Panama's government has ordered all of its ISPs to begin blocking the UDP ports used for Internet telephony (AKA VoIP). The national telco is pissed that ISPs are undermining their businesses, which rely on charging farcically high rates for long-distance, and they've gotten their pals in government to strong-arm all the ISPs in the country.
In the decree, the Panamanian government requires "that within 5 days of publication, all ISPs will block the 24 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 24 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.
David "Reed's Law" Reed posted this followup to the Interesting People list:
What Panama is doing is asking for the Internet to be redesigned and
rearchitected in order to inflict a policy that relates to
competition. The result is not the Internet.It is important for the IAB and IETF to point out to the government of
Panama that the service they are asking to be deployed is NOT the
Internet. It violates the Internet standards, by incorporating an
end-to-end protocol into the routers between adminstrative domains.
(via Interesting People)
