Comcast favoring their own VOIP?

Posts: 831 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 831

I thought Comcast and Vonage "kissed and made up"

But, according to http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2009/01/more-trouble-for-comcastmore-work-for-willkie.html

"The FCC has sent Comcast a letter charging the company with favoring users of its online phone service over customers who use competitors like Skype or Vonage, the Wall Street Journal and the AP report. Kevin Martin, chair of the FCC, sent the letter Sunday, about 48 hours before he lost his job when Barack Obama assumed the Oval Office. "

Posts: 656 · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:17 pm Post subject:

Comcast does use MPLS with QOS/ TOS to mark their own voice packets within their network to provide higher priority then other packets. Technically there is nothing wrong with that. Problem is only if they set other packets based upon src or dst IP or ports for other services to lowest priority which will causes issues and that is what is deemed illegal.

The deal between Comcast and Vonage has nothing to do with packet prioritization. It is only Gig-E IP links purchased by Vonage from Comcast that terminate to Vonage border routers. Not all Comcast customers will ride these links all the way through Comcast to Vonage due to the way the ASN broadcasting is done but most will.

This will greatly reduce issues that happen upon IP Handoff interconnections on the internet between ISP's.

Posts: 38 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jan 24, 2009 Posts: 38

Just to comment on the ISP situation - For the past five years I have subscribed to Vonage and in the begging I was using a cheap DSL connection, which had lots of QoS issues "Can You Here Me Now". Over the past fifteen months I have been subscribing to Comcast services for my ISP and have had nothing short of normal telephone conversation but for the past two month my Vonage service has been unacceptable with serious QoS issues all on the upstream side - After much time spent with Vonage Tech support and no resolve, also some time spent with Comcast tech support - Their position is since my internet connection is fine and that is all I subscribe to obligation fulfilled - From my point of view "I do not recall any Voip clause in my USER AGREEMENT with my ISP.

Conclusion - Several hours on phone with both Tech support, New Firmware flashed on my WRT54G router, which has QoS controll and I still left with Send Money from both parties whom I purchase services from.

AS for Vonage they have been great thus far but at the current time the JURY is still out - It would be nice to have some Real Trouble shooting and Log generating utilities at our disposal allowing us firmer ground to stand on when dealing with our ISP for QoS/LoS issues

Posts: 86 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 03, 2009 Posts: 86

Could you provide some details about the appliances in use on your network, as well as the physical and logical configuration?

Posts: 831 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 831

tv wrote:

It would be nice to have some Real Trouble shooting and Log generating utilities at our disposal allowing us firmer ground to stand on when dealing with our ISP for QoS/LoS issues

Try www.voipspear.com You will nned to allow ICMP or "Ping" in your router settings, my Vonage device as a lot of routers have it turned off by default.

As far as what it really does, read theur FAQs