Panama Decrees Block To Kill VoIP Service 461
An anonymous reader writes "In an apparent attempt to stem telephone company revenue losses due to Internet telephony, the government of Panama has decreed that 46 UDP ports be blocked by all Internet service providers. The ports include ones that are commonly used for voice over IP as well as some that are used for other purposes, apparently with the idea that these, too, could be used to circumvent the POTS (plain old telephone system, a term of art) in making telephone calls."
Different Ports (Score:5, Insightful)
Not hard at all... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here though comes in talking to the rest of the world. The above-mentioned servers have to direct the traffic to the destination servers at some point. Those servers are completely outside the control of the subversives to be. Those servers have to know that the traffic being received is actually VoIP and deal with it appropriately.
It can be done, but it will require servers outside of Panama to cooperate with the scheme.
Of course, once the Panama government locates those sites (shouldn't be hard) they'll start gopher whacking them with a variety of tactics: legal shutdowns through warrants, DOS attacks, etc. Vendors from outside of Panama will also rush to fill the void, and that software will also subsequently be outlawed.
The bottom line though is that the government will not be able to control the VoIP "problem" entirely without just pulling the plug on all Internet activity. That would be a steep price and they will face economic pressure to not do it.
Oh well, they'll learn this one the hard way I guess.
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Too true.
I'm actually more worried about collateral damage here - if the news report is correct then any traffic passing _through_ Panama would be subject to the filters - stopping any application that just happens to use one of the ports mentioned.
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although realistically this is unlikely to be a problem for any significant percentage of Net traffic. Topologically, Panama is most probably a spur on the Internet, rather than a hub. Most of the western hemisphere's traffic passes through the US west coast on its way to anywhere. By the time a given packet hits Panama, I'd lay good odds its actually bound for an endpoint in Panama.
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:3, Informative)
corkscrew [freshmeat.net] allready provides a tunnel over port 80, all you need to do is configure gnomeeting to use port 80, then you have secure VOIP over the mostly web port.
The only way for them to stop VOIP, is to shut down EVERY PORT!
--Benjamin McFree is one cool dude
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Panamanian government gets serious about this, they could put a stop to VoIP by making it illegal to use VoIP in Panama. Many countries have done this kind of thing in the past. In the UK 20 or so years ago, it was not possible to set up a public internet because of government rules.
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:2, Funny)
Just use UDP port 53. I'd like to see Panama try to block that one.
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:3, Informative)
The Internet supports name server access using TCP [RFC-793] on server port 53 (decimal) as well as datagram access using UDP [RFC-768] on UDP port 53 (decimal).
-dk
Re:Not hard at all... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Different Ports (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the protocols that will eventually have to be blocked as a result include tftp, whois++, bootp/dhcp, ntp, udp portions of netbios, snmp (ISPs and large businesses, including the phone company, will love that one.) hsrp, (another favorite of large businesses) quake, traceroute, both MySQL and Postgres, and a few others that may not have tcp vairents, or who's tcp varients are too expensive in network bandwidth to use politely.
Additionally, there is nothing preventing users from building a ppp, ssh, httptunnel or other tunnel over tcp and completely bypassing the UDP blocks from their workstation. It may even become a part of the software for DialPad or other platforms.
-Rusty
Re:Different Ports (Score:5, Insightful)
It could, but there's a reason why they avoided TCP in the first place. For phone calls, it doesn't matter if the data gets there two seconds after it was sent (ie. the reliable communication offered by TCP.) The data needs to get there now, or not at all. It's okay to have a quarter-second drop in a phone call.
I also worry that the computational overhead of these protocols, especially ssh, could be problematic for a real-time communication. But hey, processors are getting better all the time...
Re:Different Ports (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, way too much effort for zero return, especially in sight of the fact that existing tunnel packages exist that will yield equally crappy results.
