_@TO :telecom@eecs.nwu.edu N _@UMSGID :<199505041844.NAA04786@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> N From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Thu May 4 17:04:47 1995 by coyot 17:04:47 - 0400 telecomlist-out bound; Thu, 4 May 1995 13:44:46 -0500 1995 13 :44:43 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 May 95 13:44:30 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 222 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: 404 Area Code Split; New Code 770 (Linc Madison) Re: 404 Area Code Split; New Code 770 (Stan Brown) Re: 404 Area Code Split; New Code 770 (Lee Winson) Re: The AT&T "Minimum Usage Charge" Rumor (Tom Horsley) Re: The AT&T "Minimum Usage Charge" Rumor (Anthony Campbell) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Patrick Phalen) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Bob Izenberg) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Antoin O Lachtnain) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Marc Schaefer) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Robbie Honerkamp) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (Markus Gloede) Re: Open NNTP Servers Wanted by Reader (S. Rathinam) Re: Annoying Calls: Can We Deal With Them? (James E. Bellaire) Re: Annoying Feature on Payphones (Rob Hjort) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rad (rad@eusdatl.attmail.com) wrote: > Yesterday, the Georgia PSC announced an area split for metro > Atlanta. For the most part, anything inside I-285 will be 404, all > the 'burbs will be 770 (that's me). > The PSC was considering two plans. One being the plan approved > above and the other involving an overlay scenario. ... > Also, after the 404/706 split a few years ago, it was predicted that > Atlanta had numbers for EIGHT years. Three years later we're in a big > rush to come up with a plan that will go into effect December 1, 1995. > Thus, one would think that with continued growth here in Atlanta, > we'll be ready for another split in the not too distant future. How > will we split then? Another donut wouldn't be feasible(sp?), so the > 770 would have to be split either north/south or east/west. Which > brings up the possiblity of having three area codes in extremely close > proximity, which, in my mind, reduces the benefits of the geographic > split. Well, first and foremost you have to blame the local politicians in the outlying regions of what is currently 404 for whining and crying enough to persuade the state to leave far too much in 404 and not move nearly enough into 706. If the first 404 split had been done sensibly, it would indeed be several more years before another split would be needed. The same is true, by the way, in Colorado; there is no excuse for having left so much in 303 and so little in 719 in the previous split. I have even less patience for this sort of shenanigans than I have for the cellular/pager companies whining about how it's "discriminatory" to put them into their own overlay area codes. Utter nonsense. Personally, I think the donut plan would work well -- you could have situations where a telephone across the street from you would be in a different area code, but something 50 miles away, on the opposite side of the metropolitan area, is in the same area code. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ rad@eusdatl.attmail.com (rad) writes: > Yesterday, the Georgia PSC announced an area split for metro > Atlanta. For the most part, anything inside I-285 will be 404, all > the 'burbs will be 770 (that's me). Me too. I was just wondering, since I live two streets outside I-285, I feel sure that my local switch services phones both inside and outside I-285. If this is the case does it mean that the switch lives in more than one area code? Doesn't this make thing interesting? Stan Brown stanb@netcom.com 404-996-6955 Factory Automation Systems Atlanta Ga. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, two area codes in the same central office is not that uncommon in large metro areas where area code boundaries divide nearby communities. For instance, here in the Chicago area, the central office known as Newcastle on the far northwest side of the city always did serve parts of Chicago as well as the communities of Harwood Heights and Norridge, both of which are now in 708 while the Chicago prefixes served from Newcastle are in 312. The physical location of the office itself is in Chicago. The same thing occurs in areas on the southwest side of Chicago where 312 ends and 708 begins. I suspect with the additional split to 630 and 847 next year, Newcastle may well have three area codes in the same building and on the same switch. PAT] ------------------------------ In my opinion as a customer, I prefer splits rather than overlays. Overlays can be used for specialty services such as beepers, mobile phones, and other phones that don't have a fixed geographic location. ------------------------------ > AT&T claims that 26% of its residential customers have monthly bills less > than $3 and 44% less than $10. I resemble that remark. I usually have monthly LD bill of at most a few cents (usually a call to NIST's atomic clock to reset my computer :-). I essentially never make LD calls and would be happy to have no LD provider at all, and make any LD calls using a 1-0-XXXX code, but I don't think it is possible to select "nobody" as my LD provider (though I would be happy to learn otherwise). Tom.Horsley@mail.hcsc.com Home: 511 Kingbird Circle Delray Beach FL 33444 Work: Harris Computers, 2101 W. Cypress Creek Rd. Ft. Lauderdale FL 33309 (email pvs@neu.edu, 1-800-622-SMART, gopher://chaos.dac.neu.edu:1112/00/pvs.txt) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You might want to ask again. Quite a few folks have 'none' as their carrier. It is an interesting and cheap way to block your phone from unauthorized long distance calls by most people who might be in your home. Unless they know to dial the 10xxx codes -- and most folks do not -- any attempts to dial long distance will just reach the 'your call cannot be completed as dialed' intercept. Pressing double zero only, as in '00' will get the same recording, or in some locations a fast busy or reorder tone. This is not a recommended way to handle toll blocking, but it will generally work unless you have a house full of Digest readers. ... even if telco defaults your line to 'none', you will still have to pay the network access charge each month since you can access carriers you choose via 10xxx. Even when you get 'official' toll-restriction from telco, i.e. no matter what you dial out- side your local area, no matter how you dial it, telco rejects it, you will still pay network access. PAT] ------------------------------ ward1@ux6.cso.uiuc.edu (ward michael) writes: > lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) writes: >> Here's what I've been able to piece together so far. It's accurate as >> far as I know, but I have more inquiries pending and I'll pass along >> anything else I find out. >> 1) No minimum charges would apply to residential lines (as far as I can >> determine right now). I received one of these notices in with my AT&T bill for my residential line. It's no rumor. > It is possible that AT&T does not want low volume customers. A > similar issue has come up with regards to residential service. AT&T > claims that 26% of its residential customers have monthly bills less > than $3 and 44% less than $10. My monthly long distance bill is usually only $1.50-$2.00. From all the hype, I thought I was the only one who didn't spend $50 on long distance a month. > It costs AT&T between $0.35 and $0.85 to render a monthly bill. I guess that is what I found so funny, and frustrating. I always got my long distance billing included with my local phone bill. Without warning, several months ago, I started getting my AT&T long distance bill separately. Sending off a check for $1.50 every month is quite a nuisance. I decided that with my next bill I would send off a check for $10, just to save the hassle of mailing of checks for the next several months. You know what came with my next AT&T billing, the notice that a $5 minimum charge would be starting, possibly with the next bill. And just like the separate billing, this too would be to my benefit. (Don't you love how they worded that notice? :) Enough is enough, time to switch long distance carriers. So guess what was again included as part of my just received local phone bill? My last AT&T billing. Too late, AT&T. TonyC@amwbbs.rain.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T has a very good, efficient way of dealing with minimum usage where cellular phones are concerned. If you use AT&T as your cellular long distance carrier, that always come billed separately from some place in Florida. If the bill is less than five dollars, a note enclosed with the bill says payment can be delayed until the bill is at least five dollars *or three months has gone by* whichever comes first. Over a three month period, presumably at least five dollars in long distance charges will have accumulated. If not, its hard to imagine why you are using a cell phone anyway. My AT&T bill is still consolidated with the local Ameritech bill and I have not received any notices about a minimum monthly charge. PAT] ------------------------------ > Someone sent me a note the other day which I have managed to lose, but > the essence of his request was this: He likes to read Usenet news but > many of the groups he wants to read are not carried by his site. He > wants to know of sites which maintain 'open' NNTP servers; that is, > where anyone can pull the news and post news, etc. > If you want to send me the information, I'll pass it along to him when > he writes me again, as I am sure he will when I don't answer him in the > next few days. He wrote me, I mistakenly thought he wanted information > on how to get this Digest by email; he wrote back saying it was not just > this Digest, but various other groups that were unavailable as well. > I told him I would post his note ... now it's lost. :( His intention is > to edit his .login file to 'setenv NNTP open.server.somewhere', and pull > the news that way. Any help will be appreciated. Patrick, I've seen this question come up periodically and the standard answer seems to be that any sys-admin who decides to permit it soon finds their newsserver overloaded (freeloaded?), and they inevitably have to slam the door. Of course, all the major online services provide this, but then why doesn't he just get a SLIP/PPP dialup connection at home (or work) for ~$20/mo; then he'll have the whole Internet at his fingertips, including the WWW? If his budget doesn't allow this, he could get a Shell account for under $9/mo, unlimited use, and Telnet to it from his other account or acess it directly with a few Unix commands. Patrick Phalen <<>> pphalen@crl.