Section 6.2. Stumbling Blocks | Talk is Not Cheap!: Saving the High Costs of Misunderstandings at Work and Home

6.2. Stumbling Blocks

Today, getting a software phone and making calls out to other users of the same service is a snap. Even calling out to traditional telephone users works well and costs little. But getting inbound calls from traditional telephone users still includes plenty of hassle.

6.2.1. Getting the Firewall Out of the Way

When using a router supplied by a broadband phone provider such as Vonage, many connection issues are handled for you. The router's security configuration takes into account the attached broadband phones and initializes the firewall security settings properly to allow full phone access.

Using a software phone when you have a typical broadband router with even minimal security makes things more complicated. The problem comes with the way your router hides your internal devices (computers) from hackers on the Internet: the router masks your device's actual IP address. When a request from your computer goes through the router, the Network Address Translation (NAT) portion of the router's security software attaches its own address along with a specific port number.

When return packets (say the web page you asked to view) get back to the router, they include the specific port number given the outgoing packets by the router. The router then connects the outside packets to your device. Outsiders can't see through your router to your internal devices because internal device addresses never go past the router.

Note: Do the NAT ThingIn plain terms, every machine on the outside world thinks it's talking to your router, when it's actually talking to one of the machines on your network. This becomes a problem because your router doesn't know how to answer phone calls. That's why Vonage provides a customized router that knows how to handle incoming phone calls.

This security procedure works great for protecting internal devices from hackers, but also works great at protecting your softphone from callers. These issues will be easier to handle by the end of 2005, but right now they take too much serious time and effort to resolve for me to recommend them wholeheartedly to nontechnical users.

Note: Sneaky SkypeSkype's proprietary application sidesteps most firewall issues.

If you want a broadband phone that is easy to configure and easy for anyone to call, go back a chapter and look at Vonage and the other companies. If you want a free way to call a few other people, each of whom are running the same type of softphone on their computers, SIP or Skype will work great today.

Small businesses (or extravagant home users, I suppose) who put an Internet Telephony server directly on the Internet like a web server don't have these problems. It's only when you try to get through one of the inexpensive home and small office broadband routers with a limited security implementation that frustration grows.

6.2.2. Regulations

Monopoly telephone companies, in the U.S. and every other country, have always been tightly entangled with their governments. That, of course, is how they get and protect their monopolies.

Not the computer-centric phone providers. They are not, according to the U.S. government, phone companies; rather, they are data services companies. In fact, what is now called the Pulver Ruling (yes, that Pulver, as in Jeff) states flatly that these companies and their products may not be regulated like a telephone company at all.

Once you pay your license fees for broadband access to your home or small business (and there are fees, you just don't see them on the back pages of your bill unless you look carefully), what you send over those broadband links is your business. Your Internet Service Provider has some regulatory oversight because they use data communication lines from regulated phone companies, but what you put through your broadband connection is your business.

With a couple of caveats, of course. First, not all countries believe this way. More repressive regimes in Europe and Africa try to control everything, which may involve you if you have family or friends in those countries you wish to sign up for the service. One or two South American countries are making noises like this as well, because they see the revenues for their state telephone monopoly falling. Repressive governments don't care what the people want; they just care about their state monopolies.

Second, we haven't had a court case where a computer-centric phone provider gets caught between their customer's privacy and a district attorney. Not that the services won't give up the names and addresses of users when asked, because they will have to. The problem comes with Skype and their use of encryption.

You'll see more details about this in a moment, but the bottom line is that Skype encrypts all phone connections between each computer (or PDA) running the client software. Great for users who want privacy, but really bad for government officials waving around their court order to wiretap a user.

Wiretapping an encrypted conversation won't satisfy the law enforcement officials involved, and they will get mad at Skype. From headquarters in Luxembourg, the Skype founders will be apologetic but probably not helpful. The local Internet service provider will be helpful, but unable to decrypt the Skype conversation. This mess will make headlines, I promise.