My apologies. Mea culpa. I sincerely regret any confusion that may have been caused.
VoIP is a complete waste of time.
OK, I exaggerate slightly for effect. But in fact, VoIP is indeed not very important. Why? Because it mistakes technical efficiency for economic efficiency. What really matters is Voice Over The Internet (VotI) -- the network or networks, not the internet protocol itself. Yes, by definition that means VotI is VoIP, but the converse isn't true. There is a difference.
You can run VoIP on a private network: VoIP without VotI. If that network is one you own and control, then having a stupid IP network isn't a massive advance over an inflexible smart network. If a smart middle node gets in the way of progress, just change it. No service provider gets in the way, no third party permission required. Yes, there have been "revolutions from the edge" in corporations (e.g. the deployment of PCs was initially driven by departmental budgets to but spreadsheets for accountants). But that's the exception, not the rule. Most IT and communications change is centrally driven, because that's where the budget lies. Apart from anything, you're probably going to get fired for breaking the corporate security policies: don't try to mount an insurrection armed with IM clients and Linux boxes hosted in cubicles.
We're all familiar with public smart networks and their comprehensive failings. Conversely, the stupid Internet crushes all rivals, one by one. Which is why the end-to-end principle is possibly misstated. It isn't that functionality is best placed at the edges. That's just a corollary of control being best placed in the hands of the user of that functionality, be that an individual or a corporation. And since we don't (yet) operate and control our own networks, that in turn pushes the functionality to the edges.
So VotI is important to society because it represents a shift in the control of economic assets. VoIP is just a technology with negligible stand-alone economic significance in the absence of the Internet. It's like a wave-particle duality theorem for neworking. You get a much better understanding if you see the Internet as being as much an economic phenomenon as a technical one. The network of networks has formed because of the low cost on internetworking. Kind of obvious, but needs to be said.
One consequence is that the much-vaunted ability of companies like AT&T to offer consumer VoIP solutions that run over their own private backbones is irrelevant over the long run. Private IP networks are only needed to the extent that (i) there are technical dificiencies in the Internet [hard to find] or that (ii) the digital identity and governance infrastructure is missing and you are swamped by abuse [still some deficiencies, but improving].
What does this all mean for the end-to-end principle? Imagine a local ad-hoc mesh network. These networks are effectively little communities, and the "user" is the whole network. Intermediaries only transit packets on the basis that they are willing tolerate your through traffic. There's no money flow, no contracts. Everyone's a stakeholder. I wouldn't be surprised to see some regression of functionality into the "core" of such a network. This challenges the "technical" end-to-end principle, but perfectly in line with the "economic" version. (The end-to-end principle only says the default place is the edge, so it doesn't contradict it. But the end-to-end principle doesn't say anything about when or why that default is broken.)
To push the point home in a more concrete manner, just consider the degenerate case of an open WiFi neighbourhood access point. The "edge" is my laptop borrowing your connectivity. But it would be perfectly reasonable for you to apply some form of QoS to make my packets second-class citizens compared to yours. After all, you're paying for the upstream broadband connection. Some "smarts" have crept one hop upstream from the edge. Again, the "economic" end-to-end principle tells us where the functionality goes, whereas the "technical" one doesn't.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. It's as simple as that.
PS Notice how BT changed their logo from a piper to an Internetish connected globe. Anyone else see the irony in the piper's escape?
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:03 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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