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > He wants to know of sites which maintain 'open' NNTP servers Pat, They're not asking for much, are they? :-) There are some (but not as many as once there were) sites that do promiscuous NNTP. Does your correspondent understand what they're asking? "Dear system administrator: May I transfer anywhere between zero and many megabytes of data across your network at any time?" Want to bet that some of the groups that they seek are high-volume binaries groups? Would you also bet that they'll be accessed during the work day instead of in the wee hours? Bob Izenberg 512-442-0614 / 617-728-1416 / 800-946-4645, pager 1109500 bei@io.com / bei@dogface.austin.tx.us / bei@pencom.com ------------------------------ In comp.dcom.telecom TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Someone sent me a note the other day which I have managed to lose, but > the essence of his request was this: He likes to read Usenet news but > many of the groups he wants to read are not carried by his site. He > wants to know of sites which maintain 'open' NNTP servers; that is, > where anyone can pull the news and post news, etc. Pat, I seem to recall that news.uunet.ca worked the last time I tried it. I'm sure they wouldn't thank us if you sent that information to Usenet, though. I recall finding that one in a list on a link from the FAQ which refers to how to get Usenet groups on yahoo. Most of the suggestions on that list didn't work when I tried them, though. Antoin O Lachtnain, Trinity College, Dublin. mail: aolchtnn@alf2.tcd.ie ------------------------------ > to edit his .login file to 'setenv NNTP open.server.somewhere', and pull > the news that way. Any help will be appreciated. setenv NNTPSERVER news.uni-stuttgart.de tin -r # or any newsreader capable of r)emotely reading news. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: More about Stuttgart a little later in this issue in a larger list of places. PAT] ------------------------------ news.randomc.com is an open port. :) Robbie [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for your offering. :) PAT] ------------------------------ "AW" == Art Walker writes: > In article TELECOM Digest > Editor wrote: >> I told him I would post his note ... now it's lost. :( His >> intention is to edit his .login file to 'setenv NNTP >> open.server.somewhere', and pull the news that way. Any help >> will be appreciated. > Unfortunately, "open" NNTP servers are all but extinct. news.georgetown.edu is accessible from outside and has comp.dcom.telecom. hth, Markus G. markusg@darkwing.uoregon.edu http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~markusg/ ------------------------------ Once a "public" server becomes known, traffic increases and they go private. A. Lesiker used to maintain a list which he discontinued about a year ago. I have an old version (attached) and most/all the servers are non-US. Some of these may still be open. ============ OLD LIST OF PUBLIC NNTP SERVERS $ finger lesikar@tigger.stcloud.msus.edu LESIKAR Lesikar, Arnold V. LESIKAR not logged in Last login Mon 18-Jul-94 4:35PM-CDT Plan: PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE NEWS SERVERS (Last Update 3/14/94) I am planning to take down the Lesikar NNTP server list as of mid-July. Currently I am no longer updating the list. The problem here is with growth of the net. News administrators seem to be unwilling or unable to cope with the increased traffic that results from publication of their site in my list. They cannot be blamed for this; the rapid growth in usage seems to be straining many resources on the net. There are in fact a number of NNTP servers that can be accessed freely. However, publishing the address of an accessible site seems to result in such a load increase that public access is shut off. So giving out the addresses of the sites that I know of will certainly be self-defeating! Gopher news servers are easily found throught the use of Veronica. Search through gopher directories using the keyword "Usenet" or "news." Not every site that turns up this way is accessible, but a percentage of them can be used. The list of public NNTP servers was an experiment. I have learned a good deal about how the net works from maintaining the list. Unfortunately, one of the results of the experiment was proof that the list is impractical under present conditions. It is for that reason that I am ceasing to update the list and will take it down entirely in July. