Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 04:30:04 PST From: Advanced Amateur Radio Networking Group Errors-To: TCP-Group-Errors@UCSD.Edu Reply-To: TCP-Group@UCSD.Edu Precedence: Bulk Subject: TCP-Group Digest V94 #42 To: tcp-group-digest TCP-Group Digest Tue, 15 Feb 94 Volume 94 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: Euro ISDN-2 (2 msgs) ISDN ISDN in USA (was Re: Euro ISDN-2) (2 msgs) tapr jnos workshop topics ? TCP-Group Digest V94 #41 Who (if any) is going to the TAPR meeting Send Replies or notes for publication to: . Subscription requests to . Problems you can't solve otherwise to brian@ucsd.edu. Archives of past issues of the TCP-Group Digest are available (by FTP only) from UCSD.Edu in directory "mailarchives". We trust that readers are intelligent enough to realize that all text herein consists of personal comments and does not represent the official policies or positions of any party. Your mileage may vary. So there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:55:38 CET From: dk5dc@vnet.IBM.COM Subject: Euro ISDN-2 To: tcp-group@ucsd.Edu Phil, You are absolutly right. It's a pitty, development companies are even cutting budgets (in large chunks) from ISDN development. Which may finally end up in the point where communication Solutions and protocols will start to diverge..... Peter ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 13:23:22 GMT From: Alan Cox Subject: Euro ISDN-2 To: jack@victron.nl, karn@qualcomm.com In the UK, ISDN costs more to install and the same to run within the UK (more to go abroad). Since the UK still doesn't have general flat rate local calls its becoming popular with buisness users both for its speed and thus short duration calls, and its fast dial rate/computer control properties that make it good for dial on demand traffic. UK ISDN is on the verge of a big expansion.. and I think it'll take off but only time will tell. The big IP problem at the moment is every ISDN bridge vendor likes to force people to use its own incompatible protocol and either don't support or make it harder to get PPP as wel.. ALan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 12:37:32 +1100 From: CCDRW@cc.newcastle.edu.au Subject: ISDN To: tcp-group@ucsd.edu Well, in Australia we have a pretty wide-spread ISDN, but our Telecom basically market it as Primary rate links for PABX's (20 or 30 chanels on a 2Mb (E1) stream). They have been very slow to get it to homes and have an annoying rule that if the cable run is over 2.5Km to the local exchange they wont give you a basic rate line (2x64k). That caused us problems when we only wanted a few (3 or 4) chanels. The technical staff understand Data OK and Semiperminent links make good 64K data lines, but at a high startup cost! I'm interested in ISDN ISA boards, if anyone has info! Dave VK2XPX, sysop VK2RAP. Internet | ccdrw@cc.newcastle.edu.au Amprnet | vk2xpx@vk2xpx.ampr.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 12:17:48 -0500 From: goldstein@carafe.tay2.dec.com Subject: ISDN in USA (was Re: Euro ISDN-2) To: tcp-group@ucsd.edu I run TCP/IP over ISDN practically every day in Massachusetts, USA. I don't run NOS over ISDN, simply because I have "better" applications for my purposes (no need for AX.25, and I do need a _serious_ VT220 emulator). But it's possible. The trouble with ISDN here is that the phone companies don't really know what it is or how to use it, so they mismarket it. Most have only sold it until recently for Centrex; that's a bit like selling Ferraris that can't be driven outside of one's garage. We now have a residential ISDN tariff in Mass. ($8 above analog for any line class) and it's available in a modest percentage of the state, inlcuding my neighborhood. Equipment is indeed pricey but coming down fast; the current price point for an ISDN-to-Ethernet bridge or ISDN PC card is under $1k, so companies don't have to call it "capital". The $500 card is almost here (IBM's Waverunner ISA is $545) and Combinet's bridge has an educational price in that range (though the dial-in end costs much more). PPP-over-ISDN is becoming sort of a standard, and many vendors should have it this year. Alas, proprietary encapsulations are still common, so for instance Gandalf, Digiboard and Combinet can't interoperate. Network Express has however built a dial-in server that talks multiple dialects. Compressed PPP may come next year when the standard for that is agreed upon; today's compression is again vendor-specific. But it is nice to be able to upload files at 56k and run X Windows at decent speed. Now the trick is cost: For local calls, most telcos in the US charge usage (1-2c/minute, sometimes more) for ISDN "data" calls. Even if "speech" is free. Calls within Centrex are free but that's pretty limiting. The workaround, for LOCAL calls, is to make data calls specifying bearer capability = speech. The local voice network is almost always digital uncompressed and good for 56 kbps. It's harder for long distance (echo canceller tones) and impossible overseas (compression). fred k1io ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:13:02 -0800 From: Phil Karn Subject: ISDN in USA (was Re: Euro ISDN-2) To: goldstein@carafe.tay2.dec.com, tcp-group@UCSD.EDU Nah, selling ISDN for