North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors

  • From: Adi Linden
  • Date: Sat Mar 26 14:11:45 2005 
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Eric Gauthier wrote:
> Hrm... Isn't a VoIP call realtively low bandwidth?  I haven't studied
> this, but Vonage's site seems to imply that the maximum data rate is 90Kbps
> (http://www.vonage.com/help_knowledgeBase_article.php?article=190).  I
> typically see speeds greater than this from my web browser...  Are they
> saying that anything that might consume over 100Kbps isn't going to be
> allowed?

90kbps may be low bandwidth but the packets per second are a killer for
some equipment. VoIP typically has small packets, 80 bytes or 160 bytes,
whereas your webbrowser has most packets close to the max MTU, usually
1500 byte packets. There is quite a bit of wireless gear that buckles
under the stress of very few VoIP streams. Those few streams add up to
much less then the theoretical advertised throughput.

Adi