TELECOM Digest Thu, 26 May 94 11:01:30 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 251 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Can a Unix Box Work as an Internet Router? (Carol Gwilt) Re: GSM "Short Messages"==Pager? (Paul Hulbert) Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns (Steven Grevemeyer) Re: What Kind of Capacity is in VBI? (John Lundgren) Re: Pac-Tel (PC) Communication Software (Rob Lockhart) Re: Need Information on Complete PC (dolphinqst@delphi.com) Re: 800 number Billback (Smut) (castaldi@heroes.rowan.edu) Re: 800 Number Billback (Joseph Romero) Re: Cordless Phone Wanted With Ten Mile Range (William Sohl) Re: Speech Recognition "Word Spotting" (Al Varney) Re: Need Criteria for Choosing a Phone Number (Randy Gellens) Re: Long Range "Cordless" telephones (Scott D. Fybush) Re: DID Loophole or I'm Screwed up? (Paul Robinson) Re: "Erlang" the Programming Language (Jan van der Meer) Re: FAX Mailbox Services (Clarence Dold) Re: Hackers On Planet Earth Newsgroups (Carl Moore) Re: Hackers On Planet Earth Newsgroups (John Slater) 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. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: cgwilt@vanbc.wimsey.com (Carol Gwilt) Subject: Re: Can a Unix Box Work as an Internet Router? Date: 25 May 1994 22:35:48 -0700 Organization: Wimsey Information Services xxmcleis@indsvax1.indstate.edu writes: > internet. Of course, we have very little money, but do have a few > computers. So the question is, can a computer (ie Unix) function as an > Internet router, or must we buy one of these routers like CISCO or > WellFleet? The answer is *mostly* yes. Most Unix distrib's come with all you need to set up some pretty elaborate routing on the host itself. The reason I say "mostly" is because you can usually find some extra goodies on a router that was built to be a router. All of the WAN protocols (and possibly some of the LAN protocols) might not be available on your brand of Unix -- ask your Unix vendor, or tell us what flavor Unix you have. >If so, what's the *cheapest* router available? CISCO routers have dropped in price substantially, but you pay for the WAN and LAN protocols that you need -- so, if you have a mix of protocols, you're still going to pay a pretty penny. A company called Cabletron has a program called GAN (good-as-new) and sells CISCO routers on this program (which I understand to mean that the equipment is "used"). ACC has some good mid-range routers/bridges that rival competitive high-end equipment. I've recently seen at least two reviews of *cheap* routers -- if you want really CHEAP, email me and I'll weed through my mountain of mags to find the manufacturers for you. If Cabletron and/or ACC aren't in your phone book, let me know -- I've got the numbers at my office. > Can a Unix box connect to a digital comm line (56k)? Normally you communicate on a high-speed serial port to a digital modem. You need a serial port that is capable of 56k -- but these are generally available. Good Luck!!! cgwilt@wimsey.com ------------------------------ From: hulbert@hasler.ascom.ch (Paul Hulbert) Subject: Re: GSM "Short Messages"==Pager? Organization: Ascom Hasler AG, Berne, Switzerland Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 06:59:45 GMT In article 6@eecs.nwu.edu, ketheesa@enws204.eas.asu.edu (K. Ketheesan) writes: > In article 3@eecs.nwu.edu, gregalex@cybernet.cse.fau.edu (Greg > Alexander) writes: >> Is it a pager -- or a digital message that appears when your phone is >> in range? My interest is because I will often be in No service areas >> (eg Asia Pacific -- Thailand, and non city areas of Australia). If its >> a pager -- cool, I will still be contactable. If it relies on being in >> the area -- good too (I will NEVER miss the message). > My understanding is that in order to deliver SMS messages in GSM, signaling > connection has to be established (if one is not already existing). So > that implies that when you are outside the coverage area, you will not > be able to send or receive SMS messages. But it is very important to add that if you are out of range when the message is sent to you you will still be able to receive it the next time your mobile makes radio contact with the network. Paul Hulbert ------------------------------ From: grevemes@VTC.TACOM.Army.Mil (Steven Grevemeyer) Subject: Re: No 911 Available as Tot Drowns Date: 25 May 1994 16:44:36 -0400 Organization: Vetronics Technology Center,US Army TACOM,Warren, Michigan USA Hmm. I wonder why they just didn't dial "0" for the operator and have the operator connect them? I have always used the operator as a fall back position in case the emergency system didn't work. (If the operator goes away chances are so did the rest of the phone system ...) Steven E. Grevemeyer Phone: (810)574-5106 FAX: -5008 US Army