TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Apr 94 12:11:30 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 189 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature" (Peter M. Weiss) Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature" (Les Reeves) Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (H. Peter Anvin) Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (Gregory P. Monti) Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (John Anderson) Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet (Michael Covington) Re: GSM and Airbags (David Josephson) Re: GSM and Airbags (Gary Sanders) Re: GSM and Airbags (Jari Junikka) Re: ISDN Bridge Advice Please (Bob Larribeau) Re: DISN Information Request (Bob Larribeau) Re: Quality of Long Distance Telephone Lines (Carl Oppedahl) Re: DID, PBX and University Phones, SL-100 (Jay Hennigan) Re: How Can FAX Use T1 But Keep POTS Number? (puma@netcom.com) Re: TCP/IP Over X.25/Datapac (Garrett Wollman) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and GEnie. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 07:11:50 EDT From: Peter M. Weiss Subject: Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature" Organization: Penn State University Once upon a time, we here at PSU were advised NOT to let our outgoing LD calls ring more than eight (?) times or else we would incur toll charges even without an answer. Don't know what the rules of the game are today. Pete-Weiss@psu.edu "The 'NET' never naps" +1 814 863 1843 31 Shields Bldg. -- Penn State Univ -- University Park, PA 16802-1202 USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For lack of ability to supervise your calls, they were saying if you stayed on the line longer than that they were going to assume you got an answer. I imagine the same would have been true if you listened to a busy signal without hanging up for more than 30-40 seconds. The flip side of the coin was if you were able to get connected, convey your message in twenty or thirty seconds and disconnect you would not get charged for the call. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: Re: Unwelcome AT&T "Feature" Date: 28 Apr 1994 02:59:22 -0700 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [login: guest] Steve Kass (skass@drunivac.drew.edu) wrote: > I had to leave an important message after hours tonight, and the party > I was calling warned me that to reduce their voice mail load, the > system was set up not to answer for 16 rings or longer. The sanity of > that aside, I placed the call through AT&T and was unable to get > through. Before the call was answered, AT&T informed me that my party > did not answer, and that they were sorry, I would now be disconnected. > I then successfully placed the call by dialing 10222+ . I couldn't > help wondering if an AT&T operator could have placed the call with > this "feature" disabled. I find this AT&T "feature" particularly annoying. As far as calling through the AT&T operator is concerned, you would have gotten a solicitation to use their Voice Mark Messaging Service (they no longer refer to it by that name) by pressing *123. This kind of invasion of 0+ calls is fine. However, disconnecting an unanswered 1+ call is *unacceptable*. Les lreeves@crl.com Atlanta,GA 404.874.7806 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you why AT&T adopted that stance. Radio talk show host Larry King was in the habit of helping his callers avoid toll charges by telling them, "when you call us, just let it ring, we will answer you when it is your turn to be on the air ..." While most talk shows answer and screen your call, then leave you on hold upwards of 30-45 minutes waiting for your chance to spill your bile (on your nickle, I might add ... very few are willing to provide an 800 number for you to camp out on at their expense), King's thing was to have all his bells turned off and let the lights on his phone wink instead. That way the caller did not have to pay and neither did King. AT&T got stuck with the cost instead of having their circuits tied up in a non-revenue position for the several hours King is on the air. AT&T finally got tired of being the straight man for King's routine and started cutting off his unanswered calls after a couple minutes. King's response was predictable: when he found out what AT&T was doing he blasted them over the air and told all his callers to start calling him using Sprint's 10333 code instead. AT&T's response: Good! Let him abuse Sprint instead. AT&T was glad to get rid of all that non-revenue dead weight traffic. So send thanks to Larry King for his abuse of the network which led AT&T to install the 'feature' you do not like. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hpa@eecs.nwu.edu (H. Peter Anvin N9ITP) Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet Reply-To: hpa@nwu.edu (H. Peter Anvin) Organization: Northwestern University Electromagnetics Laboratory Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 09:11:10 GMT > In article Paul Robinson > wrote: > I agree with Paul. As long as the names and addresses are gleaned > from public messages, no harm is done. Anybody who posts their > address publicly, whether in a newsgroup or on the local supermarket > notice board has no grounds for complaint about what others do with > that information. > On the other hand, if he's scanning headers of mail messages that are > routed through his machine, or worse, reading packets that fly by on a > net backbone, that's slimy. Rather like opening people's mailboxes to > read the return addresses on their mail, or hooking a pen recorder up > to their phone line. Based on the subset of the users on machines I maintain that were listed, I can almost guarantee that the addresses were from public USENET messages. They also have an option for unlisting your address (by sending mail to delete@whitepages.com) or adding it if you don't post (add@whitepages.com). Seems fair to me. hpa INTERNET: hpa@nwu.edu FINGER/TALK: hpa@ahab.eecs.nwu.edu IBM MAIL: I0050052 at IBMMAIL HAM RADIO: N9ITP or SM4TKN FIDONET: 1:115/511 or 1:115/512 STORMNET: 181:294/101 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 11:43:48 EDT From: Gregory P. Monti Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet A recent posting noted that an "Internet Yellow Pages" had been published. The writer speculated that a white pages might be along soon. Too late. The other weekend, I was in the Borders Book Store in Bailey's Crossroads, VA, and noted that an "Internet White Pages" was for sale. About three inches thick. Listed by personal last name, then first name, just like the telephone directory. I, and a friend whose Internet address I knew offhand, were both in it. They must have "fingered" or "pinged" the world to find all the personal names and associated them with their Internet addresses. Greg Monti Arlington, Virginia, USA gmonti@cap.gwu.edu ------------------------------ From: andrsonj@rtsg.mot.com (John Anderson) Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet Date: 28 Apr 94 11:40:46 GMT Organization: Motorola Cellulsr Infrastructure Group john@pixel.kodak.com (John Hall) writes: > In article Paul Robinson > writes: >> Internet White Pages". Someone started collecting E-Mail addresses >> and names for people from public messages, probably those posted on >> newsgroups and heavily circulated mailing lists and put them in >> alphabetical order. > On the other hand, if he's scanning headers of mail messages that are > routed through his machine, or worse, reading packets that fly by on a > net backbone, that's slimy. Rather like opening people's mailboxes to > read the return addresses on their mail, or hooking a pen recorder up > to their phone line. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are on-line databases that you can query to get a person's e-mail address. MIT provides a service that will search for a user's e-mail address given a search string. Supposedly, MIT gathers this info based on posts to Usenet News that pass through their site. Here's an example of how to get a list of all users named "anderson": > mail mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu Subject: send usenet-addresses/anderson ------------------------------ From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Subject: Re: Let Your Fingers do the Walking on the Internet Date: 28 Apr 1994 00:59:35 GMT Organization: AI Programs, University of Georgia, Athens I don't object to people knowing my email address, PROVIDED they don't presume that I'm the secretary for the whole university and maybe the whole state of Georgia! I hope this directory cautions new users that they should _not_ send mail to people other than the person they're actually trying to reach. The mere fact that I live within 50 miles of someone else doesn't mean I am handling email for them! Does anybody else get this kind of stuff, or is it just me? Michael A. Covington, Assc Rsch Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Programs The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7415 USA mcovingt@ai.uga.edu Unless specifically indicated, I am not speaking for the University. For information about any U.Ga. graduate program, email gradadm@uga.cc.uga.edu. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe former Digest participant John Higdon once commented that he recieves a large amount of mail at his site each day from people who make all sorts of erroneous assumptions about who he is, what his company does, how to reach other people via his site, etc ... all sorts of time-wasting, junk mail inquiries, and some of it quite rude at that claiming it is his fault the mail did not go through. PAT] ------------------------------ From: davidj@rahul.net (David Josephson) Subject: Re: GSM and Airbags Organization: a2i network Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 08:17:17 GMT In Stewart Fist <100033.2145@CompuServe. COM> writes: > I've just received by fax a photocopy of a story from the {Guardian > Weekly} (UK) dated April 3. > It is headlined "Mobile phone set off airbag" and the story is about a > couple of instances where (it is claimed) GSM handsets have set off > airbags in luxury cars in Europe. I'm interested to find out whether > this stuff is true, or an urban myth. I think it's probably myth, > because I can't imagine anything easier to shield from EMI than an > inertia switch in a car. If you want to do some research, check on the safety regulations for the distance between a 3 watt (or even 600 mW) 900 MHz transmitter and a blasting cap is. The actuating mechanism of an airbag is essentially a shotgun shell (without shot; the expanding gas is vented to the bag which it inflates) fired by a blasting cap or electric squib. > problem, but when I contact them they deny it. BMW, VW and Mercedes > are also reported to have had airbag blow-outs with GSM, but they also > all deny it. > Someone's not telling the truth. Would you? How about asking them just plainly what it is in an airbag that blows the bag up, eh? David Josephson ------------------------------ From: gws@gwssun.cb.att.com (Gary Sanders) Subject: Re: GSM and Airbags Reply-To: gary.w.sanders@att.com Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus Ohio. Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 12:49:04 GMT In article , Stewart Fist <100033.2145@ CompuServe.COM> wrote: > I've just received by fax a photocopy of a story from the {Guardian > Weekly} (UK) dated April 3. > It is headlined "Mobile phone set off airbag" and the story is about a > couple of instances where (it is claimed) GSM handsets have set off > airbags in luxury cars in Europe. I'm interested to find out whether > this stuff is true, or an urban myth. I think it's probably myth, > because I can't imagine anything easier to shield from EMI than an > inertia switch in a car. Yes but think about it; what is a switch but a couple of contacts? Add a liitle bit of dirt and gunk and you now have a diode. What can you you do with a diode -- you can detect radio signals. You now have an RF switch. Actually this warning went around the Ham radio circles for a while with friends and friends of friends having the problem. I have never heard anyone directly with the problem. However with all the electronics going into car the idea of RF floating around is scarry. Gary W. Sanders (N8EMR) gary.w.sanders@att.com AT&T Bell Labs 614.860.5965 ------------------------------ From: jarij@cc.jyu.fi (Jari Junikka) Subject: Re: GSM and Airbags Date: 28 Apr 1994 17:03:10 +0300 Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland One of the Finnish evening papers had a story some weeks ago claiming that a GSM phone had set off a fire alarm in a hotel several times. What else? Soon you can probably get pregnant by using a GSM phone ... jari ------------------------------ From: blarrib@netcom.com (Bob Larribeau) Subject: Re: ISDN Bridge Advice Please Organization: Consultant Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 16:10:30 GMT In article idddsb@iddss1.iddis.com (Dean Banfield) writes: > We have a 10baseT Ethernet lan and would like an outlier individual to > have access on a hardwired basis. ISDN sounds great, but I have no > idea what's required here. > You take the 64kpbs 'B' channels and then using a 'bridge?' you > convert the serial data to 10baseT? Who makes bridges? At what > prices? I assume higher price translates into higher performance. > Any info appreciated. Thanks. You can get either bridges or routers. Bridges are available from Combinet, Digiboard, Gandalf, Extension Technology. Routers are available from Cisco, Ascend, and ACC. Prices for bridges start about $2,000 and routers around $3,000. You have a lot of good choices for connecting IP networks. There are fewer choices for Novell networks. Bob Larribeau Consultant San Francisco ------------------------------ From: blarrib@netcom.com (Bob Larribeau) Subject: Re: DISN Information Request Organization: Consultant Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 16:11:49 GMT In article rtodt@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Rodney