TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Jan 93 07:58:00 CST Volume 13 : Issue 29 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution (Scott Hannahs) Questions on FDDI, 500GB File Servers, Remote NFS Mount IBM (Nita Avalani) Wanted: Small (4-12 Line) PBX/Phone System (Larry Augustin) How to Plan a x.25 Numbering Scheme? (Guido Weppler) New Developments in ISDN From Illinois Bell (David E. Martin) Beware: Portability (Bill Cerny) Looking For Recommendations For UPS For Phone System (Robert P. MacKin) ANI and SS7 (Ross Alexander) Philippine Telephone Monopoly to be Broken (Ang Peng Hwa) Is This a "Real" Security Alert Message of Some Sort? (J. Eric Townsend) USR HST 14.4 Forsale (eabu288@orion.oac.uci.edu) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Hannahs Subject: N.E. Telephone Admits Ripoff - Refuses Restitution Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 16:40:45 GMT These are reposts of some articles involving an ongoing dispute with New England Telephone that I posted to ne.general a week ago. It was suggested that I repost them here. This is an interesting problem in that they seem to be hitting universities and modem users. I have heard from at least one other person who was misbilled involving other exchanges. This problem applies to unlimited local service where you get an unlimited number of very local calls un-itemized bill for not-so-local calls. The unitemized bill obviously involved my modem usage to the University which was supposedly in the "free" area. Things seem to be moving along in that I now have an admission that the bills are wrong for lots of people. But it would be "too expensive" to rebate people who were misbilled. ---------------reposts follow--------------- To continue this thread, I have an interesting story about ongoing misbilling by NET which is probably widespread. boaz@concerto.lcs.mit.edu (Boaz Ben-Zvi) writes: > Following N.E.T's announcement of raising some of their rates on 1/15, > I begun wondering how one may offset some of the hike. > Unlimited service costs more than 6-8 bucks above the measured one, > and gives unlimited service to your local area (your town plus the towns > surrounding it), which would otherwise cost $.016/minute (plus 1 cent > per call). I.e., it'll take more than (approx.) 6-8 hours of monthly > phone use (in the local area!) to make Unlimited service a good choice. > (Well, some modem-owners use that much in a single day :-) I saw this about a year ago and after carefully checking that my modem is to a "free" call signed up for unlimited local which was about $6/month cheaper. However after a month or so, I was getting large bills that could only be from the modem calls. I have spent the last year convincing NET that their software is in error and that I was being billed for these "free" calls. Most of the time I have been ignored or told that I do not know what is going on in my own household. Two weeks ago after 50 calls and a formal complaint to the DPU I got someone who admitted that there was a problem and that the table was incorrect for our phone. However he claimed that it was only our phone and nobody else's. I do not see how the billing software could only single out our phone. I have not gotten a satisfactory reply to that question from NET and the complaint to the DPU has not been withdrawn. Since the bill for unlimited local is not itemized to what numbers are called, it is difficult to prove or disprove billing mistakes. I am still asking for an outside review of the billing system but don't know if I have the political clout to get it since they have admitted the one mistake and are stonewalling that there may be others. If anyone else has had a similar problem, I would certainly like to hear about it. Anybody know a good "sleazy" lawyer? This could be an interesting class action. Fortunately I consider it more of a hobby than an annoyance, also an excuse to withold payment to NET since they owe me big time. > The announcement said "New England Telephone does not receive any > additional revenue as a result of the new rates". Sure, they spend > the money we pay them on TV commercials :-) But they can always just bill you incorrectly and make up the difference ... :-) The claim is that you get a cheaper rate since they don't have to itemize your calls, and then they can charge you for whatever calls they feel like. YIKES! Just a follow up to the note I posted last week. New England Telephone now admits (verbally) that they were miss-billing (read overcharging) everyone in my exchange. They are willing to rebate me the amount they overcharged but I was told, "We can't rebate everyone since that would cost too much". I didn't hear any complaints about collecting too much money. They will rebate anyone who complains about it. This is sleaze at its finest. I do not know how many other bills are incorrect only that calls from Jamaica Plain to the 353 exchange were (are?) billed at the local zone 1 call rate and not the free local rate. With the kind of quality