TELECOM Digest Mon, 27 Jun 94 17:23:00 CDT Volume 14 : Issue 300 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Understanding Local Area Networks" by Schatt (Rob Slade) Canadian Internet Handbook Now Available in U.S. (Rick Broadhead) Wireless Comms Summer Course (Richard Tsina) Need Help Setting up Service (Dialins ,etc) (C. Mohr) MCI Solicitations Cause Havoc at Our Company (Bill Garfield) Book Review: "The Internet Book" by Comer (Rob Slade) Canadian Chat Line Case (Dave Leibold) Re: O.J. Simpson Case (Robert L. McMillin) 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: Rob Slade Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 06:49:27 MDT Subject: Book Review: "Understanding Local Area Networks" by Schatt BKUNDLAN.RVW 940415 SAMS Understanding Series Prentice Hall Computer Publishing 113 Sylvan Avenue Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 (515) 284-6751 FAX (515) 284-2607 or 11711 N. College Ave. Carmel, IN 46032-9903 or 201 W. 103rd Street Indianapolis, IN 46290 or 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY 10023 800-428-5331 or Market Cross House Cooper Street Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1EB England phyllis@prenhall.com - Phyllis Eve Bregman is postmaster 70621.2737@CompuServe.COM Alan Apt Beth Mullen-Hespe beth_hespe@prenhall.com "Understanding Local Area Networks", Schatt, 1992, 0-672-30115-6, U$26.95/C$34.95 This is a readable and fairly comprehensive guide to the concepts and terminology behind Local Area Networks. While it gives a thorough background to a wide range of LAN features, technical details are scant. This may be good news to the executive trying to get an initial grasp of networking; it may present problems to the manager charged with coming up with a plan for implementation. Three initial chapters provide basic concepts and jargon for LANs, basic parts and pieces, and connections to wide area networks. Four major network operating systems are described in further chapters, and it is nice to see some mention of OS/2 and Macintosh systems included. Chapter eight is a bit odd: of the four "other" LANs listed, two are hardware interfaces rather than network operating systems. A further three chapters look at electronic mail options, management and networkable software. The book closes with a chapter on LAN selection and appendices with vendor addresses, a glossary and a bibliography. The material is very basic and almost completely non-technical. The content will certainly help a neophyte to get started, or someone who has to "start from zero" on a major networking project. However, the lack of technical details could allow for major disasters in the choice of systems. For example, the topologies are described correctly, but the load implications of the different access methods are never discussed. An ethernet, with repeaters, could conceivably service an entire ten-storied building. With heavy loads, however, you would probably want to break that down into a series of smaller networks with routing. If response time is critical, you probably need token-ring access in order to guarantee an upper bound to delays. (The lack of detail extends to the review questions at the end of each chapter. These are extremely simple queries from the lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy, and only serve to check whether you've read every sentence.) A possibly useful start, but far from being complete. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKUNDLAN.RVW 940415. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated newsgroups/mailing lists. DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '95, Toronto, ON, February 13-17, 1995, contact: rulag@decus.ca ------------------------------ From: Rick Broadhead Subject: Canadian Internet Handbook Now Available in U.S. Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 12:33:00 GMT June 24, 1994 Contact: Beth Hespe PTR Prentice Hall (201) 592-2348 (Tel) (201) 592-2785 (Fax) T H E C A N A D I A N I N T E R N E T H A N D B O O K Now Available in the United States Foreword by Jean Monty, President and CEO of Northern Telecom Limited Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, June 24, 1994 -- Prentice Hall/PTR and Prentice Hall Canada proudly announce that, due to popular demand, the Canadian Internet Handbook by Jim Carroll and Rick Broadhead is now available in the United States. In the last three months, the Canadian Internet Handbook has established itself as a genuine Canadian publishing phenomenon. It has been on the Toronto Star's National Bestseller List for the last two months, and for six consecutive weeks, the book was the #1 selling non-fiction paperback in Canada. The authors believe it to be the first Internet book ever published to reach the #1 position on a general bestseller list. The Canadian Internet Handbook has also achieved bestseller status in several other prominent Canadian newspapers, including