TACOM/Software Enginnering Division (AMSTA-OS) Vetronics Technology Center Warren, MI 48397-5000 Email: grevemes@vtc.tacom.army.mil ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@ohlone.kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: What Kind of Capacity is in VBI? Date: 26 May 94 00:15:52 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Paul Robinson (PAUL@TDR.COM) wrote: > A question I have is, for a U.S. signal, which I believe the Vertical > Blanking Interval also exists, how much capacity is available on a > single TV channel and at what speed can the data be sent? Is this > related to closed captioning? If not, what type equipment is needed > to decode VBI data and what kind of costs are involved to build it? Well, the line is (for the U.S.), occurring at 30 times a second, and there are a couple hundred dots. Maybe about 3K baud, I would say. Of course there would be other stuff like error correcting and such. ------------------------------ From: rlockhart@aol.com (RLockhart) Subject: Re: Pac-Tel (PC) Communication Software Date: 26 May 1994 06:11:03 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) In article , przebien@news.delphi.com (PRZEBIENDA@DELPHI.COM) writes: > We had a home grown telecommunication package that allowed us to send > alphanumeric messages to our PAC-TEL pagers. We are interested in > updating the softwaree. We are interested in reasonably priced > commercial software or in the protocol specs of the 800 number we > communicate with the old package. Seems you've received some good advice on this, but let's take it one or two steps further ... I produce Motorola's Third Party Referral Guide to Alpha and Data Paging -- a freebie we give away at various shows and elsewhere. The Guide is updated on a quarterly basis and covers everything I know to be commercially available in the alpha and data paging sending and receiving software marketplace (both generic, app enablers/APIs, and vertical market apps) for DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macs, AS/400s, UNIX, Mainframes, Atari Portfolios and HP100s. It's organized by platform, application type, and manufacturers/publishers and also covers some of the information service providers available for use on most paging services. The 04 March 94 edition of the Guide is available on some of the commercial services (e.g. CIS, AOL, AppleLink) as a Stuffed MacWord file or may be obtained on paper via our NewsStream/NewsCard hotline. (BTW, it lists contact information for some of the apps listed in the other responses to your request.) You also asked 'bout the protocol used by Pac*Tel -- now AirTouch, BTW. The protocol used is called TAP (Telocator Alpha Paging. PET and IXO are different (older) names for the same industry-standard alpha paging) protocol. The only formal source for this spec is PCIA (Personal Communications Industry Association, formerly Telocator) in Washington, DC, at 202.467.4770. If, however, you'd like to look at the more commonly used portions of TAP, I've a thread (culled from a now-out-of-print programmer's guide we used to publish that Telocator used to form the basis of TAP) I can send you that covers these. More than you *ev*er wanted to know, right? <- big toothie grin. Rob Lockhart, Resource Manager, Interactive Data Systems Paging Products Group, Motorola, Inc. Desktop I'net: lockhart-epag06_rob@email.mot.com Wireless I'net (<32K characters): rob_lockhart-erl003e@email.mot.com Wireless I'net (< 1K characters): rob.lockhart@radiomail.net ------------------------------ From: dolphinqst@delphi.com Subject: Re: Need Information on Complete PC Date: Wed, 26 May 94 20:49:04 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Almost every computer corner store that you walk into carries the Complete PC line of voicemail hardware; just give them a call. ------------------------------ From: castaldi@heroes.rowan.edu Subject: Re: 800 Number Billback (Smut) Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey, Glassboro, NJ 08028 Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 23:00:51 GMT I went through the game of blocking my numbers, calling the carriers ordering toll billing exception and none of it works. I have heard that since March 9 you can restrict your billing info on non-published numbers, but it doesn't work either. Now I have an idea ... I recently tries to dial a smut number from a private pay phone and guess what? I got a recording that I should try another phone. (This came from the sleeze provider). Can I order private pay phone trunks and terminate them in my switch and route my 800 calls over it? Would this be legal? I am getting $1500.00 a month worth of these calls placed by students in a college dorm. They are getting the majority of these numbers from {Rolling Stone Magazine}. