TELECOM Digest Sun, 29 May 94 11:05:00 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 258 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telegraph Wires [Transcript of American Numismatic Broadcast] (N. Allen) Re: How Smart is Call-forwarding? (Brett Frankenberger) Re: How Smart is Call-forwarding? (John Lundgren) Re: Average Data Speed of Wire Telegraphy Wanted (Fred Blonder) Re: Government Regulates Modem Redial Attempts (Aaron Leonard) Re: FCC Seeks Further Comments on 0+ Call Routing (Gordon Burditt) Book Review: "The Internet Message" by Rose (Rob Slade) Re: Hunting Service From GTE (Paul Lee) Re: Cordless Phone Wanted With Ten Mile Range (John Lundgren) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 14:06:47 -0400 From: ae446@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Nigel Allen) Subject: Telegraph Wires [Transcript of American Numismatic Assn Broadcast] Organization: 52 Manchester Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Reply-To: ae446@FreeNet.Carleton.CA The American Numismatic Association, a long-established group of collectors of coins and other types of money, prepares a daily radio broadcast about some aspect of collecting and posts it to the rec.collecting newsgroup. The following transcript was posted by ana@athena.csdco.com (ANA), and will be of particular interest to readers of the TELECOM Digest. Transcript No. 427 May 24, 1994 TELEGRAPH WIRES By Lee F. McKenzie Along the roadside, a determined tourist trips over a cactus. She struggles up an embankment and through sagebrush to get past telephone poles and wires. Finally, with camera in hand, she has an unobstructed view of Jenny Lake and the beautiful Teton Mountains. How often have you struggled to get just the right picture -- a photo without telephone wires to ruin a beautiful scene? This is "A-N-A's Money Talks." Many years ago, an artist sat at his workbench carefully engraving metal plates. He was an employee of the American Bank Note Company. The work before him was a vignette, or small picture, which would be used on checks issued by a bank in Elmira, New York. In the 1870s, banks prided themselves on the beautiful art work that adorned their checks. The vignettes often reflected achievements of society or the ambitions of local people. When the new checks for the Elmira bank were completed, a small vignette showed a country scene with cows in a quiet meadow, a distant bridge, and poles with a pair of wires connected between them. How odd that an artist would "ruin" a beautiful country scene with telegraph wires! What you and I would find annoying in our photos, was somehow important to an artist in 1878. Today marks the 150th anniversary of Samuel Morse's first telegraph message. In 1844, that message was sent 40 miles between Washington D.C. and Baltimore. The message Morse sent was, "What God Hath Wrought." These simple words reflected the inventor's own humble awe at a miracle. Suddenly, the pioneers of America had a fast way of hearing from home. Loved ones no longer seemed so far away. Business decisions that once took weeks now took a couple of days or less. In so many ways the art and history in old coins and paper money speak to us. When we see telegraph wires carefully engraved on an old check, we're reminded that money truly does talk. This has been "Money Talks." Today's program was written by Lee McKenzie and underwritten by Heritage Rare Coin Galleries, the world's largest rare coin firm. This is a production of the American Numismatic Association, America's coin club for over a century. For a transcript and a free ancient Egyptian coin, be the first to call 1-800-367-9723 with your local station's call letters. Request program 427. Nigel Allen ae446@freenet.carleton.ca ------------------------------ From: brettf@netcom.com (Brett Frankenberger) Subject: Re: How Smart is Call-forwarding? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 20:39:54 GMT birchall@pilot.njin.net (Shag Aristotelis) writes: [ SUMMARY: The author has obtained a standard residential line with call forwarding in a town half way between the author's residence and a number that the author wishes to call frequently. Author has programmed the call forwarding on the 'middle' number to forward to the number he wishes to call frequently, for the purpose of eliminating toll charges. Author wants to know if, when he calls the middle number from his residence if it routed from the author phone to the author's CO, to the 'middle' CO, to the terminating CO, then to the number he is calling, or if it router from the author's phone to the authors CO to the middle CO, to the telephone terminating the 'middle' line, back from