Re:Different Ports (Score:3, Interesting)
True. But there is no reason why you couldn't run your VoIP system on UDP:80. A better bet though would be to choose UDP:53, provided that the remote end wasn't also running DNS of course. They'd have a fun time if they tried to firewall off *that* particular UDP port on their "great fireall of Panama". ;)
Re:No UDP/TCP specific ports (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Different Ports (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Different Ports (Score:3, Insightful)
HTTP works great for webpages, but using it for everything in the longrun is bad for everyone for numerous reasons.
What happens when VoIP is widely done via port 80 - what are they going do then?...block port 80...I don't think so!
Ron Bennett
IPSEC is the right choice for tunneling it. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not perfect - Compressed RTP does a CSLIP-like elimination of most of the IP, UDP, and rTP overhead, but doesn't work over IPSEC or most other tunneling protocols.) That means bandwidth is pretty tight over 28.8-upstream dialup modems (especially if you don't always get full speed), but I'm not aware of any better tunneling solutions.
It'd be nice to have some tradeoffs like putting more than one voice sample per IP packet, which is not so hot for quality but cuts the packet overhead in half, and the protocols *ought* to have encryption as a standard feature, so you don't need tunneling for the general case, but it's a good start.
This is ridiculous (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, what's next, steel tariffs or something? Nah, that'll never happen.
They will need to also block every other port. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They will need to also block every other port. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They will need to also block every other port. (Score:3, Funny)
The idea is that only the most skilled, black hat hacker can open the preferences for his VoIP software and change the port number.
Re:They will need to also block every other port. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They will need to also block every other port. (Score:3, Informative)
For once I wish this article was confusing the country of Panama with Panama, FL., but it isn't...
Re:They will need to also block every other port. (Score:2)
> it to route around Panama?
There's lots of dark fiber across North America.
I should think that a few threats from organizations such as AT&T and WorldCom to take their business elsewhere (including voice) would cause them to back down.
Suggestion to Panama (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Suggestion to Panama (Score:5, Funny)
-- Multics
Another good example of fear of progress (Score:5, Insightful)
People have tried to fight progressive technological evolution for ages and it has yet to ever work once. Any country making laws forcing its citizens to live behind the times is only hurting itself. What if panama had outlawed the original telephone because it hurt the post office? Granted, Voice IP isn't quite as drastic a step, but it is progress and it will succeed on its own merit, laws or no laws.
Another good example of corporatism (Score:3, Insightful)
The industry is too big and too rich to go down without a fight, in Panama this results in naively blatant intervention. In the US the telecom industry will probably pair up with the content industry to outlaw private private peer to peer broadband communication sooner or later, under the guise of security and copyright protection. Only a monopoly or a price fixed ogliopoly will be able to squeeze money out of people on the same scale as today for communications in the future
I'd like to think (Score:2)
Re:Another good example of fear of progress (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it's about fighting evolution -- it's just about delaying it for as long as possible. They have an existing monopoly and every day they stretch it out the money continues to pour in.
Another example: the record companies know that every year they can delay the widespread adoption of file-sharing technologies is another year they can freely suck the blood out of the american public. They can't stop it in the long run, but they have a huge financial incentive to slow it down.
Port change... (Score:3, Interesting)
If person2person chat programs with voice capabilities, then whoever provides the software (I know Yahoo messenger and ICQ can do that, although it's not VoIP) should be able to make it switch ports easily.
If companies (such as the one I use to call Russia if/when I ever do
Or is my logic flawed somewhere and the port block like that would achieve the desired effect?
Cheers,
DVK
In a Folow Up News Release (Score:5, Funny)
Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious solution is going to be a transmission tax on VoIP calls. Cheaper than the old way, but it will begin to cost you money. Hate them you might, but the phone companies have real expenses in physical property, technical services, and customer service. They need to get paid. It will be less than they are used to, but they won't be giving it away for free much longer.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
unlike japan and the usa and a few other countries not too many places are getting net connections from high speed cable. hell I live in the usa and I don't get my net from cable.
the phone companies at some point always figure in your ability to communicate with anyone over wire. they do have shit to pay for.
their business model really needs to change as one poster suggested to providing high speed net access but that doesn't mean that right now they aren't concerned about lost revenue to VoIP.
as for your simile it really doesn't hold up. the RIAA doesn't provide the infrastrcuture for me to listen to indie bands. the phone company does, however, provide the infrastructure for me to respond to your post. between me and you there is a telco.