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Many sites seem to have closed down since my last update. :( Currently only one U.S. site still remains accessible. I am sorry about that people, but I have no control over how the site administrators decide to run their servers. We have lost several Gopher news sites as well, but still 29 sites remain that provide news service through Gopher. (NOTE: 3/24/94 - the last U.S. site has just closed. You can try sol.ctr.columbia.edu, but I am told that this site allows only 15 connections at one time. In fact I have never succeeded in connecting to it. Reportedly it does allow posting.) These sites have been found to be available to the general public for NNTP service through port 119. You will need Newsreader software to make use of these sites. These sites were found to be open at the time they were surveyed, but I make no guarantees about future access. News administrators are free to close off sites to the public at any time. I will remove any site from this list that asks to be removed. I have not surveyed what is available at each of these sites. Please do not overload these sites looking for pornography. The administrators of these sites have been notified about this list, and they are unlikely to make prurient material available to the public. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE A GUEST IN MAKING USE OF THESE FACILITIES. The news adminstrators who support open access to the Usenet News are voluntarily doing a service for the public. PLEASE SHOW GRATITUDE FOR THEIR EFFORTS BY NOT ABUSING THE ACCESS THAT IS PROVIDED! Please remember also that you can also use Gopher to access the Usenet news. After the list of news servers, I have included bookmarks for sites that provide access through Gopher for reading the news. - arnold v. lesikar lesikar@tigger.stcloud.msus.edu news.belwue.de, 129.143.2.4 (read only) news.uni-hohenheim.de, 144.41.2.4 (read only) news.uni-stuttgart.de, 129.69.8.13 SEE NOTICE BELOW! newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de, 130.75.2.1 (posting OK) nic.belwue.de, 129.143.2.4 (read only) shakti.ncst.ernet.in, 144.16.1.1 (posting OK) Notice from the news administration of news.uni-stuttgart.de [please note the access policy & information below] - allows *read-only* access on port 119, - anon-nfs access to news.uni-stuttgart.de:/news and news.uni-stuttgart.de:/news/spool/news and, finally, to news.uni-stuttgart.de:/news/archive [our news archive]. - telnet access: rusinfo.rus.uni-stuttgart.de, login info, select menu item 1 (shell access), and to change to /pub/soft/comm/news/. cd spool/news for the spool dir, look around to watch a full-blown news server running 8-) - anon-ftp access: ftp info2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de:/pub/comm/news/*, same tree as via telnet access. - ftpmail access: ftpmail@info2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de, same as ftp access above - fsp access: info2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de, port 21, directory /comm/news - X.25 access (now, thats it ! 8-) to NUA (WIN, Datex-P): 0262 45050 367111 NUA (EuropaNet): 0204 3623 367111 - There is some way for decnet access. I don't know how this works. Good luck ! (quick'n'dirty) access policy: news.uni-stuttgart.de is a RS6000 with 128 MB RAM, FDDI interface, and a few Gigabytes disk (10, soon 15 8-). Its also our campus anon-ftp server. Its running inn-1.4. There are a few special hierarchies (e.g. russian, japanese, french etc), but no alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*, alt.sex.* and some other groups the university administration was not able to allow, please don't waste your time trying. Do not abuse this service. If You want to use our nntp service on a regular basis, please contact news-adm@news.uni-stuttgart.de so that we *know* who You are and why You use our server. This helps us to defend the open access policy [and we've seen hard times ...]. We will disable any domain without further notice if we have problems with it. -------------------------- BOOKMARKS TO SITES PROVIDING GOPHER ACCESS TO USENET. You can edit this list and include whatever parts are of interest in the bookmark file for your Gopher client. Alternatively you can point your client directly at the site. On a UNIX system, for example, you could point your Gopher client at the La Tech Usenet site with the command gopher -p '1/Usenet News' aurora.engr.latech.edu 70. The general format for the command in Unix is gopher -p 'PATH' host_name port# You cannot post news articles via Gopher. However, it is possible to post news articles by mail through the University of Texas. You must remember in using this service that the periods in the newsgroup name are all changed to hyphens. So, to post an article to the newsgroup "alt.beer," for example, you would e-mail your article to the following address: alt-beer@cs.utexas.edu. To post to the newsgroup "comp.os.vms," you would e-mail to comp-os-vms@cs.utexas.edu. # Type=1 Name=USENET News (from Lousisiana Tech) Path=1/Usenet News Host=aurora.latech.edu Port=70 # Type=1 Name=USENET News (from Michigan State University) Path=nntp Host=gopher.msu.edu Port=4320 # Type=1 Name=USENET News (from Walla Walla College) Path=news Host=saturn.wwc.edu Port=4320 # Type=1 Name=USENET News (San Diego Supercomputer Center) Path=1/News/Usenet