TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Mar 95 16:41:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 136 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Portable Computer and Wireless Exposition and Conference (Lawrence Grant) We Need a TDM; What Will Work For an Internet Provider? (Bruce M. Hahne) Book Review: "DNS and BIND" by Albitz/Liu (Rob Slade) GSM Rental in Germany (John R. Covert) Information Wanted About MFS Intelenet (Timothy D. Hunt) Video Dialtone, HFC, HDSL, or ADSL (Timothy Kreps) PHS Doesn't Work in Moving Vehicles? (Steve Samler) Switched 56 CSU/DSU Vendor Information Wanted (Bruce Parks) Re: AT&T Offers 'International Redial' (Steve Brack) Re: PBS Rumors and Innuendo: Any Truth? (Charles McGuinness) Re: Re: E(TACS) and GSM (Sergei Anfilofiev) Re: mu-law to a-law PCM (Finn Stafsnes) Re: AT&T Calling Card Mixup (Robert Scott) Re: New NPA in Colorado (Stan Schwartz) Re: New NPA in Colorado (Mike King) Re: New NPA in Colorado (David C. Bray) Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted (stanford@algorhythms.com) Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted (Fred Goodwin) Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted (Carl Moore) Management Software Wanted (Rick J. Dosky) 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 America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available 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: 500-677-1616 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. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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: ir000579@interramp.com (LAWRENCE GRANT) Subject: Portable Computer and Wireless Exposition and Conference Date: 5 Mar 1995 17:55:27 GMT Organization: LAPTOP EXPOSITIONS This is our eighth year Portable Computing & Wireless Communications Exposition & Conference held at THE NEW YORK HILTON, 1335 6th Ave, New York NY,March 9th and 10th. The Exposition features all solutions under one roof, revolutionary PCMCIA intro's, working pen applications, new PDAs, PICs and Palmtops, InfraRed Intro's and IRdA, wireless communications and PCCA focus. At the Conferences and special hospitality functions,hear from our fifty industry experts and learn the latest on Laptops, EMail Services, LAN, WAN, Radio and Cellular Transmissions, System Security, integration and much more. In this fast changing era of field automation,you have to compete to survive. The information and contacts you make at the seminars,will be invaluable to you and your company. For more information and FREE pre-registration contact LAPTOP EXPOSITIONS: (800) 444-EXPO, (212) 682-7968 or FAX: (800) 569-LAPS. ------------------------------ From: hahne@gol.com (Bruce M. Hahne) Subject: We Need a TDM; What Will Work For an Internet Provider? Date: 6 Mar 1995 14:29:09 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway I'm no telco engineer, so hopefully somebody can give me a few pointers as to the right product(s) for this application. My guess is that I just need the right mux, but maybe I'm missing something. The goal is to bring in several sub-T1 leased connections, muxed over a single T1, and then break them out into separate lines again so that they can be fed into an Internet router such as a Cisco 7000 (or choose your favorite high-end IP router). Our site is at the hub as the (small but growing fast) Internet provider, and of course the sub-T1 connections are downstream sites such as businesses and organizations. Life gets a lot more interesting when you throw in the fact that we're in Japan. However, I don't believe that this changes the possible technical solutions; it's probably just going to limit the equipment that we're legally allowed to buy. The picture looks something like this: leased-line ---- ----- Cisco 7000 port customer \ / \ / \ fiber T1 NTT / leased-line ----- MUX1 -------------- DSU ---- TDM?? -------- Cisco 7000 port customer / to our site \ / \ / \ leased-line --- ----- Cisco 7000 port customer (Yes, T1 has to be pulled in over fiber in Japan). MUX1 is provided on our behalf by the phone company and is physically done at an NTT site. The DSU comes from NTT also. But what goes beyond the DSU is our problem. What I need information on is the "TDM??" piece above. It needs to be some sort of demux that goes from the DSU (which probably uses an RJ45 connector, and is definitely an I interface) to either V.35 connectors or RS449 connectors, since a Cisco understands V.35 and RS449. Any suggestions? There must be a canonical solution to this problem, right? More generally, is this the best way to pull in the multiple downstream clients, or is there a better method (perhaps an IP router that can split the T1 apart internally?) Feel free to bombard me with solutions, sales pitches, equipment lists, blatant advertising for telco gear, whatever. It's often tough