I got a better solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
This is about the dumbest thing I've heard in a few days. No. The solution is for POTS to die. Telcos can switch their services over to simply providing everyone with highspeed wired internet.
They can get paid for doing something worthwhile. Not charging for bits to a particular port because their old business model won't support them. Who comes up with this crap? There's no "right to profit" in the Constitution or any other law. Why do you think the dot-com bust happened? If one business model becomes unsustainable, you move or get trampled.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:4, Insightful)
I fear that in the future the Internet will actually move this way. You want to use Kazaa? Pay a per-hour fee for the privilege. You want to use VoIP? Pay per call. This would kill innovation in Internet services. Would P2P have ever developed if this kind of infrastructure was already in place? No, nobody would have been able to use it because of limits on what they could send over the Internet. The whole point of the Internet is that it is this great 2-way communication medium with nearly infinite possibilities and no limits on what kind of information can travel on it. When you limit what can be transmitted to a few well-known protocols you kill that. Firewalls have already done enough damage to innovation on the Internet. I don't want to be using HTTP to browse HTML webpages served by media conglomerates and POP3 to read the same old e-mail 10 years from now just because ISPs have become complacent and not allowed anything new to develop. I want to be using Freenet and Jabber and other protocols that haven't even been invented yet.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Truth is; long distance is now very cheap anyway, and getting cheaper all the time- the fiber systems have seen to that. Besides; voice traffic is already in the minority for of traffic worldwide as a percentage of bits carried, soon it will be basically an irrelevancy cost wise.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2, Informative)
Tools like stunnel are readily available over the net. If crypto is illegal down there, it would be pretty easy to make a steganographic wrapper that would make the connection appear to a casual observer to be an ftp session, say. More sophisticated methods could be used to make it hard to detect the fact that there is a connection at all.
The only real solution thus is to drop LD prices and/or raise internet access prices. Or to sharply limit uploading speed/latency to a level where VoIP would be unacceptably bad.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Propose a business model that pays for repairing pipe that will supercede the current model, and we have no argument. We are going to pay for it one way or another, period. Higher telephone, cable bills will be the likely result, but there is no free lunch. Beer is free, but not the beer nuts.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Hmmm...Lets see..Oh yeah, I have one - paying for internet service. I pay ISP, ISP maintains their pipes or pays telco to do it.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
Some companies, like Cox, are working on offering VoIP to the home. YOu'll pay them instead of your phone company or voice service, and it'll come over on your cable line.
The phone companies also make use of VoIP. A good deal of international traffic uses VoIP since it's more efficient, and they are even starting to use it domestically.
The whole reason for VoIP is efficieny. For example: I work for a university. If we want to set up a remote site (not on the campus cable plan), currently we have to install enough T-1s to cover their data and their phones. That means they need a T-1 line for every 24 phones, regardless of how often those phones are in use. The only alternative is to install an expensive PBX in every building.
Now with VoIP technology, we could just install one data circut, which can be anything (DSL, T-1, wireless, whatever) and all it needs is sufficient bandwidth to handle peak voice traffic. The cost is far less because we need less lines to the building, and less infastructer (the Cisco VoIP phone plug into eithernet jacks, just like computers).
It's not like VoIP is some magical technology that rips off the phone company. It's just a different kind of phone circut, just like a cell phone. If you want VoIP at some place you still need the IP part, access to the internet in otherwords. You have to pay someone for that.
It's not like the telephone companies have some sacrad right to keep doing bussiness like they always have done. I'm betting that in 30 years just about everything (phone, data, cable TV and so on) will be IP traffic, it's just more efficient. When you do that, you only need one single link to supply all your different needs.
