On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 8:53:50 AM CET Simon Matter via CentOS wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 1:50:57 PM CET Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >> On Sun, 26 Jan 2020 at 20:45, hw <hw@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > > I'm not sure I understand what you are asking.
> >> >
> >> > It is about VOIP calls via SRTP being interrupted at irregular
> >>
> >> intervals.
> >>
> >> > The intervals appear to depend on the time of day: Such phone calls
> >>
> >> can
> >>
> >> > last for a duration of about 5--25 minutes during the day to up to 1.5
> >> > hours at around 3am before being interrupted.
> >>
> >> UDP is called Unreliable Datagram Protocol for a reason. It can be
> >> dropped at all kinds of places in between the two users depending on
> >> how busy the routers/firewalls between 2 users can be.
> >
> > How would packets being dropped explain the replay errors and
> > authentication
> > failures?
> >
> >> Packets can get
> >> out of order or a dozen other things which then relies on the
> >> application layer to put the things back in 'order'.
> >
> > libsrtp seems to have provisions to deal with packets arriving out of
> > order.
> >
> >> For voice, that
> >> usually means a drop or other ugliness because it is assumed that if
> >> the quality is too bad, the people would just call each other again.
> >
> > That's a funny idea. Phone calls just worked fine and were good quality
> > 25
> > years ago, and mostly long before that. I have never expected to have to
> > call
> > anyone back because of poor quality in over 40 years, and I'm not going to
> > start to expect that now.
>
> Just wait another 10 or 20 years and everybody will tell you it's normal
> and nothing to worry. They won't believe you if you tell them there was a
> time long ago when telephony just worked.
All things will be a lot worse in 10 or 20 years.
> I remember in around 1999, when a lot of companies started to hear about
> VoIP and wanted to implement it to save money and welcome the future, I
> had lot's of discussion about it in the company I was working back then.
> Those who new a bit more from the technology side said this can be done in
> a company but not widely as a replacement for (public) telephony
> infrastructure. Now that whole countries went all IP, just listen to
> police and emergency services what they think about it: only now they
> start to realize that having telephony which just works is a thing of the
> past!
It's still something that just needs to work. And 1999? Maybe it's because
this country has kinda detached itself from technology and remains behind
further and further, currently about 30 years, but in 1999 nobody has heard of
VOIP. That started in 2018, and people expect phone to just work. If
anything, it should get better, not worse.
> But hey, don't worry, they will fix it with "the Cloud" :-)
It only means that we can't do anything anymore.
> > It's unacceptable, and it's not feasible, either. For example, try to
> > call
> > paypal to solve some issue with your account. It can take an hour before
> > they
> > call you back because everyone is busy. Finally you talk to someone and
> > just
> > after you explained the problem, the call is interrupted. Good luck
> > calling
> > the same person back. You won't get anywhere because your next try will
> > only
> > result in another interrupted call.
> >
> >> For the most part this works pretty well but all it takes is a
> >> firewall to get busy on something else and you have a bunch of UDP
> >> packets out of order and people's calls dropping.
> >
> > VOIP calls are worlds away from what phone calls used to be. Dropping
> > calls
> > has never been an option and is not an option now.
>
> Telephony is like operating systems these days: a lot of things improve
> but not everything...
What has actually improved? In 1999, I could make a phone call whenever I
wanted to, and it worked just fine. In 2020, I can't make a phone call at all
because it will be interrupted before I'd get anywhere with it and it's just
embarrassing.
What am I supposed to do? Travel to paypal to talk to someone in person? At
least we can still travel, and that is about to change, too.
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