Despite a regulatory regime that is impossible to obey (isolating data traffic that's to be turned into voice on a network with trillions of transactions going through it each second) hardware makers are going ahead with the production of Voice Over IP (VOIP) hardware.

Linksys and Netgear are the latest to say that voice support will become part of their residential gateways Real Soon Now. (For more on VOIP, buy O'Reilly's VOIP book, right.)

In this case, however, the Feds will be glad to know there's actually less here than meets the eye.

Linksys and NetGear are only going to support the most easily-tapped VOIP system, Vonage.

Vonage runs its Internet calls through a central switch so they can be readily tapped (if they're not encrypted). Other VOIP systems, like Skype, are peer-to-peer, without a central hub to tap.

Of course, all this assumes that Voice Over IP is just Voice Over IP, that it's a simple replacement technology. It's not. The power of VOIP will be the power of new applications that have yet to be created, like

• video VOIP,
  
• VOIP conferencing,
  
• VOIP mail,
  
• time-shifted VOIP IM,
  
• VOIP support within games,
  
• etc.
  
• etc.
  
• etc.