to get information on IP and telco gear in Japan so I always welcome literature. If you're asking "why mess around with fractional T1; why doesn't everybody go for straight T1?", the answer is that Internet connections are so expensive here that only top-level providers can afford a T1. In fact, right now the _entire_ commercial Internet bandwidth coming into Japan is less than T1! Thanks, Bruce Hahne Engineer, Global OnLine Japan hahne@gol.com Oshima Building 302 1-56-1 Higashi Nakano Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164, Japan ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Mar 1995 15:26:14 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "DNS and BIND" by Albitz/Liu BKDNSBND.RVW 950131 "DNS and BIND", Paul Albitz/Cricket Liu, 1992, 1-56592-010-4 %A Paul Albitz %A Cricket Liu %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 1992 %G 1-56592-010-4 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 info@ora.com or nuts@ora.com %P 381 %T "DNS and BIND" Of the millions of users on the Internet, almost all are blissfully unaware of the complexity and magnitude of the task of network routing. How does the network know where to deliver a piece of email? In fact, given the packet nature of all Internet traffic, how do telnet or ftp packets get, reliably and generally quickly, to their destination? Few even recognize the term DNS, the Domain Name Service, which handles the problem. Administrators may have used BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain program, to manage DNS, but may not fully understand the importance, use or finer aspects of it. This book gives both background and operational details. Given the nature of the netowrk routing problem, a full understanding of DNS likely requires actual hands-on work. Albitz and Liu have, however, put together clear, straightforward, and sometimes even lighthearted text to make the learning process as painless as possible. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 BKDNSBND.RVW 950131. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. 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: Mon, 6 Mar 95 11:54:29 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: GSM Rental in Germany I want to rent a GSM phone with a German number in Germany in about three weeks, but I can't find any rental companies. I'll be in Germany for about nine days. I travel to Germany every year about this time, and since 1989, I have been able to rent telephones, through Budget rent-a-car, through Lufthansa, and last year through a small company which was in the process of going out of business even as I was renting from them. My investigations so far have yielded nothing. Noone is willing to rent a phone. Budget no longer has portables; only phones built into the cars. Lufthansa is out of the rental business, as it seems everyone is. Too many problems with people running up horrendous international call bills and then disappearing. I want a German number. This may not be possible. I'm also investigating buying a phone and signing up for a whole year's service in the U.K., since I expect to be there for a few weeks this summer on a separate trip, but even that may not be a real possibility, since I don't have residency in the U.K. At least in the U.K. rentals are available. But buying a phone and a year's service would cost about $700, not including call charges. If anyone can give me a contact to someone who _is_ renting phones in Germany, please send me mail as well as reporting back to the list. Please avoid the temptation to reply "I think so-and-so rents phones" without first checking to make sure they still do. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John Covert is a *long time* participant in this Digest. I think he is a charter subscriber on the mailing list, going back to 1981. He has written to us in the past about his trips to Germany, and perhaps will do so again when he returns. If any of our readers in Germany can research this for him and report back to him in a timely way, I know he will appreciate it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tim@karl.fsg.com (Timothy D. Hunt) Subject: Information Wanted About MFS Intelenet Date: 6 Mar 1995 14:22:56 -0500 Organization: Fusion Systems Group, Inc. We have just switched our local phone service to MFS Intelenet. I would be interested in hearing from other MFS customers, especially in the New York area. Tim Hunt tim@fsg.com ------------------------------ From: tkreps@netcom.com (Timothy Kreps) Subject: Video Dialtone, HFC, HDSL, or ADSL Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 19:34:15 GMT Where can I find info or discussions on: - video dialtone, - Hybrid Fiber/Coax (HFC), - High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Lines (HDSL), or - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL) Timothy Kreps tkreps@netcom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You'll find those discussions right here when they start from time to time. Feel free to present questions and comments. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 14:33:26 EST From: Steve Samler Subject: PHS Doesn't Work in Moving Vehicles? I read in {Kyodo} today that the Japanese PHS phones do not work in moving vehicles. Is this due to the Doppler effect? ------------------------------ From: ucbruce@nova.umuc.edu (Bruce Parks) Subject: Switched 56 CSU/DSU Vendor Information Wanted Date: 5 Mar 1995 21:30:40 -0500 Organization: University of Maryland University College I'm looking for a potential source for 50-100 switched 56/64 CSU/DSUs on behalf of a government agency. I would appreciate any referrals. Thanks, Bruce J. Parks ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 95 22:32:42 -0500 From: Steve Brack Subject: Re: AT&T Offers 'International Redial' In article telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > A new service from AT&T allows subscribers who make a lot of > international calls to cut through the wasted time so prevelant when > calling many international points with no circuit messages, busy > signals and such. > Nothing comes free: The cost is $3.00 per month, and it only works > to about twenty countries at the present time, however those twenty > include a few that are notorious for sending back that message saying > 'your call cannot be completed in the country you dialed at this > time'. Does that mean that the operator will no longer do the same thing for no additional charge, like (s)he used to? AT&T seems to be developing the same customer service attitude as the upstart IXCs, that is to say, nonexistent. Steve Brack, Consultant | sbrack@eng.utoledo.edu Toledo, OH 43613-1605 | sbrack@cse.utoledo.edu MY OWN OPINIONS | Tel: +1 419 534 7349 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not believe the AT&T operators would ever devote up to thirty minutes repeatedly redialing a call. I've had very courteous operators get the no circuits message and immediatly try again; even possibly try again a third time, but then they tell you to hang up and try again later. And that is assuming you go through the operator -- at operator assisted rates -- rather than dialing direct. This is not fifty years ago -- or even twenty years ago -- where the international operators in White Plains, NY would 'book' the call and call you back when they were able to get through, a half an hour or two days later. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Mar 1995 10:12:34 -0500 From: charles@jyacc.jyacc.com (Charles McGuinness) Subject: Re: PBS Rumors and Innuendo: Any Truth? Let's see ... the Republicans are looking to axe public broadcasting because either ... (A) NPR and PBS are filled with lefties who have consistently used government money to oppose the things Republicans want to do, and in doing so have built up a huge resevoir of ill-will among Republicans. úÿ or .. (B) It's an elaborate conspiracy (involving a mysterious Aussie, the new Speaker of the House, a large east coast telephone company, and a talking purple dinosaur) to give away valuable public resources. Obviously, (A) isn't contrived enough to be believable. But (B) still doesn't explain cattle mutilations. Hmmm, which to believe, which to believe ... Charles McGuinness | JAM Product Manager | JYACC Inc. charles@jyacc.com | +1 212 267 7722 x 3026 | 116 John St, NY NY 10038 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you read the Sunday comics in the news- paper? Yesterday they had a very clever one about a woman who takes her car to the repair shop. She tells the mechanic that her car is not working properly. 'No matter how she turns the steering wheel, the car seems to keep gradually moving toward the left.' The mechanic gets in the car to check it out and the car radio is seen in the picture. He gets out and says, "I found the answer to your problem lady ... you had your car radio tuned to the local NPR affiliate station." Har har har! PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sergei Anfilofiev Subject: Re: Re: E(TACS) and GSM Date: 6 Mar 1995 18:24:16 +0300 Organization: ZNIIS Reply-To: sanfi@zniis.msk.su d92-sam@black29.nada.kth.se writes: >> GSM is a French standard which is (roughly) translated as Group >> Special Mobile or something similar. Someone else will know exactly. > It started out as a European standard but has evolved into a world > standard. Groupe Spiciale Mobile was the name of the first task > force, GSM later came to mean Global Standard for Mobile Telephone (or > something). Current meaning is Global System for Mobile Communications. > GSM is up and running in *all* western european countries except for > Spain. Other European countries are Hungary and Russia. Nowadays Russian operators support three standards: NMT-450, GSM, AMPS (as a regional standard). Some none-European countries running or opening shortly are: Dr. Sergei Anfilofiev | Tel:(7 095)368-9127 Chief Internat. Depart.