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you term 'private payphone trunks' are just normal coin service lines from the central office provided the COCOT is correctly registered in telco's records. And no, telco won't give you coin lines to terminate on a PBX. They expect a phone with a coin box to be attached on that line (yours or theirs, no matter, but that kind of an instrument). I assume -- correct me if I am wrong -- that you have been successful in blocking 900 numbers. I assume, if you allow long distance calls in general from student dorm phones, that you have some method of requiring a PIN or access number that identifies *which* student and *which* phone made the call. If you do, why not simply require this PIN to be used on 800 calls as well? Also, you say billed number screening does not work, but maybe you have not gotten on enough databases yet or tried it long enough. In addtition to telling your local telco (which gets your number on the database used by telco, AT&T, Sprint, and MCI) you need to tell a couple of the other carriers directly. They'll add your numbers to their list also. Telling two or three of the other carriers, especially the ones which specialize in doing billing for the sex services, will get rid of 90 percent or more of those charges. Add to that requiring PINS on outgoing 'long distance' calls -- even 800 numbers -- for the purpose of identifying who made what calls, and your trouble should be greatly reduced if not eliminated entirely. PAT] ------------------------------ From: 1JCR7732@ibm.mtsac.edu Subject: Re: 800 Number Billback Date: Wed, 25 May 94 22:03:31 PDT Organization: Mt. San Antonio College In article steven@sgb.oau.org (Steven Bradley) writes: > Call the service as much as you want and as often as you can from PAY > PHONES and see how easily they (don't) get their money then! > Since pay phones permit 800 number calls without charge and the phone > companies see fit to permit them to go through since they are free, > there is no reason to prevent it passing. But alas ... some pay phones DO block 800 numbers. Joseph Romero 1jcr7732@ibm.mtsac.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But legally they are not supposed to. Genuine Bells never block 800, and the COCOTS are slowing learning they cannot legally do it either. PAT] ------------------------------ From: whs70@cc.bellcore.com (sohl,william h) Subject: Re: Cordless Phone Wanted With Ten Mile Range Date: 25 May 1994 11:40:09 -0400 Organization: Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) In article , Guorong Roger wrote: > Is there any kind of CORDLESS PHONE which can be used for ten to > twenty miles distance (not a cellular phone, not the regular cordless > phone which can only be used within the house). The telephone should > still use the regular telephone switching system. The master piece of > the phone should be installed at home, and the handset could be bring > ten to twenty miles away from the home but be still access the phone > at home. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are, but they are not legal for use > in the USA. About the closest you can come to this legally in the USA is > to use a manual phone patch attached to a CB radio or some other type of > legal radio service. CB description deleted for brevity ... > Now, if you use radios equipped for 144 megs -- what is known among > hams as 'two meters' -- then repeater sites equipped with telephone > patches are quite common. They usually belong to a local club whose > members jointly maintain the cost of the repeater site and phone line, > etc. A license is required from the FCC to operate a two meter radio, It is probably worth noting too, that the license requires passing a test on FCC regulations, elements of radio theory and safety. Additionally, the "phone patch" via an amateur radio repeater is only operated on an "originating call" basis. That is, a call from the person with the radio is the only way a call can be made. There is no provision (nor is it allowed by FCC rules) for a call to be made by someone (a non-ham) to the repeater phone patch line in an effort to contact someone via the radio (repeater) connection. > If you've got the money, you might consider setting up a little two > meter arrangement of your own with a private phone line attached, etc. While that is possible, it can only be done legally within the constraints of the FCC regulations as per my comments above. Additionally, there is a frequency coordination process that must be followed to obtain a fixed set of assigned two meter frequencies to establish a permanent repeater which is the only way this could be done and still be legal on the amateur two meter band. If you have any additional questions on this please ask. Cheers, Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.) Morristown, NJ email via UUCP bcr!cc!whs70 201-829-2879 Weekdays email via Internet whs70@cc.bellcore.