Voice on Cable Modems (Score:4, Insightful)
Two of the problems of VOIP over cable are service reliability and reliability during power failures. The easiest way to fix the latter is to integrate some cheap cellphones into the equipment. Service reliability's a bit harder - the economics of the cable TV business assume that you need enough technicians and trucks to take care of most failures, so customers are happy and you don't need to rebate their bills for downtime very often, but that fundamentally it's just television, and if it goes down for the weekend in bad weather, your customers can read a book or go watch videotapes until you can get it fixed.
Moore's Law for Beer and Telecoms (Score:4, Interesting)
A decade or so ago, when Joe Nacchio was working for AT&T before he started Qwest, he gave us a talk at Bell Labs where he drew a curve on the screen that showed the market price of long-distance voice telephone minutes. It took a steep dive, settling down asymptotically toward zero; given the prices of the time, he was showing it going from a quarter to a dime to a nickel to a penny. What could we do about it? Well, the choices were adapt or die. Use technology to cut costs, and use lower prices (plus advertising) to get people to make more phone calls.
Many countries' PTTs were abusing their monopoly positions by charging excessively non-cost-based prices for their service, ripping off their customers and damaging their overall economies by interfering with international communications and therefore international trade. In the past couple of years, they've been taken down not only by callback companies, but by wholesalers using VOIP technology to keep their costs much lower than the PTTs costs. Everybody wins from that, except the greedier PTTs, and most of them were using excess international prices to cross-subsidize local calling.
What's the next step? What happens if VOIP drops costs to the equivalent of $0.001 per minute? The most likely big impact turns out not to be the costs, but the fact that you no longer need a gigantic expensive #4ESS telephone switch to route large numbers of calls - internet routing technology works quite well for that, with something DNS-like to help with end-user location. Unlike those of you who aren't in the telephony business, yes, we do care that our last several business models have gotten the chairs kicked out from under them, but the problem of proposing new business models for telcos is ours, not that of the people who are trying to make us obsolete.
Re:Logical Conclusion of VoIP (Score:2)
If telcos does tits up your last mile either dissapears or becomes a monopoly. So you either have nowt. Or pay whatever your local monopoly feels like having you pay.
Censorship = Damage? (Score:2)
Re:Censorship = Damage? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been demonstrated here in Australia with the federal goverments push to sensor content and make ISP's liable for content that is served up from their service.
It's been demonstrated by the Chineese government with their sensorship and blocking of sites like google.
It has been shown by the USA's government in their restriction of encryption technology export.
All of these things are easilly worked around by even the most non techsavvy user.
Those of us who understand what the internet is and how it works understand that this sort of filtering will not work. These type sof things just show that until governments actually gain an understanding of the things they are trying to control they will continue to make fools of themselves. (btw: I'm surprised they dont want to block tcp ports 25, 110 & 143 (smtp,pop,imap) as people might send electronic mail rather than using the snail mail service).
Block _all_ UDP? (Score:2)
After this kind of crap, I don't think I'd have any problem with them blocking UDP 53.
I think this is "Just Cause" for... (Score:2, Funny)
Heck, maybe it'll tide us over until Iraq War II debuts in January.
Next day, several new protocols invented... (Score:5, Funny)
VODNSOIP
VOHTTPOIP
VOICMP
Re:Next day, several new protocols invented... (Score:2)
Re:Next day, several new protocols invented... (Score:2, Funny)
I don't see how this is moral or legal.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Example: I buy a new tool. It is a clawhammer. For some reason, this deprives the company making nail removers of money, especially considering their old nail removers were overpriced.
So, the government affiliated nail remover maker goes and makes buying clawhammers illegal.
This is immoral. You can't just rent-a-law because your overpriced technology is being smashed by a preferrable alternative.
I mean, just because you can buy laws (ie: riaa), doesn't mean it should be allowed to happen..