Todt) writes: > Can anyone in this group provide me with a pointer to online > information about DISN. I am specifically looking for a map and how > to get connected information. Thanks. Call Bellcore at 1-800-992-ISDN. They should be able to help you. Bob Larribeau Consultant San Francisco ------------------------------ From: oppedahl@panix.com (Carl Oppedahl) Subject: Re: Quality of Long Distance Telephone Lines Date: 28 Apr 1994 10:55:42 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In T.I.Boogaart@research.ptt.nl (Boogaart T.I.) writes: > I would like to know if anyone has conducted research on the quality > of long distance telephone lines. With "Quality" I mean the amount of > noise and echo (e.g. signal noise ratio). In particular, I want to > know if it is at all feasible to perform speech recognition / speaker > verification over long distance lines. > The focus is on the quality of lines to Europe, but any information on > the subject (references, pointers, hints) is welcome. Well, for calls originating in the US it is easy to make the test calls, anyway. You precede your dialing string with 10222, 10288, 10333, etc. So for a test call to someone in England you might dial, from New York, 011-44-71-XXXXXXX as a normal way to dial. Instead, to do this kind of testing, you would dial 10222-011-44-71-XXXXXXX or 10288-011-44-71-XXXXXXX or 10333-011-44-71-XXXXXXX to force your call to MCI, AT&T, Sprint, respectively. If you were doing modem calls this way, and if your modem is the kind that keeps session statistics, you could note down how many resent packets there were, how many NAKs, etc. etc. This is all taken from The Phone Book, page 98 and following. (Consumer Reports Books, ISBN 0-89043-364-X). Carl Oppedahl AA2KW Oppedahl & Larson (patent lawyers) Yorktown Heights, NY voice 212-777-1330 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Carl Oppedahl wrote 'The Phone Book' although he modestly fails to mention that point in his remarks above. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jay@coyote.rain.org (Jay Hennigan) Subject: Re: DID, PBX and University Phones, SL-100 Date: 27 Apr 1994 16:47:14 -0700 Organization: Regional Access Information Network (RAIN) In article canadian@leland.stanford.edu writes: > Phone Question for those in the know.(I am not one of them, so please > reply in layperson lingo if possible. :-)) > I am the Business Manager of the Student newspaper, the Stanford > Daily. We are independent from the university, and are running a > very tight budget. We pay alot each month to be connected to our > phone service and have no choice but to use the university phone > service. We are currently we are being charged anywhere from $28.50 > to $37.50 per month for each phone (which we own) plus $12.50 per > phone for an expanded local calling area ranging from San Francisco > to San Jose and parts of the East Bay. > The Daily intends to convert its current incoming 32 line mixed ET and > single-line set configuration to a set of 16 analog DID wink-start > trunks mapped to our current 32 numbers. We will be installing a > DID-ready PBX, station lines, and PBX telephones on our premises. Unless you get an extraordinary amount of incoming traffic, 16 DID trunks for 32 numbers is gross overkill. Six to eight trunks are far more realistic. Also, keep in mind that DID trunks are usually one-way incoming, so you'll need some outbound and/or two-way ground-start trunks as well. Depending on your expected growth, six would be a good starting number here as well. If your traffic includes substantial long distance, you might want to consider a T-1 trunk from an interexchange carrier. (This means that AT&T, Sprint, MCI, etc. bring in a special circuit that is used solely for outbound long distance, you need a lot of long-distance traffic to handle this.) T-1 direct from a carrier is a way around the outrageous local exchange carrier toll rates (with it, you will no longer pay more to call 25 miles away than across the country). > We are planning on a PBX from Panasonic, the KX-T336 system. Please > tell me what you think! This is a good switch, thought without a real track record yet. It will not handle T-1 circuits, but you could use an external channel bank if T-1 becomes attractive to you. You might also want to look at the Mitel SX-50 or even the SX-200 Digital if you are expecting substantial growth. I like the Panasonic 7000 series feature phones, they are a good value for the price. > I need to know thoughts about PBX's, DID's and University Phone > services. Also how much does Pac-Bell charge and how much do other > university services charge? As for Pac Bell, call them and ask. They will