control that they operate with I would guess the system is riddled with errors. Has anyone else found such problems? I was told that there couldn't be an error since no one else complained. HAH! I am still waiting for a formal response before pushing the issue further. gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes: > In article , sth@slipknot.mit.edu > (Scott Hannahs) writes: >> I am still waiting for a formal response before pushing the issue >> further. > Good, when you get a written response you can publish it. I certainly will. What I have verbally as of today is that N.E.T. has misbilled everyone from the Jamaica Plain exchange with unlimited local service. These people were billed for calls to the Boston Central exchange which was a supposedly non-billable number. These are two fairly large groups of people. This situation has existed for at least a year. I was told that NET may not be able to figure out when the problem first occurred. I asked about software change logs but got a blank response with a "we will discuss that" type answer. The hopeful news was that this was the first time NET mentioned "subscriber notification" and that this problem is "bigger than we first thought". Some person in billing is trying to fix my bill; she actually got permission (heavy sarcasm here) from her supervisor to spend two hours checking back a year on it. As for written response, after sending many certified letters to NET (including directly to the president Paul O'Brien) I have not received more than a postcard specifying the amount of my bill adjustment (which was incorrect). I am not sure how many people there are literate. In fact today it was suggested by an NET liason to the DPU that I should have contacted the presidential appeal council (or some such body). I mentioned that I had no idea such a council existed and that the NET main office number is unlisted. I asked why I had not recieved an answer to the letter to the president that this person had a copy of and was given another "we have to look into that" answer. So it goes. > Remember the other MIT graduate who found that NET had overcharged > the State House something like a few millions of dollars? No. I might not have been here then. Do you have a date, or reference, names etc. I would like to get ahold of that info. Dr. Scott Hannahs sth@slipknot.mit.edu F. Bitter National Magnet Lab, MIT NW14-1313, (617)253-5570 ------------------------------ From: na@princeton.edu (Nita Avalani) Subject: Questions on FDDI, 500GB File Servers, Remote NFS Mount IBM Organization: Princeton University Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 14:00:14 GMT I have following questions: (1) Is there any way to increase the size of a file partition from 2GB (to 20 - 50 GB, for example) in Unix OS? Is there currently an upper limit on the size of file partitions in mainframe (IBM) environment? (2) Are there any high speed hardware/software alternatives to restore/dump in Unix that would back up everything on the nets/subnets? If so, what is the best product? (3) Does any one have any experiences (good or bad) with the following: Either (1) a FDDI backbone with ethernet from each offices to the backbone/routers/whatever environment or (2) a FDDI backbone with FDDI drop to each offices, with 100+ users accessing very large databases/files (20 GB+) at will and simultaneously. Does the network performance suffer in any way? Can the line speed (100 Mbps for FDDI) be achieved for data transfer for each user under maximum loads? What are the do's and don'ts? I hear that 3COM has atleast two similar set ups (at Northrop and NASA Kennedy space center), does that setup work as planned? Is that the best out there? (4) Are there any pitfalls to setting up a high speed link (T1, T3 or FDDI) between a mainframe (say in California) and Unix LAN (say in Maine)? Even if one could receive data at line speeds, would a file server (Sun, Auspex, IBM) be able to handle it? More importantly, would each user be able to realize the same data transfer rate from their desktops (say Sparc10's) to the file servers? (5) I hear that the NFS, TCP/IP technology is available for IBM mainframes. Has any one ever NFS mounted the mainframe (in CA) on to their Unix file servers (in ME) using T1, T3 or FDDI lines? If so, could you please forward all your experiences (good, and of course, bad)? Were you ever able to access large data files from the mainframe for all your users instantly? Was it a reliabile set up? and finally, (6) Are there any products/vendors out there who make high speed unix file servers of 500GB and more (per server)? All comments, criticisms, etc. are welcomed. Thanks in advance. Nita ------------------------------ From: lma@dayton.Stanford.EDU (Larry Augustin) Subject: Wanted: Small (4-12 Line) PBX/Phone System Organization: DSO, Stanford University Date: 17 Jan 93 19:10:42 GMT I'm looking for an inexpensive phone system for a small business. I don't have any experience with vendors in this area. I'm looking for recommendations, vendors