the Financial Post, Ottawa Citizen, and the Globe and Mail. This is a significant accomplishment for a country the size of Canada. With over 35,000 copies printed and distributed in Canada alone, the Canadian Internet Handbook has far exceeded the normal Canadian bestseller status of 5,000 copies. Due to great demand for the book in the U.S. market, the Canadian Internet Handbook is now being distributed in the U.S. by Prentice Hall. The Canadian Internet Handbook provides Internet users with comprehensive directories of Canadian Internet resources, including Canadian Gopher servers, WWW servers, and Internet-accessible library catalogues. The book also includes a detailed listing of Canadian Usenet groups, and a list of over 700 organizations that are using the Internet in Canada. Other chapters discuss such topics as "What's Wrong With the Internet?", and "Where is the Internet Going in Canada?" The book covers all the popular Internet tools - Mail, Telnet, FTP, Gopher, WAIS, WWW - and provides many examples of how Canadian businesses and individuals are using the Internet. Shell Canada, Midland Walwyn, the Regina Public Library, and the Canadian Space Agency are some of the organizations profiled in the book. Jean Monty, President and CEO of Northern Telecom Limited, introduces the book with a foreword. For further pricing and ordering information, point your Gopher client at: gopher.prenhall.com WWW users can point their browser at the following URL: http://www.csi.nb.ca/handbook/handbook.html For more information, please contact the authors of the book: Rick Broadhead Jim Carroll handbook@uunet.ca handbook@uunet.ca ------------------------------ From: course@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Wireless Comms Summer Course Date: 27 Jun 1994 18:03:09 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley U.C. BERKELEY Continuing Education in Engineering Announces a short course on Wireless Technology: WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS (July 26-27, 1994) There are technical bottlenecks to developing a ubiquitous wireless multimedia environment: the capacity of the radio link, its unreliability due to the adverse multipath propagation channel, and severe interference from other channels. This course covers the principles and fundamental concepts engineers need to tackle these limitations (e.g., a thorough treatment of channel impairments such as fading and multipath dispersion and their effect on link and network performance). Topics include: Introduction to Wireless Channels, Cellular Telephone Networks, Analog and Digital Transmission and Wireless Data Networks. Comprehensive course notes will be provided. Lecturer: JEAN-PAUL M.G. LINNARTZ, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. His work on traffic analysis in mobile radio networks received the Veder Prize, an innovative research in telecommunications award in the Netherlands. At Berkeley he works on communications for intelligent vehicle highway systems and multimedia communications. Professor Linnartz is the author of numerous publications and the book "Narrow Land-Mobile Radio Networks" (Artech House, 1993), the text for the course. For more information (brochure with complete course descriptions, outlines, instructor bios, etc.,) send your postal address to: Richard Tsina U.C. Berkeley Extension Continuing Education in Engineering 2223 Fulton St. Berkeley, CA 94720 Tel: (510) 642-4151 Fax: (510) 643-8683 email: course@garnet.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ From: mohrc@storm.cs.orst.edu (C Mohr) Subject: Need Help Setting up Service (Dialins, etc) Date: 27 Jun 1994 04:43:58 GMT Organization: Computer Science Department, Oregon State University Hi, I'm hoping someone(s) out there can help me with a few questions. First what I am trying to do. A few of us here with some money to burn (but not to much) and some Unix experience want to set up a internet access service in a fairly large town here. There is no access except the local college, which only lets students on their machines due to lack of dialins. There are also no services that are a "local sprintnet" call away (unless you count Delphi or Prodigy; I'm refering to services such as Netcom.) We want to start fairly small and wait until we start getting more users to upgrade to bigger machines. What we are thinking of doing is getting a Pentium 99 with 64 or 32 megs of memory, two or three gigs of SCSI harddrive and putting the latest version of linux on it (uh oh I hear groans ;]). We are currently running linux 1.1.18 on a Pentium 60 and it seems to be running fairly well (although it only has four or five users and a mud running on it) which is why we choose that OS (plus its free.) We want to put in a minimum of 10 dialin lines to start, maybe 16 (this is where I start having problems ;]) Since there are two local colleges both with T1 or better lines we plan to (try) to get a T1 line as our connection to the net. Now the questions: Is it a really bad idea to use Linux for this task? If so why? What's a better suggestion? We dont want to sink 100 grand into this right away, over time maybe. Do you think a Pentium 99 will be able to handle 25 users at a time? 50? 