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 May 94 10:47:11 CDT From: varney@uscbu.ih.att.com Subject: Re: Speech Recognition "Word Spotting" In article pbflower@uts.EDU.AU wrote: > I'm looking for info on Word Spotting. Any info on developing a HMM to > do this would be much appreciated. Please mail information or names of > books, papers etc. that will do this. (It's in the mail.) November, 1993 issue of IEEE Communications Magazine contains an article by Roe & Wilpon called "Whither Speech Recognition: The Next 25 Years". HMMs are discussed -- 21 references are given, including Wilpon's "Automatic Recognition of Keywords in Unconstrained Speech Using Hidden Markov Models", from the Nov. 1990 IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ASSP). The Transactions and the companion Proceedings of IEEE International Conferences on ASSP are key to understanding the technology, and for finding people involved in it. Al Varney ------------------------------ From: RANDY@MPA15AB.mv-oc.Unisys.COM Date: 25 MAY 94 23:06:00 GMT Subject: Re: Need Criteria for Choosing a Phone Number ross@ncd.com (Ross Oliver) writes: > I personally dislike lettered phone numbers. I don't like having to > translate on the telephone keypad, and it makes modem dialing VERY > difficult (1-800-CHK-DUAT for example). I also dislike lettered numbers. I notice some ads list both forms. Also, the Convergent Technologies Voice Module (which is a fun thing to play with, having two phone line jacks, a phone set jack, a modem, a CODEC, and an analog cross-point switch) comes with driver software that, among other nifty things, lets you enter a dial string as digits or letters. (Since this means A, B, C, and D now mean 2 or 3, the extra DTMF digits A-D are dialed with a ! first). I wish standard modems had this feature. Randall Gellens randy@mv-oc.unisys.com (714) 380-6350 fax (714) 380-5912 Mail Stop MV 237 Net**2 656-6350 ------------------------------ From: fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush) Subject: Re: Long Range "Cordless" telephones Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 00:59:10 GMT Al Cohan <0004526627/{s7@mcimail.com> writes: > Pat, someone recently asked about long range (ten to twenty mile) > "cordless" telephones -- not cellular. Yes, there are several illegal > high power full duplex cordless phones, but there are also rural > systems that are perfectly legal. [deletia] > Maybe Scott Fybush will jump on this thread and tell us how it worked > when he attended Deep Springs College here in CA. I actually saw and > heard their unit in a radio shop in Bishop, CA where the telco line > was connected. Didn't sound bad, but has now been replaced with > cellular. It has? That must be costing an arm and a leg! When I was there (six years ago already), the setup worked like this: At the Deep Springs end, a small (24 student) private college in an isolated desert mountain valley, we had a Panasonic KX-T616, set up with the full complement of 16 extensions, but with just the one incoming phone line. That line came in over a business-band radio system that operated, if memory serves, on 461.XXX/466.XXX (I'm not concealing; I just don't remember!) There was a small vertically- polarized yagi on the roof of the school, aimed up at Silver Peak in the White Mountains. A repeater up there bounced the signal down to that radio shop in Bishop. That was where Contel terminated 619-872- 2000. At the Deep Springs end, the transceiver box in the radio closet presented a standard RJ-11 to the KX-T616. From our end, it was essentially transparent: when we picked up the line at Deep Springs, the transceiver would send the appropriate signals to Bishop, the actual Contel line would be picked up at that end, and we'd dial just like normal. Audio quality? Well ... let's just say it was better than the ancient Contel wireline over the mountains, the old "Deep Springs Toll Station #2" that was pulled out circa 1986-1987. And of course you could direct dial into and out of the valley with the radio system. But the system was being pushed a bit beyond its capacity ... some 12 miles from Bishop up to Silver Peak and about 15 or so from Silver Peak back down to Deep Springs. There was a lot of audio fading ... a lot of noise whenever there were storms, and if that antenna were to be knocked ever so slightly off-beam, well ... forget about the phone! :-) When I left Deep Springs in June 1989, there was still no cell service in the valley, or in Bishop for that matter. I'd like to know more about the cell system they have in place now ... especially how Deep Springs justifies the cost of cellular usage. (When I was there, the 40 or so people living in the valley kept that one radio line humming almost 24 hours a day, and since the college had absorbed the initial cost of the equipment, we paid only the normal telco LD charges for our own personal calls!) Scott Fybush - Deep Springs '88 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 05:24:12 EDT From: Paul Robinson Reply-To: Paul Robinson Subject: Re: DID Loophole or I'm Screwed up? Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA >> Per FCC Part 68 and TELCo tariffs, anything other than audible >> ring and busy tone (with some exceptions) is "meaningful" -- and >> the call must be supervised (answered). > I thought it was OK for a PBX to issue an intercept without > returning supervision. For example, "The extension you dialed > does not exist. Please call xyx-xxyy for assistance." Do these > messages have to be supervised? My office has Centrex service. As lines are not used, they return exactly that type of message, referring people to our main switchboard. I would assume that it is permitted to provide an unsupervised announcement since I believe the message does not supervise. And I doubt that even the telephone company can provide a class of service that violates an FCC regulation. Or perhaps Telco Centrex is not subject to the same rules as PBX service. ------------------------------ From: etmjvdm@angstrom.ericsson.se (Jan van der Meer) Subject: Re: "Erlang" the Programming Language Date: 26 May 1994 11:33:10 GMT Organization: Ericsson Telecom bv, Rijen, the Netherlands Hi, I am using Erlang for a couple of years now. There is more information available by anonymous ftp: euagate.eua.ericsson.se, start looking in file: /pub/eua/erlang/info/INDEX. The ISBN number of the book is: ISBN 0-13-285792-8 They classify Erlang as follows - Classification: Concurrent functional programming language for large industrial real-time systems. Untyped. Pattern matching syntax. Recursion equations. Explicit concurrency, asynchronous message passing. Relatively free from side effects. Transparent cross-platform distribution. Primitives for detecting run-time errors. Real-time GC. Modules. Dynamic code replacement (change code in running real-time system, without stopping system). Foreign language interface. Availability: Free version (subject to non-commercial licence) with no support. Commercial versions with support are available (Erlang Systems AB). Hope this helps you, Jan van der Meer Research Manager, Intelligent Networks Application Lab Ericsson Telecom, Rijen, the Netherlands ------------------------------ From: dold@rahul.net (Clarence Dold) Subject: Re: FAX Mailbox Services Organization: a2i network Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 05:48:57 GMT Jack Bzoza (JackB@delrina.com) wrote: > Clarence Gold wrote: Hmm, how much effort was it to misspell my name in the quote? Jack and I hashed out his slightly inflated claims via email. I think WinFax 4.0 is a wonderful product. I use it to retrieve my FaxMail from my system at work, which happens to be an AudioFax. This is done on a turnaround line, which Jack implies is my imagination. In order to retrieve my fax, I do need to key some touchtones. I might be able to accomplish this via a clever dialing strings, with empirically determined commas for delays, but I use a telephone. If you can use WinFax 4.0 to retrieve faxes without the need for touchtones, then it is an advance in program technology. My other point, that requiring a step backwards from Class 2 to Class 1 faxmodems seemed odd, was also lost on Jack. Perhaps everyone has the CPU power to drive Class 1 faxmodems, and Class 2 is a waste of time. I certainly hope Jack isn't in Tech Support. Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - Milpitas (near San Jose) & Napa CA. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 May 94 04:17:35 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Hackers On Planet Earth Newsgroups And of course there is the song (from the "big band era") PEnnsylvania 6-5000. ------------------------------ From: johns@scroff.UK (John Slater) Subject: Re: Hackers On Planet Earth Newsgroups Date: 24 May 1994 15:43:02 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems (UK) Reply-To: johns@scroff.UK > it and used that number as part of the movie's theme. Then of course > there was the campy Dracula movie a few years ago which used a take-off > on the same thing with the number TRansylvania 6-5000. PAT] Then, of course, there was the Sesame Street version with Count von Count singing a song called "Transylvania 1-2-3-4-5". And no, I am not making this up. I saw it. John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know you are not making it up. Sesame Street is on television here every day; my nephew watches it. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #251 ****************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------