phone numbers, etc. Here are some of the features we're looking for: - we currently have two outside lines and six extensions. We would like the system to be expandable to about four outside lines and twelve extensions. - automated attendant; an incoming is call reaches an automated attendant, and the caller is routed to a particular extension based on a menu selection. - uses standard touch-tone phones for extensions. - any extension can be connected to any outside line. We don't need: - voicemail; we would be satisfied with attaching answering machines to individual extensions. - extension to extension connections (the office isn't that big :-)). if going off hook on an extension immediately connects you to an available outside line (or gives a dial-tone otherwise) that's fine. The most important constraint is cost. PC based solutions are fine -- we have a spare 386 PC we can use. Thanks in advance, Larry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:31:45 +0100 From: Guido.Weppler@FHFD.uni-giessen.dbp.de Subject: How to Plan a x.25 Numbering Scheme? Hi, Networkers! Since we have to plan the numberging scheme of a large X.25-network I wonder if anybody can give me a hint where to get some information about this problem. Today, our network covers only Germany, but we intend to make it international in the near future. The network is growing steadily (more than 200 switching nodes now, to be about 1000 nodes in the future) and transport services over it are used by more and more users. For user addressing we intent to use 14 digit numbers. The question is how to organise those numbers to get a structured numbering scheme that will work even if the network will grow. How many digits should be used for area coding, for subaddressing and for the node ID, etc.? I really would like to know if anybody had to deal with that kind of problem before and I would be very pleased to receive a literature tip or any other kind of information on that problem. Thanks in advance, G. Weppler ------------------------------ From: dem@hep.net (David E. Martin) Subject: New Developments in ISDN from Illinois Bell Date: 17 Jan 1993 22:29:23 GMT Organization: Fermi National Acclerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL, USA Reply-To: dem@hep.net I talked with Bill Kalmyer after getting a cryptic letter from him about ISDN service. He works for Ameritech and is their ISDN product manager for Illinois. Here is what he told me: 1) Base ISDN rates are going up 18%. This will raise our monthly bills for residental service by about $5.00 to about $40 for 2B. 2) IBT is going whole-hog for National ISDN-1. All new services will be by default NI-1. You can still get AT&T Proprietary ISDN (what IBT calls "custom" ISDN) by special request. 3) IBT is offering free FX (foreign exchange) service to those not served by a ISDN-capable CO, so they can get service at the same rates. 5) There is a new ISDN data products center in Wheaton, IL. 6) IBT formerly offered ISDN only from AT&T switches. They now offer NI-1 service from AT&T, NTI, and Siemens. 7) They are working on a new tariff to cut the cost for people with very high monthly circuit-switched data usage. David E. Martin National HEPnet Management Phone: +1 708 840-8275 Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory FAX: +1 708 840-8463 P.O. Box 500, MS 368; Batavia, IL 60510 USA\ E-Mail: dem@hep.net ------------------------------ From: bill@toto.info.com Subject: Beware: Portability Organization: Sun, Surf 'n Sushi, San Diego, CA Date: 18 Jan 93 03:31:01 GMT Inbound call center managers beware: the mad rush to implement CCS-7 (American extension to CCITT SS7) in order to support 800 number portability is going to give you several migraines. Why? A short story: Earlier this week a client discovered they could no longer reach their own x00 number (served by Sprint). Panic ensued, "My customers can't call me!" A urgent call was placed to Sprint: Sprint denied any network problem. They denied it adamantly! Quick escalation up through management. Somebody finally listened, and 48 hours later the problem was traced to a Sprint switch "upgrade" to Northern Telecom's BCS-34 (BCS: Bad Canadian Software ;-). In the meantime, inbound traffic volume diminished. Frantic calls were made to friends, and friends of friends across the nation, "Can you get through on my x00 number?" Blockages were found in three other LATAs, with dozens still untested. Worse still, a blockage was discovered for an AT&T x00 number, too! If your core business depends on inbound x00 traffic, you have been warned. I recommend that you routinely check inbound call completion from your major markets. And get a list of management's phone numbers at your long distance company. Bill Cerny | 10288-0-700-FON-BILL ------------------------------ From: rpmackin@student.business.uwo.ca (Robert Patrick MacKin) Subject: Looking For Recommendations For UPS For Phone System Organization: University of Western Ontario Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 19:27:27 