intra-company Centrex-style computer networking isn't like selling Ferraris that won't go outside your garage. It's more like trying to sell tricycles to people who already own cheap and reliable Ferraris (10 megabit Ethernets)... It's amazing that the Telcos ever thought they could compete with Ethernet. They always seem to want to sell you what you need least, and sit on the stuff that you really do want until it's nearly obsolete. Phil ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 18:49:41 PST From: "(Johan. K. Reinalda)" Subject: tapr jnos workshop topics ? To: nos-bbs@hydra.carleton.ca, tcp-group@ucsd.edu >From those that are going to attend the jnos workshop at the tapr convention in a few weeks, I would like to hear what kind of topics you are interested in hearing about... Please send mail to me, not a reply to the groups Johan, WG7J. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:33:13 +0100 From: Geert Jan de Groot Subject: TCP-Group Digest V94 #41 To: TCP-Group@ucsd.edu On Mon, 14 Feb 94 04:30:02 PST Advanced Amateur Radio Networking Group wrote: > Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 01:15:09 -0800 > From: Phil Karn > Subject: Euro ISDN-2 > To: jack@victron.nl > > Ask the Japanese. Ask the Europeans. In fact, ask just about everybody > but us Americans. Here ISDN has been an almost complete flop for these > and other reasons: > 1. ISDN is only available in a smattering of US locations. > 2. It's expensive. Very expensive. Both for the equipment and the > telco charges (installation and usage - some automatically charge > per-minute business rates even for local calls). In Europe, there are a number of ISDN standards around making no end of confusion. This happened when the standard bodies were not quick enough defining ISDN, and various local implementations filled in the gaps, each in it's own way. There are a number of local implementations, which are all incompatible: while with analogue phone you can plug a German modem in a Dutch phone socket and expect it to work, you cannot do so with ISDN because the equipment simply will not talk to each other. To overcome this, it has been decided that there will be one general standard: euro-ISDN. This, however, is not without flaws: - Approval is very difficult, and thus very expensive. I know of very little equipment that has been approved yet, and what has, is expensive. As a result, there is almost no equipment available yet.. - There are (again) local variations to Euro-ISDN. While basic functions might work, do not expect full functionality (e.g. toll ticketing is done differently in various countries, as are some other features. In Germany, 1TR6 ISDN (the local variation) is available almost everywhere and very good usable. Line costs are double of a normal phone line but connect costs are the same. This means that you can get cheap 64kbit/sec switched service, including Calling Line Identification, for the same (traffic) price as an analogue line. No wonder that this setup is very popular there; even if the standard changes in a few years (which it does), the equipment pays back for itself soon because the speed more than triples compared to analogue modems (Germany used to have very restrictive modem policies, so the increase was even more!) You can get cheap ($400) ISDN cards for PC there. It is very often used for file transfer. I know of an Internet service provider who simply could not keep up with the growth of his IP-over-ISDN service: people moved from slow dialup UUCP lines to ISDN lines and added the ability to connect to the Internet at the same time, and for the same price! In the Netherlands, things are just starting up. Stuff is still expensive and unreliable. The few lines that have been delivered did have some problems: I am glad I was able to use a protocol analyser when I installed one. Things are getting better, but slow. The service in other countries differs. You might want to look into comp.dcom.isdn. > In the one case I know something about (Japan), residential ISDN is > priced at the same rates as analog POTS. And there are no free local > calls, so there's an incentive to use connect time as efficiently as > possible. So I understand that IP-over-ISDN has become popular > there. Even ISDN pay phones are fairly common. Internet service providers are starting to use ISDN in many countries now. In some countries, it is still very much experimental, while in other places production traffic runs via ISDN. This gives it's own problems, though: a single DNS lookup might cost $0.15 because it causes the ISDN link to go up and down. I have had some real panicky phonecalls from people who saw this happen all day because of configuration errors Geert Jan (RIPE NCC is NOT an Internet service provider) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:29:28 -0800 From: brian@nothing.ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) Subject: Who (if any) is going to the TAPR meeting To: tcp-group@nothing.ucsd.edu I'm having a difficult time convincing myself that it's worth going to the TAPR annual meeting this year, what with all the changes to the organization and so on. Any opinions? - Brian ------------------------------ End of TCP-Group Digest V94 #42 ******************************