Re:I don't see how this is moral or legal.. (Score:2)
Re:I don't see how this is moral or legal.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a situation which, IMHO, will only increase as we see massive values for companies being created overnight (in business terms) for IT related products which are _bound_ to become outdated in a matter of a few years. For the lucky few like MS, they were able to get the wealth early, buy the politicians and can now sit back and reap the rewards. For anyone in competition, the barrier to entry just got a whole lot higher. Not only do you need a better product, but you need a spare billion dollars to throw at Capital Hill.
Gotta love that combination of capitalism and 'democracy'.
Re:I don't see how this is moral or legal.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not called capitalism. It's called corruption.
Re:I don't see how this is moral or legal.. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, this is an example of goverment interference in a capatalistic society. Perhaps it is correct to say that this is how elected (some might say corrupt) government (such as the US has) works.
The capatalist thing to do is to let companies that cannot respond to new technologies and markets die a natural death while new companies take their place.
Unfortunately this means that people will be displaced from jobs, and they must be willing to learn new things in order to be employable at new positions. People don't like this, they want to just stay doing the same old thing forever, so they get their elected officials to try to maintain the status quo.
In the end it will result in stifling of new technologies and that country will ultimately pay a price.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unbelievable (Score:2, Troll)
That's unbelievable!... that it happened in Panama before America.
Re:Unbelievable (Score:2)
As a courtesy... (Score:2)
Who's with me?
More genius from those 'in charge'. (Score:2)
#define VOIP_PORT 80
#endif
This isn't really all that different from what... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for satellite and other wireless communications, ALL VoIP in Panama (as elsewhere) goes through wires that sit on the Government's land (that would be everything). If I can't use a public road except by playing by the rules of regulated private companies, (even if I know of a cheaper alternative), why should Panamians be allowed to use data lines going through public land, except by playing by the rules of a regulated private company?
Okay, that's the most contrived example I could think of. I don't think there's a closer equivalent -- some candidates were Edison (the electric company) - run public schools (look it up -- but you're not required to go to one, since you can homeschool) and private appraisals mandated in certain cases by the government.
Anyway, uh, yeah, HOW DARE THEY.
Re:This isn't really all that different from what. (Score:4, Informative)
small picky point (Score:4, Informative)
Got a neighbor periodically goes to panama for his oil business stuff, he sez the government there is roughly equivalent to say chicago in corruption levels, ie, total top to bottom. I imagine them mucking with the internet only applies to peons, that if you are at least a semi connected fatcat and pay the correct bribes you can do whatever you want, but at that level you could afford long distance so the point is moot. Most (not al, generally speaking here of course) civil laws in regards to anything but fraud in it's various forms more or less exist to protect the already wealthy's status quo. No different here than in panama, not really.
I'll give you an example I am running into locally here where I live. I'm in the market for a small piece of property to have a home on. My income level for this would be in the uber cheap range. Anywho, this county a few years ago decided on a minimun acreage size for new homes, 1.5 acres. Well, ok, fine and dandy..... trouble is, for the decades preceding this, they "allowed" smaller than that to be deeded up as lots and now exist in undeveloped abundance by the hundreds or thousands really, like 1.1 acre, etc. These lots are now useless except for growing weeds and trees, people are stuck with them now, no one wants to buy them, you can't do anything with them, but they are still taxed. This benefits the more recent richer arrivals who took the county over(lotta cash under the table money gets spread into country government is the popular notion) and don't want it to be farming/light manufacturing, they want it to be yet another yuppie retirement/second home vacation place.
Poorer people are untermenschen here, you can WORK here, but they would rather you to live over real far away some other place and commute, please go home at quitting time, no riff raff. It sucks but that's another example of a civil statute enforced by their bureaucrats and hired badged mercenaries to benefit the more wealthy.
What it will also kill.. (Score:3, Interesting)
On the negative side, it will kill Quicktime, which needs UDP ports for negotiating a connection.