GMT I am looking for recommendations for a UPS suitable for KEY and PBX systems. It should handle 120vac at three or four amps output. I hear Tripplite in Chicago carries something of the description, but I have neither an address nor phone number. I also know that ALPHA UPS systems have a suitable device, but I have no source for them at all. Any help here? Thanks! rpmackin@student.business.uwo.ca (Robert Patrick MacKin) Western Business School -- London, Ontario ------------------------------ From: rale1@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Ross Alexander) Subject: ANI and SS7 Organization: Computer Science, Auckland University Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 20:09:52 GMT Could anybody tell me what ANI is all about? I follow this group regularly but the common kiwi doesn't have to worry about interstate laws and Caller ID (yet). I've read up on the basic idea of SS7 and ISDN so I follow the idea of both in channel signaling and D channel signaling. Any help would be most appreciated. Ross Alexander Computer Science University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jan 93 10:12:54 SST From: Ang Peng Hwa Subject: Philippine Telephone Monopoly to be Broken This from Reuter: MANILA -- Senior Philippine communications official Josefina Lichauco said yesterday (Friday) she was determined to break up the country's telephone monopoly after renewed pressure from President Fidel Ramos. "The president has issued an order to abolish the monopoly and it shall be implemented," said undersecretary Ms Lichauco, who oversees the nation's communications policy. President Ramos, angered by a report that over 600,000 telephone applications have been pending for years, ordered officials this week to dismantle the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co (PLDT) monopoly. The average would-be subscriber has to wait four years to get a phone installed in the Manila area. Ms Lichauco said she was determined to force PDLT, one of the country's biggest companies, to allow other telecommunication companies to interconnect with the PLDT network. ------------------ Comments: a strange story that makes Ms. Lichauco a central figure in breakup. I would have thought that if the President says so, you do so. Regardless of how you feel, you *have* to be determined. Also, for those unfamiliar with the Philippines, it is a long standing joke that the Philippine phone system is modeled after the American AT&T pre-divestiture model. With one exception -- the Philippine system does not work. ------------------------------ From: jet@nas.nasa.gov (J. Eric Townsend) Subject: Is This a "Real" Security Alert Message of Some Sort? Organization: Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation, NASA Ames Date: 17 Jan 93 16:21:00 Got this while logging in to a BBS a month or two ago. I was doing the "new user look around" thingie. I didn't bother calling back. It looks a bit like those fake messages that sysops sometimes send in order to scare people off. The "NO CARRIER" bit came when they dropped carrier on me. ---start included text--- CYBERTRON CORP! (R)Telecommunications Security Node:#264839-LL NOTIFICATION: FCC-#9632852 - LINE VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS! ROUTE LINE IS CURRENTLY BEING FORWARDED TO: {DT*2VRP}(c) CALIFORNIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION! You have commited a FELONY, according to the FCC ruling #6828744 Telecommunications Privacy Act (1989) Section IV - 3529A-6 Municipal Code of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND IT'S AGENTS HEREIN ... Therefore, you are hereby WARNED! Any further attempt to contact this customer will result in CRIMINAL PROSECUTION and/or EXTRADITION by FEDERAL authorities....Your telephone number has been recorded in our central office! Thank you for using..."CYBERTRONICS SECURITY RESOURCES" Summary: Notify Police and local phone company? YES! Continue to monitor violator? YES! Total time logged was 1 minute(s), with 24 minutes remaining for 07/25/92. Thank you for calling, Eric. NO CARRIER ---end encluded text--- J. Eric Townsend -- jet@nas.nasa.gov -- 415.604.4311 (DoD# 0378) [Moderator's Note: This looks like a very poor attempt at humor to me. I do not think it is any sort of 'real' security alert. After all, why would they close by thanking your for calling and telling you how many minutes you had left on your call? The sysop not only has a warped sense of humor, but he is not very good at editing the print statements in his program. PAT] ------------------------------ From: eabu288@orion.oac.uci.edu (Alvin) Subject: USR HST 14.4 For Sale Date: 18 Jan 93 03:57:12 GMT I have a USR HST 14.4 for sale. It's an external modem for all computers. It has v.42 and v.42bis and tranfser at 1600cps. I still have the original package and documents. It's upgradeable to v.32 or v.fast from USR directly. I am asking $300 for the modem. Email me if interested it. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V13 #29 *****************************