[jordanthoms]

I'd settle for IP-based video conferencing that actually works, 100% of the time. As far as I can tell the major issues with that now are more from WiFi - Bufferbloat is particularly bad there and interference causes small dropouts (run a ping to a local router in the background for a while, and you'll probably see jitter eventually).

It's pretty noticeable here in New Zealand where most people are now on fiber connections with easily enough bandwidth and low latency - but video calling is still way harder than it should be.

[yomly]

Are you talking about video chat within NZ or with rest of world? I imagine there's a fixed amount of latency with calling anyone in NZ due to speed of light...

[fastball]

As the crow flies, it takes light 66ms to get from one point on earth to a point on the opposite side.

Pretty sure the limiting factor is not the speed of light. It's the fact that (currently) these packets on not traveling in a straight line, and there is a lot of switching happening between A and B.

There is plenty of room for improvement in this area.

[jack1243star]

> IP-based video conferencing that actually works, 100% of the time.

This is oxymoron. Our packet-switched infra simply cannot fulfill such promise.

[bawolff]

That's a bit pedantic - the poster would cleary be happy with something that worked 99.9% of the time, and there is no technical reason why our packet switched network can't suppot that in theory

[EdJiang]

For all the net-neutrality proponents: isn't this an argument against net neutrality? If ISPs could discriminate depending on traffic and apply better QoS priorities to sensitive content like video calls, reprioritizing downloads and p2p applications, we could have video conferencing that works, 99.9% of the time.

[ryukafalz]

No. The FCC's 2015 open internet order had an exemption for "reasonable network management":

>A network management practice is a practice that has a primarily technical network management justification, but does not include other business practices. A network management practice is reasonable if it is primarily used for and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service.

Net neutrality has always been about leveling the playing field, not about preventing network operators from improving service for users. So, for example: QoS rules to make real-time communication work better in general? Great! QoS rules to prioritize Zoom over other real-time comms because the ISP has a deal with them? Nope.

[jack1243star]

Yet there's not one implementation that does work? I am not an expert on this, but I don't think current Internet-based solutions can compete with telephone/cellphone voice call on reliability, not without some drastic infrastructural change.

[criddell]

I thought a lot of phone calls were actually routed over the internet?