100? Is there a maximum number of connections at a time under Linux? Maximum memory or HD? Does Linux support tape backups besides the "qic format" something in the one to two gig format? Does it support multiple serial port cards (meaning the 8-16 or higher port cards)? If so what kind (for both questions) If (and even if it does) Linux doesn't support multiple serial port cards what is the best way to get 8-32+ dialins to the Linux box? I'm guessing some type of modem server, can someone tell me how these work (the more specific the better) and who some good companies are to contact about these? How is a T1 line connected to Unix machines? Directly, a router, what? Is it different for each case? If this is the sole machine would it be a direct connection (and later when we add more machines add the router/gateway/whatever it is ...?) Is a seperate "gateway" machine required or can the same machine act as both? Can someone point me at the NW USA internet providers that offer connections to companies that plan to offer pay for accounts? I am only aware of one provider (NWnet) and i'm not certain they allow this. Is there a list of providers such as this? email/voice contact numbers needed as well if possible. Are there any suggestions (besides give up ;]) you have? Any technical knowhow or whatever is also GREATLY appreciated! Sorry if I am asking some very basic questions or things I "should" know but this will be my first time setting up a Unix network from ground zero (IE no T1 no dialins etc). I have set up two new Sequent machines for a university here but they did all the network connections and the modems were easy since they wanted them connected to the backplane (64 rs232 connecters weee fun!) Also any FAQ's would be great if you can point me at them (books are ok also but prefer free pubs or help for now ;]) Thanks ALOT for all help provided and we hope to see you on the net soon! PLEASE E-Mail all replies if someone else is interested I'll be glad to forward them to you. mohrc@storm.cs.orst.edu ------------------------------ Subject: MCI Solicitations Cause Havoc at Our Company From: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 94 10:21:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) At my company my whole DID number block has been literally under seige for the past six months by the MCI autodialers. At first we had no idea where it was coming from; hundreds of single-jingles a day, at 16-minute intervals, across large blocks of our DID number span. These appeared as one-ringers, apparently because MCI's *DYSFUNCTIONAL* autodialers interpreted our PBX's double ring cadence as a "busy" and so immediately dropped the call ... BUT KEPT TRYING AND RETRYING AND... AND...!!!! After suffering under this continuing barrage of five-second duration calls for nearly a month I handed the problem to SWBT's Annoyance Call Bureau. Ten of the extensions then under assualt were put up on call trace and the data collection process began. SWBT's Major Account Center in Houston contacted me to advise that without exception, *ALL* the nuisance/harrassing calls were coming from the same trunk group, MCI. I was given a local number to use in contacting someone at MCI's Houston POP -- which coincidentally is right across the street from my office. Then for two more weeks I called the MCI POP at least twice daily and faxed thousands of call records to them to use in continuing the trace. "Shirley", one of the switchpersons, finally let it slip that these calls were coming from MCI Telemarketing Centers at Denver and Phoenix! Having positively identified the source, it still took TWO MORE WEEKS of nuisance calls to get relief. But it was over, or at least I thought it was. Early in May of this year, the by now very recognizeable single-jingle, 16-minute interval calls were back. However, this time attacking only one extension, 4796. According to SMDR records my subscriber tolerated the single-jingle attack an average of twelve times a day for three whole weeks before contacting anyone. (Patient fellow, huh?) As soon as I saw the calling pattern I had strong suspicions of -who- the culprit was, but I called SWBT's Call Annoyance Bureau again anyway. The CAB put the number on call trace and another week passed while we collected SMDR evidence. Suspicions confirmed! The MCI trunk group was again identified as the source. MCI's Houston POP again confirmed that the calls were originating from their Denver telemarketing center. Again I demanded, much less politely than before, that this activity immediately cease and desist. Again it took an entire week for MCI to get it under control.