, so sorry."  Your own ISP won't be able to do a
thing, and neither will Vonage.  It'll be buried deep in some backbone
carrier's innards where the only Responsible Party is someone that doesn't
know you from a hole in the ground, and frankly couldn't care less about
even a few thousand VOIP customers that aren't their direct customers.
They only have to contend with their direct peering partners, and the
amount of pressure one peer can exert upon another is negligible short of
something like the Level 3/Cogent debacle--in which case -everyone- loses.

I'd take a pass on that risk, personally.  I can only assume that those
taking that kind of leap have never actually dealt with 1st and 2nd peer
carriers in any amount of detail regarding outages.  Run an ISP for a year
and a half--it's an extreme eye opener.  Given the way the carriers don't
cooperate and communicate on some levels, it's a miracle anything gets
passed anywhere.

Telco glitches are a lot less frequent than 'net based glitches.
They happen, to be sure [-especially- between competing ILEC and CLEC
providers in a local context]--but with nowhere near the frequency.

It's great for strictly recreational VOIP things like gamer conferencing,
or non-recreational but non-mission-critical applications like the fP Room
(no offense intended, but that's not intended to be as mission-critical
as phone service).  It'd be a cold day in hell before I put my business
entirely on VOIP in its current incarnation.

But that's just my opinion.  Good luck to you, and may you beat The
Almighty Randomizer!

mark->