[e2e] Skype and congestion collapse.

[David P. Reed]

Alex - the underlying assumption is that traditional telephony delivers 
911 functionality best.   Well, the word on the street is that in 
California, if you call 911 on your basic, non IP cell phone, your exact 
position is delivered to ... well, no one knows where, but it's a place 
that has no capability to actually transfer that information to anyone 
who actually can help you in an emergency.   Better to call directory 
assistance for the phone number of your local police dept. and hope they 
don't tell you "911", because that will guarantee 30-90 minutes of 
screwing around.

OK, maybe wired phones still do 911 OK, but do PBXes?   I doubt it - so 
the point about bosses may be bogus as well.

Here the argument that 911 should be "in the network" fails.   I'd much 
rather have my actual physical telephone be smart enough to figure out 
how to summon emergency services (perhaps finding the doctor who is in 
the next cubicle over if the SLP emergency service existed), I think.

Dale Hatfield points out that the phone companies have made it 
*impossible* to deploy a "911-like" service over the WWW, because who 
can trust that a person would actually tell the truth that they have a 
life or death situation on their hands.   But of course we can ALL trust 
Verizon Wireless with our lives... yeah right.