most likely try to sell you Centrex, with a sales pitch that it is more reliable or easier to expand than a PBX. Centrex is (IMHO) not really a good deal unless you have a number of satellite offices spread out within a local calling area. You pay for every feature every month, and the features aren't usually very user-friendly. Ask your centrex sales rep exactly what steps you would take to put a call on hold on one phone and pick it up on another across the room for an example. > Stanford has a SL-100 systems and I think that Stanford rates are > currently tarriffed as analog DID service at a base charge of $10 for > an 8 line group and $2 line/month for each line. However Stanford > Communication Services does not currently tariff standard analog DID > service, but we understand that the Stanford SL-100 system is capable > of providing this service, and would like to work it in tariffing > this offering at standard and reasonable rates as soon as possible. Are you limited by Stanford to taking what they offer, or can you deal with Pacific Bell? If you're limited, then you don't have a choice. If not, haggle. You're in a lot better position than most in that you have a choice of dial-tone provider. Jay Hennigan jay@rain.org ------------------------------ From: puma@netcom.com (puma) Subject: Re: How Can FAX Use T1 But Keep POTS Number? Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 16:51:48 GMT In article , wrote: > An extremely well publicized FAX number that is on a POTS phone line > now is in an office that has a T1 to an IXC. > There is a LOT of long distance FAXing, and it would be very nice to > put this machine on the PBX, but there are some problems and I am > looking for creative solutions. > It is not acceptable to change the FAX's phone number. Nor is it possible > to add a second FAX machine. Adding a second fax machine is a fairly low-cost alternative. You might be better off to reconsider. I hate to quote all the rest of what you said, hopefully folks will remember. It should be possible with a couple of line relays and some creative electronics to: - allow the fax to answer either line - place outgoing calls on the line of choice - busy out either line when the other is in use. The only problem I could see is that there could be a narrow timing window where an incoming call could be answered by busying out the line (because of a call coming in or going out on the other line). I really think a second fax would be the least costly and most effective solution, and would provide more functionality also, as you could send faxes and still leave the original line open for receiving. puma@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: wollman@ginger.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: TCP/IP Over X.25/Datapac Date: 28 Apr 1994 12:59:38 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Gordon Sawatzky wrote: > Does anyone know of products that allow TCP/IP over X.25 (datapac) > connections for Windows? I don't know of any for Windows, as PCs in general tend to have lousy serial interfaces and synchronous cards are generally very expensive (cheaper to build 'em yourself if you have the EE expertise). However, IP has been running over X.25 for a LONG time now, so it wouldn't surprise me if you could dig up someone who has done it. I was listening to the Seattle IETF and someone from UCL (Jon Crowcroft?) was talking about the development of the Internet in Britain. The British academic network was based on home-grown "Coloured Book" protocols which were layered on top of X.25 network service. People at UCL were given a contract to figure out how to migrate the little IP clouds which were attached to this big X.25 network to OSI networking (so that they could then be completely part of the network). The result of this work has been an explosion in IP connectivity in Great Britain. In the original network, IP was encapsulated the standard way over X.25 and then forwarded around by the X.25 switches. In the current network, X.25 traffic is encapsulated in TCP and forwarded about a 622-Mbit IP network instead, so the network setup has gone from: Internet applications -> TCP -> IP \ Coloured Book Applications +-> X.25 ISO applications -> TP0 -> CONS / ...to: ISO applications -> TP0 -> CONS \ Coloured Book Applications +-> X.25 \ Internet applications +-> TCP -> IP The speaker noted that they never did transition from Internet to OSI protocols, but they do now provide the best X.25 service ever seen... Garrett A. Wollman wollman@lcs.mit.edu formerly known as wollman@emba.uvm.edu ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #189 ****************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------