| Fax:(7 095)274-0067 ZNIIS, Moscow, Russia | E-mail: sanfi@zniis.msk.su ------------------------------ From: Finn.Stafsnes@nta.no (Finn Stafsnes) Subject: Re: mu-law to a-law PCM Organization: Norwegian Telecom Research Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 15:22:32 GMT In article , Testmark Laboratories <0006718446@mcimail.com> writes: > I need to check the acoustics of the handset of a European ISDN BRI > phone. Unfortunately, I only have a North American ISDN BRI > simulator, which uses mu-law PCM, and the phone uses a-law PCM. I > know from prior experience that the two PCMs can be connected > together, and the phone conversation still sounds "normal." Provided you have a mu to A converter in between you will only get e few dB of degraded S/N ratio. If you feed a mu-encoded signal into an A-law receiver (or thew other way) you _may_ get an intelligible result (yes, I have tried), but the S/N ratio is probably well below zero (I have not measured it). Remember, in A-law encoding every second bit is inverted. I think you have two options: 1) Disconnect the handset and measure it separately. 2) Check if it is possible to strap the PCM codec to make it work in mu- law (many circuits can do both). > can anyone tell me what the error would be in dB when I sweep from 300 > to 3400 Hz at a constant level, and do a loudness calculation? If the converter is there I think the levels will be rather close, but without the converter the measurment will be usless. Finn Stafsnes ------------------------------ From: rbs@cs.city.ac.uk (Robert Scott) Subject: Re: AT&T Calling Card Mixup Date: 06 Mar 1995 11:53:32 GMT Organization: School of Informatics, City University, London Reply-To: rbs@cs.city.ac.uk TELECOM Digest Editor noted, regards subscriber entered in error in the AT&T Military Saver plan: > Or it went through and later a supervisor caught it. If you > keep on getting marketing and promotional materials for the military > plan *then* let us know, but I think you'll be okay. Honestly though, > if it were me, I'd hope they did *not* discover the error. AT&T gives > the soldiers a very good deal with absolutely rock-bottom pricing. PAT] I don't think the case has been resolved. I got sent some promotional literature about this military saver option. It costs $8.50 per month and you get something like 20% discount on your calls. BUT if you don't make any calls in a given month they credit the $8.50 back to your account the next month. This debiting-crediting cycle has happened three times now so they haven't discovered the mistake. It means that I'm always $8.50 out of pocket. Also the crediting and debiting are translated into UK$ using interantional exchange rates, and as the credit rate is different from the debit rate (the banks make a profit somewhere) then I get charged every time they do that trick (even though the credits and debits are make on the same day). I don't think the charges are particularly competitive with other services. There are services here that charge around 30c a minute to the US whereas AT&T charge you $2.50 before you've said anything (or something like that, I don't remember the exact terms). Anyway, my question still stands. Does AT&T Charge Card have an email address or even a fax number? Rob Scott Dept of Comp Sci, City University, London, UK. http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/rbs/homepage.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I guess you have a valid complaint alright. Apparently someone punched the wrong plan number in the computer when you signed up. I don't know of any way to contact AT&T Customer Service by email, but why don't you try calling them at 800-222-0300. You will get representatives who, if they cannot help you, will transfer to representatives (for the correct plan) who can. PAT] ------------------------------ From: stans@panix.com (Stan Schwartz) Subject: Re: New NPA in Colorado Date: 5 Mar 1995 16:52:13 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC THE PILOT (PHRANTIC@UWYO.EDU) wrote: > Does anyone have any information concerning the addition of a new NPA > in Colorado? Supposedly (from a USWest CSB guy) metro Denver will get > the new area code in April of '96. > Anyone able to confirm this and/or tell us what the new NPA might be? Yes, it was announced in September that the 303 NPA was splitting, leaving 303 for Denver and 970 for everywhere else that is not already 719. Stan ------------------------------ From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: Re: New NPA in Colorado Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 09:48:56 PST In TELECOM Digest V15 #128, THE PILOT asked: > Does anyone have any information concerning the addition of a new NPA > in Colorado? According to the NANP Status Report from Bellcore (1/31/95), NPA 303 in CO will split to 970. This is scheduled for April 2, 1995, and the permissive period ends October 1, 1995. Mike King mk@tfs.com ------------------------------ Date: 05 Mar 95 22:06:31 PST From: BRAY, DAVID C. Subject: Re: New NPA in Colorado Hi, All I can say is this ... Denver is retaining the 303 area code for now. Northwest Colorado is changing from 303 to 970 in *April, 1995*. All of us have the burden of getting the stationary updated, not the big city boys! Cheers! dcbr@chevron.com (970) 675-3838 <-- New number after April. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Can you believe they had the nerve to settle the 312/708/630 fiasco late last week by deciding that we in the northern suburbs will have to have *our* area code changed to 630 later this year. Chicago will retain 312 exclusively; the politicians and other hotshots would not hear otherwise. 708 will be almost directly straight west of Chicago in the western suburbs, with part of 708 in the southwestern suburbs moved into 815 (which for the most part is quite underused.) All we northerners have to move to 630. The few wireless customers already resident on 630 -- there maybe all of 500-1000 customers there, and that is it, period -- will be moved to the proper geographic code. So in other words, 630 will not be a wireless overlay, nor will it be co-resident with 708 as originally proposed on a first come, first served basis. Instead, 708 will be chopped in three parts. I wonder if there have been any other splits where part of a 'new' area code' (i.e. 708 in recent years) was given to an 'old' (i.e. 815, around since the beginning of area codes) rather than handed off to a newly created one? The cellular people gave Ameritech such a fuss about having all their stuff parked in 630, that they originally decided on the co-resident plan for 708 instead. Then when all the suburbanites made a stink about having their next door neighbor in a different area code, the decision was finally reached to do things in a more conventional manner. Forget ever expecting 312 to be inconvenienced in any way; Mayor Daley would never permit that. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 00:03:43 -0500 From: stanford@algorhythms.com Subject: Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted > Is there any place to get the 800 directory listings and to whom the > numbers belong? The "Free Phone" CD ROM from ProCD (Danvers. MA. +1 (508) 750 0000) contains the AT&T 800 directory searchable on any field including SIC code. ------------------------------ From: fg8578@onr.com (Fred Goodwin) Subject: Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted Date: 6 Mar 1995 07:23:12 GMT Organization: Onramp Access, Inc. In article , jps0723@aol.com (JPS0723) says: > Is there any place to get the 800 directory listings and to whom the > numbers belong? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you are referring to a criss- > cross style directory for 800, and I do not think one has ever been > published. PAT] I believe AT&T has a web page for 800 numbers. It has several options, one of which is to input an 800 number, then the AT&T form returns the business that subscribes to the number. I'm not sure if AT&T's database includes all 800 numbers, or just their own. Hope this helps. Fred Goodwin Southwestern Bell Austin, TX ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 06:48:33 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: 800 Directory Listings Wanted Years ago, there was a "Toll Free Digest" published by someone in Claverack, New York. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, that poor man -- if he is the person I am thinking of -- used to spend all his time calling one 800 number after another, rudely demanding of whoever answered the phone, "What company is this? What is this number used for?" When he called me and asked that, I told him it was a central repository for wrong numbers, a place where callers unable to dial ten consecutive digits without losing their train of thought called when they needed to release their anxiety and tensions. I told him the telephone company provided it as a public service to people who consistently dialed the wrong number. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 15:18:25 CST From: Rick J. Dosky Subject: Management Software Wanted I am looking for any information available on Telecommunications Management Software. Including: * Facilities Management * Call Accounting * Trouble/Service Ticket Management * Fraud Detection * Telephone Directory * Invoice/Vendor Management If any one has any information, please e-mail me at rdosky@free.org. Rick J. Dosky The Limited Stores ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #136 ******************************