In case site gets /.'ed (Score:5, Informative)
The ports include ones that are commonly used for voice over IP as well as some that are used for other purposes, apparently with the idea that these, too, could be used to circumvent the POTS (plain old telephone system, a term of art) in making telephone calls.
In the decree, the Panamanian government requires "that within 5 days of publication, all ISPs will block the 46 UDP ports used for VoIP and any other that could be used in the future (which could end up being all UDP ports)," according to a reporter and computer consultant there, and that "the ISPs will block in their firewall or main router and in all their Border routers that connect with other autonomous systems."
This "unequivocally decrees that all routers, including those not carrying traffic from Panama, but that might be traversing Panama, have the 46 UDP ports blocked."
The significance of the government action affects areas far beyond that nation. Due to its geographical location, numerous undersea cables connect in the country, making it a substantial hub for international IP traffic.
Among the services that are to be disrupted are NetMeeting, Dialpad, and Net2phone, which labels itself "communication without borders," a claim which apparently will no longer be true if one of those borders is Panamanian or communication is between two countries whose IP traffic passes through Panama.
The decree is apparently rooted in complaints by Cable & Wireless Panama (Motto: "If you're worried about your data, voice, or Internet service provider, we're here to help"), which says it is losing money due to users employing the Internet to make otherwise expensive internetional telephone calls -- calls that would otherwise be listed on Cable & Wireless bills.
The UDP ports involved include: 1034, 1035, 2090, 2091, 5000, 6801, 6802, 6803, 9900, 9901, 12080, 12120, 12122, 22555, 26133, 30582, 35061, 38000, 38100, 38200, 47563, 48310, 51200, and 51201.
The decree was published October 25.
Among the services that employ some of those ports are "nlockmgr," the NFS lock manager responsible for rpc.statd and rpc.lockd, which in turn are responsible for crash recovery functions for locked files and for processing file locking requests, respectively; telnet; and numerous VoIP services.
In addition to those who wish to save on their phone bills, the government order blocks the perfectly lawful use of those ports by businesses that have legitimate VoIP applications allowed in the country.
There were reports late Sunday that Panamanian ISPs were planning a demonstration aimed at exhibiting their displeasure with the government action.
Possible reasons for this move? (Score:5, Interesting)
Privatization - Phone Company: [alphaluz.com] and A Case of Privatization Gone Wrong: Panama's Wires Crossed [worldpress.org]. Perhaps this is the start of some revenue-generating stunt to pull some dumbass decision-maker's ass out of a fire somewhere?
-fester (capt. conspiracy?)
ps.. I'm sure Panamanians by and large dislike this as well.. the 'pissant' is directed at the governmental representation of Panama, which right now looks suspiciously like a boil on someone's ass.
This is crazy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Panama assists security developers everywhere. (Score:4, Informative)
People have been saying for years we need transparent encryption of internet connections (OK mabee I've been saying it) Once 'important' countries like Panama start playing routing games like this it becomes even more important.
Such heavy handed actions might be just what projects like FreeSwan [freeswan.org] need to get more universal acceptance. That all being said does anyone honestly belive that panama will be able to block *all* UDP traffic, while they are at it is might be a good idea to block ICMP and TCP - both of which could potentially carry voice data as well.
Cable & Wireless of "Panama" (Score:5, Interesting)
This is yet another example of our British friends at Cable & Wireless adapting to the local culture of the country which they're sucking the blood out of. They obviously have quickly learned the Panamenian way of politics and have paid off all the necessary politicians, which can often be bought very cheap.
Cable & Wireless is privatization gone totally wrong. The previous phone company was a government owned company called INTEL, and Cable & Wireless beat US GTE and took over the phone system of Panama. The results have been horrible.
Local calls in Panama used to be like in the US, you paid your minimal fee and could talk all the minutes you wanted. Cable & Wireless brought the wonderful European model of paying for each minute for local calls.