that telephone to the middle CO (presumably on a separate pair?), then to the terminating CO, and to the terminating number. (Obviously I'm not mentioning any intermediate Tandams between COs here). Author also notes that all inter-CO trunks are fiber.] The answer is that the CO handles it ... it doesn't go out and back. There isn't any means for it to do so, as the path between the CO and the 'middle' telephone can only carry one call. (Some people get two lines and have a forwarding device that they buy perform a rudimentary type of forwarding whereby when line one rings, line two automatically calls another number and the lines are connected, and they would send the call out and back ... also, large businesses sometimes program forwarding on their PBX's to take an incoming call and route it back out somewhere else, and that would also send the call out and back ... but in both cases there are *2* lines going to user's location, not one ... and in both cases, the telco is not invloved with the forwarding ... in the case you mention where you are buying the call forwarding feature from the telco (*72 or whatever it is), it doesn't go out to the 'middle number's' telephone and back. > Recently, I've encountered _nasty_ noise. Even the latest greatest > 28.8kbps modems with all the connection-holding capability in the > world can't connect. If I dial _directly_ without using the forward > (thus incurring big tolls) the routing is as follows, and there is no > noise: [ NOTE : In a part of the original msg that I deleted, author defines CO1 as his CO, CO2 as the CO of the middle line, and CO3 as the CO of the terminating connection, and [Net] as the number he is seeking to avoid toll charges to. ] > [Me] -c- [Shed] -f- [C01] -f- ([C02] -f-?) [C03] -c- [Net] > > (Note, I'm not sure whether a direct call would pass through the CO > in NXX 2.) It may or may not, depending on how the telco has set up the routing for calls from CO1 to CO3. > It looks like one of two things is happening here: > > 1) The computers are dumb, and are routing the call out to the number and > back again, and something's causing noise on the loop. That's not an issue ... it couldn't do that ... the wires just ain't there ... > 2) The computers are ok, but something's causing noise in NXX 2's CO > itself. Unless you *know* what the routing of your call is, don't assume you do. The routing for the toll versus the non-toll version of the call could be *completely different* ... Also, don't assume the routing is 100% fiber unless you *know* it is ... the routing could be completely different ... > I'm going to call BA-NJ in the morning, and go through the usual > process of explaining to them that I'm _absolutely certain_ it's not > my inside wiring, since there _is no inside wiring_ on that line... ;) Most telco types will immediately know that of course it doesn't involve the wiring on the middle line since the switch handles the forwarding ... (I'm not saying *you* are an idiot for not knowing that, but for someone in the telephone industry, they should know it immediately). > but I figured I'd toss this out, in hopes that someone out there knows > more about how the computers handle call-forwarding. So ... to address the issue of what is it ... if the only place it is analog is between your home and your CO and the terminating CO and the terminating number, then the problem has to be digital, since those same analog lines are used for the toll and the forwarded way of calling. Do you know if it is digital all the way. (i.e. are all the intermediate switches digital, or they converting the fiber back to analog to route through some kind of mechanical switch?) If it is digital all the way, they probably are taking frame-slips somewhere between the two COs ... make data calls from CO2 to CO3 and CO1 to CO2 and see which one fails ... (Ovviously, it's the telco's responsibility to do that, not you, but if there is anything compliated about the problem at all, they will probably be confused ...) If it is analog, then somewhere, there is something noisy ... it might be in CO1 or CO3, but just on trunks to CO2 ... who knows ... Good luck. Brett (brettf@netcom.com) Brett Frankenberger ------------------------------ From: sgiblab!news.kn.PacBell.COM!jlundgre@uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: How Smart is call-forwarding? Date: 28 May 94 18:18:54 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Maybe something in the carrier plant is causing the trouble. Something like a ADPCM or whatever circuit that doesn't recognize the modem and tries to compress what it thinks is voice. jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com \ jlundgr@eis.calstate.edu ------------------------------ From: fred@nasirc.hq.nasa.gov (Fred Blonder) Subject: Re: Average Data Speed of Wire Telegraphy Wanted Date: 28 May 1994 23:30:49 GMT Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- InterNetNews site > Does anyone know what the average speed (in characters per > minute, or whatever is appropriate) of a professional > telegrapher would have been when wire telegraphy was the main > mode of electronic communication? . . . I don't know, but I've got a funny story: One of my C.S. professors at the University of Maryland was a ham radio operator, and was always trying to combine his hobbies. He wanted to transmit ASCII, but at the time the FCC didn't allow ASCII on the ham bands. (I've no idea if that's changed.) He and his friends settled on transmitting computer-generated and decoded Morse Code. The funny part is when they decided that nothing in the regs set a maximum rate for morse code, so they cranked it up to the equivalent of about 1200 baud. It was completely unintelligible to the human ear, but it was proper morse, and the FCC never gave them a hard time about it. If you want more info on archaic transmission methods, about four months ago, {Scientific American} ran a good article about semaphore telegraph systems. Fred Blonder fred@nasirc.hq.nasa.gov Hughes STX Corp. (301) 441-4079 7701 Greenbelt Rd. Greenbelt, Md. 20770 ------------------------------ From: leonard@telcom.arizona.edu (Aaron Leonard) Subject: Re: Government Regulates Modem Redial Attempts Date: 28 May 1994 17:26:34 GMT Organization: University of Arizona Telecommunications Reply-To: Leonard@Arizona.EDU In article , Paul A. Lee writes: > In TELECOM Digest Volume 14 Issue 250, Steven Bradley org> wrote: >> if you are a developer, do NOT use the internal redial option in the >> faxmodem, use the BUSY, VOICE, NO ANSWER result codes to re-dial it using >> the software command to ... allow unlimited and unregulated re-dialing > Indeed, most of the communications software I've encountered uses the > modem result (either numeric code or verbose text string) to determine > the result of a dial attempt. The software can keep track of "BUSY" > results and redial up to a preset number of attempts. > Why, though, would one want to redial upon encountering a "VOICE" or a > "NO ANSWER" result? A "VOICE" result would typically indicate that the > modem's dial attempt has reached either an intercept message or a live > body at the dialed number, indicating that a wrong number is being > dialed (for legitimate purposes, at least). A "NO ANSWER" result on a > valid number typically results from a problem with the modem or fax > machine that should have answered at the other end. > I can understand making numerous redial attempts on a "BUSY" > condition, but what would be the purpose of redialing on a "VOICE" or > "NO ANSWER" result, other than to harass (whether innocently, > gnorantly, or maliciously) the recipient of the call? I agree that redialing on voice would seem to be a rude and useless thing to do. However, redialing on NO ANSWER can make some sense. For example, assume that you are dialing into a pool of hundreds of modems (for example, the one we run). At any given time, it's likely that a small number of these modems will fail to answer, due to some malfunction. However, the odds are great, in such a case, that a successive dialin to the same pool, will succeed (because we've configured our rotary to "walk thru" the lines.) Aaron Leonard (AL104), University of Arizona Network Operations, Tucson AZ 85721 ------------------------------ From: gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: FCC Seeks Further Comments on 0+ Call Routing Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 08:56:24 GMT > Currently, 0+ calls are sent to the operator services provider > (OSP) to which the premises owner or payphone provider presubscribes. > Under BPP, calls would be routed automatically to the OSP preferred by > the party being billed for the call. For example, a calling card call > would be routed to the cardholder's preferred OSP. A collect call > would be routed to the called party's preferred OSP. A call billed to > a third party would be routed to the OSP to which that third party had > presubscribed. Interesting. It's a good way to avoid AOS rates that approach those of 900 numbers. But what happens if: - The called party's preferred long distance carrier is "none of the above"? (This is a valid choice, and it does not prevent making LD calls using 10XXX codes.) - The called party's preferred long distance carrier has no presence in the area the caller is calling from? (E.g. how many areas of the USA DON'T have service from Vartec Telecom (10811)? If I selected them, could someone call me collect from one of these areas?) - The called party's preferred long distance carrier doesn't handle collect calls (yet, or has no plans to)? Does the call not complete? Does the carrier used fall back to the dialed prefix or the carrier of the originating phone? Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 11:03:36 MDT From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Internet Message" by Rose BKINTMSG.RVW 940309 Prentice Hall 113 Sylvan Avenue Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 (515) 284-6751 FAX (515) 284-2607 phyllis@prenhall.com 70621.2737@CompuServe.COM Alan Apt Beth Mullen-Hespe beth_hespe@prenhall.com "The Internet Message", Rose, 1993, 0-13-092941-7 mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us Could there be some connection between a cover design strongly reminiscent of Douglas Adam's, "Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" and a banner stating that this is the fourth book in Marshall Rose's trilogy? For those wanting to know how to use Internet mail, this is not your book. This is a technical work examining the design aspects of electronic mail systems. The Internet RFC822 and OSI's (Open System Interconnection) MHS (Message Handling System), aka X.400, are the two major examples used in the review. Those who know Rose's views of OSI will know which comes off better. In spite of the strong (and readily admitted) bias, this is a thorough analysis of a frequently bypassed field. For those who need to build or design messaging systems, this is required reading. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKINTMSG.RVW 940309. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated newsgroups/mailing lists. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for Robert_Slade@sfu.ca Research into rslade@cue.bc.ca User p1@CyberStore.ca Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 May 1994 12:57:31 -0400 From: Paul A. Lee Organization: Woolworth Corporation Subject: Re: Hunting Service From GTE Since this thread seems to have expanded into a general comparison of GTE service offerings compared to other LECs, I'll offer a few pieces of my experience with GTE: About two years ago, I moved from a GTE area in Pennsylvania to Ameritech territory in Wisconsin. I now have two residential lines (with hunting), instead of one, and make about three times as many calls in a local service area that's about eight times as large, for about the same money. My company has two major sites that are served by GTE -- one in California and one in Florida. Digital (T-1) trunking is agony to get installed and running. DID trunks cost $350-$415 per month from GTE, compared to $45-$120 per month from NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, PacTel, etc. I can almost rely on GTE to be anywhere from several hours to a few *days* late -- or sometimes *early*, just to keep it interesting -- on installs and changes of service. On the other hand, GTE people seem to go out of their way to try and be helpful in case of a problem -- that is, beyond professional, to downright friendly. I've had GTE technicians give me their home phone numbers. I've been able to talk directly with OP crew leaders about coordinating their work with our contractors' work. I've been given phone numbers to directly reach test boards and central offices. That kind of stuff has been rather rare in the Baby Bells. Overall, I guess I'd have to chalk it up to "cultural diversity". Paul A. Lee Voice 414 357-1409 Telecommunications Analyst FAX 414 357-1450 Woolworth Corporation CompuServe 70353,566 INTERNET ------------------------------ From: sgiblab!news.kn.PacBell.COM!jlundgre@uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Cordless Phone Wanted With Ten Mile Range Date: 28 May 94 16:11:55 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Guorong Roger (hu_g@isis.cs.odu.edu) 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. I have a phone patch here for example which I have The important point here is that the amateur radio service is for recreational non-commerial use only, and the hams tend to police themselves fairly well, especially in metro areas where the bands are crowded. And, naturally, the phone co doesn't want people to bypass their cellular service. So getting a legal ten mile phone is not easy. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 VOI (714) JOHN GAB \ FAX (714) JOHN FRY jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com \ jlundgr@eis.calstate.edu ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #258 ******************************