Wednesday, February 22, 2012

France Effectively NOT Blocking Foreign VoIP Providers


UPDATE: THIS BLOG POST IS A TOTAL MISTAKE. FRANCE IS NOT BLOCKING FOREIGN VOIP PROVIDERS. ACTUALLY, IT IS BROADVOICE THAT IS BLOCKING FOREIGN IP ADDRESSES. MY APOLOGIES. FEEL FREE TO CRITICIZE. I AM NOT REMOVING THIS POST IN THE SPIRIT OF ABSURDITY.




As of February, 21st 2012, it seems that Foreign VoIP providers such as Broadvoice & Vonage are blocked to the French public. While investigating this issue, here's what I found out by running a mere "ping" command:



ping proxy.nyc.broadvoice.com


PING proxy.nyc.broadvoice.com (147.135.20.221): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
36 bytes from g2-8.br1.nyc1.ny.broadvoice.com (199.232.28.34): Communication prohibited by filter
Vr HL TOS  Len   ID Flg  off TTL Pro  cks      Src      Dst
 4  5  00 5400 be10   0 0000  33  01 6070 192.168.0.28  147.135.20.221 


Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
^C


It looks like all foreign VoIP services are blocked by all ISPs in France (I didn't have the opportunity to run a test from a "Free" DSL connection though). Same results so far with Orange DSL, Numericable & Bouygues Cellular.

Connecting through a VPN works so it can only be the result of a voluntary action. This is a very sad and definitely terrifying news for those of us that subscribe to a U.S. based VoIP service in order for their American friends & family to reach them on a U.S. phone number.

I thought that we would only see such practices in countries like China but it seems that censorship is definitely coming to a place near you...


12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think so : refusing the ping is likely done by the voip provider themselves, and that doesn't prevent you of using their service at all ...

Can you publish something serious about that topic ?

fr8d said...

My apologies. You are right. I've just updated this post.

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Daizy Joshi said...

Voip Providers commonly refers to the communication protocols, technologies, methodologies, and transmission techniques involved in the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks,such as the Internet

Unknown said...

Great post. My friend was telling me about VoIP so I have been looking up VoIP providers all morning. Thanks so much for sharing.

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