If that wasn't enough, they also charge you per minute (I think) for calls from a land line phone in your house to a cell phone. That is, you pay for calling a cell phone and the person on the cell phone pays too. I had to find this the hard way after making a few calls to some friends from my grandmothers house.
So, people are fed up with them, and the internet savy are using Voice over IP a lot. I used to receive a lot of calls from a cousing over dialpad.com (when it was free). This was the ideal system to make a call to the US, dialpad was for US calls only, but the funny thing is that this worked great if you lived in another country.
Here's a good article on the whole mess Cable & Wireless is creating;
A Case of Privatization Gone Wrong - [worldpress.org]
Panama's Wires Crossed
Re:Cable & Wireless of "Panama" (Score:5, Interesting)
The good news is that the move towards packet based services (i.e., the Internet) has thrown a kink in their business model.
In Bermuda, a local ISP started offering VoIP back in 2000 on a DS3 provisioned into the US. Per minute charges via C&W: $1.10/minute. VoIP: $0.40/minute. Quality? A fuckload better on average than C&W. Now that the ISP has enabled SS7 for true 1+ dialing, the other traditional carriers have had to reduce prices.
Once the service was made available to the public, they were then threatened with termination of the DS3 by the submarine cable provider (not C&W, although they were in on trying to regulate out the use of VoIP except by the international carriers).
It was even worse when C&W mandated no other fiber systems could be brought into a country. They could set pricing on voice and data cicuits to milk the subscribers. Back in 96' a DS1 (T1) from Bermuda to NYC ran $85K... a month. Now it's down to a reasonable $17-22K/month (rack rate).
Sorry for the rant, but I had a bad week with C&W. Dropped a production frame circuit and when calling the Bermuda NOC I was told that it was a US problem and to call them (altough I contract and pay the Bermuda office). US had dropped our email addresses (all 5 of them) from the announcement emails they send out. Some good service for over $100K per year in circuits.
Grrrrrrr.
Re:Cable & Wireless of "Panama" (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately I lived there when Windows 95 came out. I got a copy in Miami (legal) and installed it on my machine. At the install, it couldn't find the CD drive or sound card after the first reboot. The 800 number was just too expensive at about 1.50 US per minute. I went back to Win 3.1 for the duration of my stay and installed 95 2 years later when I moved back and got real support. It would have been much more than the price of the software to spend a couple hours on a free 800 number on hold for tech support.
The more things change... (Score:5, Informative)
One detail that usually gets left out of these articles, though: the "local third world telco monopoly" is not in any way a homegrown Panamanian entity. No, the citizens of Panama, like most of their neighbors in the carribean, are getting royally screwed by our dear friends at Cable and Wireless. [americasnetwork.com]
Oh yeah, and the irony is... (Score:3, Interesting)
How much did the phone companies pay the gov? (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inefficient Transportation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know whether you have lived in a small town. I have, in Europe. It took three minutes to walk to the supermarket, five minutes to walk to work, and three minutes to walk to the train station (which would take me directly to the airport and pretty much anywhere else). For short distance trips, I'd use a bicycle or the bus (fast and on-time).
The quality of life there was unmatched by anything I have found in the Bay Area (where I live now), even though I made a fraction then of what I make now. The sad thing is that most Americans don't realize how poor the quality of life in America actually is. (In case you are wondering why I didn't stay there--it's because my friends, family, and job are here.)
And some of those 'corrupt' politicians dismantled public transportation because it was/is a very large sinkhole for tax dollars.
Cars are a much bigger "sinkhole" for tax dollars than public transportation. Even disregarding all the infrastructure costs, health costs and lost productivity from cars alone are enormous and dwarf anything spent on public transportation.
Almost true... (Score:3, Insightful)
As funny as you thought that was, it's painfully close to the truth. The U.S. government recently enacted a 38% duty on all soft-wood lumber imports from Canada in order to protect its own lumber industry. Now they expect Canada to supply raw logs for processing south of the border (not to mention cheap electricity with which to process it).
