VoIP and the FCC Comcast Ruling

Doug Mohney — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:38:01 -0400

It's OK to give VoIP traffic priority over other Internet traffic, says the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). But, how do you tell if it is VoIP traffic in the first place?

CircleID parses through the FCC order issued to Comcast, abet with some brightly colored commentary. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says it would be OK for networks to prioritize VoIP traffic. But the FCC's own press release says network applications should be treated equally, rather than "discriminate" among applications.

A further mystery arises when it comes to figuring out what packets should get priority over others--assuming, of course, that you can do so. The FCC's press release quotes Professor David Reed of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as saying that deep packet inspection (DPI) is not "acceptable behavior." It does beg the question of what you need to do to figure out what's in a packet in the first place in order to give it priority.

For more:
- Read the CircleID piece parsing the FCC Comcast ruling

Related articles:
Comcast, Vonage reach traffic management understanding
FCC targets transparency for network management

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VoIP and the FCC Comcast Ruling