I am here in Amsterdam speaking at a Marcus Evans conference on 9th Annual Signalling Systems for Future Telecoms (Exploring the Future of Networks and Interconnect for an All-IP World), quite a mouthful but a really good event.
The first talk today was from Martin Stiemerling (NEC) who co-chairs the IETF nsis activity: Next Steps in Signaling (nsis) Charter. This is a fascinating development allowing flexible in-band signalling and QoS (Quality of Service) negotiation over IP routed networks.
As usual the main problem with any inter-domain QoS across the Internet is a business issue, rather than a technical one of standards: why would any network operator give some other operator's customers priority on their networks, so most QoS systems are applied within a single network autonomous system only, administered by a single operator. So just because I think my VoIP is important, doesn't mean every operator in my path will agree, even if the standards allow them to.