What next? (Score:2)
Indiana tried this [urbanlegends.com] 105 years ago... That will put Panama about the right technological place in time.
-- Multics
Age-Old Dilemma (Score:2)
POTS? (Score:2)
The IPSEC era draws ever-closer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Typical of Panama in general. (Score:5, Interesting)
And it once again sounds like the corrupt workings of their ruling junta.
Typical situations:
Transito (traffic cops) targetting rich foreigners for some BS violation, so they could receive bribe money. It was so common, that my friends always planned on taking extra cash to pay corrupt traffic cops.
The railroad system turned over by the US (at the time already "turned over" to the Panamanian govt) which in a few years had became totally non-operational due to local inept management.
Many reliable stories of gov't for hire (much like the US) where the politicos where bought off, not by campaign contributions, but people bought by large amounts of cash for personal gain.
All in all the ordinary people of Panama were friendly and had the attitude: oh well it happens, might as well be happy. (Papas e chulatas) Potatoes and bacon. oh well.
Personally I am surprised the Canal still operates. But one thing most Americans don't realize is that a provision in the treaty stipulates the US can reclaim it if it becomes non-operational. That in my opinion, is the reason the canal hasn't followed the fate of everything else "turned over" and ruined by its corrupt govt.
I have a very long term solution (Score:5, Interesting)
They want to block UDP ports that *can* be used for VOIP? Why not *make* 'em block all UDP and let them find out how screwed that actually leaves them? Wanna see a government backtrack on a previous decision really quick?
Unless Panama wants to block all web browsing...
Bear with me while I explain
UDP is used for VOIP because TCP is a streaming protocol and as such isn't particularly useful for real-time data transmission -- as said by another poster elsewhere, it's preferable to just simply lose a packet every now and then rather than to have the connection pause suddenly while TCP handles congestion control.
So... what I imagine is this: a system running VOIP listens to a randomly chosen UDP port rather than a specifically chosen one. The exact port to try to connect to is found by connecting to the system via the TCP port 80, and the VOIP system responds to the connection request letting the caller know which UDP port to actually use, and then the TCP connection is closed. The caller can then use the UDP port it was informed about. Since the system can be listening on ANY UDP port, possibly even one that would normally be used for some other well-known service, the government would have no choice but to create a ruling that would unilaterally block all UDP.
Seriously... I think it would be close to hilarious to see what they would come up with to try to stop that.
has happened elsewhere. (Score:3, Informative)
This was done unilaterally, with support from the supposedly independent telco regulation authority.
People complained, ISPs took out ads in papers and made press releases about it, and it's now looking like the sites will be unblocked by the end of the week. Hopefully.
Wrong approach to a non-problem (Score:3, Interesting)
What's happened, and the point I keep trying to make, is that technology has changed the economics of these industries.
This is indeed true of teh VOIP scene. What a pathetic lack of understanding of the technology the Panamanian governement has displayed. Many of those ports are just as easily used by many apps that they definately don't want to ban. Exchange Sever is one example, but there are many more.
Re:Revolt! (Score:2)
Re:But... But.... (Score:2)
What *is* 'the spirit of the internet', and what is "internet" you are referring to in the first place? If you are talking about TCP/IP network, then there is no "spirit". There are RFCs, and i don't think you can find one which specs which ports should or should not be blocked.
"Open and unrestricted"? As in, a bunch of open mail relays avialable to spammers, for example? Thanks, but no thanks :)
Also, what do you mean "supposed"? By whom?
As for "especially by companies": as of now, MOST of the internet is owned (as in, lines and networking equipment) by those "companies" you seem to hate so much.
In short, get off your political horse, and instead of whining go build some program to help use other UDP ports if this action is so against your spirit.
-DVK.
Re:But... But.... (Score:2, Funny)
1034-1035? (Score:2)
Re:damn mexicans (Score:2)
Re:It's ok - Panama sucks (Score:3, Insightful)