From telecom-request@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Tue May 9 18:13:02 1995 by 1995 18:13:02 -0400 telecomlist-outbound; Tue, 9 May 1995 15:04:10 -0500 1995 15:04:02 -0500 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 May 95 15:03:00 CDT Volume 15 : Issue 231 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CAIS: Chicago Area Internet Society (John FX Berns) How Many GSM Users/Networks/Countries in the World? (John Scourias) ATM/SONET VLSI Designers Wanted (Sramana Mitra) Is it Just Me? (John Mayson) Desperately Seeking 7200's (Jeffrey Reed) Use of CDPD For Redundancy in Cellular Networks (Seth B. Rothenberg) Tunneling TCP/IP Over TCP/IP? (Garry P. Adkins) Help Needed With DS2153 Interface (Yaon Ram) Re: Can Someone Explain DID in English? (Mark E. Daniel) Re: Annoying Calls: Can We Deal With Them? (Bruce Roberts) Re: Annoying Feature on Payphones Here (Jens von der Heide) 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcing the First meeting of The Chicago Area Internet Society: CAIS. What CAIS is: The Chicago Area Internet Society (CAIS) is a new organization formed to help people who are interested in the Internet as a communications tool. Our goal is to help professional communicators find out how they can responsibly and effectively use the Internet as a communications vehicle. Focus will be on the strategies and technologies for publishing and marketing on the Internet. What CAIS is not: CAIS is not a "user's group." We are not a place for beginners to learn about how to get on the internet. Future Goals: CAIS will be holding meetings to get input from people interested in helping form the future of CAIS. Some plans for the future: monthly meetings on HOT topics, developing a virtual organization on the internet, ie: a WWW page for information with links to members home pages, a news group and mail list and? Your suggestions are welcome! Where CAIS meets: CAIS will be meeting the 3rd Wednesday of every month at 6:00 pm at Loyola University's Downtown Campus at 1 E. Pearson St. (1 block west of the Water Tower, 2 blocks west of Michigan Ave & 1 block north of Chicago Ave). Getting on the CAIS E-mail list: E-mail us a CAIS@fxmm.com and send us the following info: Name, Company, Title, Address, Phone, Fax, E-mail address, home page address. NOTE: all CAIS notices will be sent via E-mail. It is critical that you include an e-mail address if you wish to receive notices. Contacting CAIS: E-mail: CAIS @fxmm.com WWW: HTTP://www.fxmm.com/cais.html (site will be up around May 7th) Phone: 312-787-3966 x200 Snail-Mail (Why?) CAIS, 520 W. Erie #220, Chicago, IL 60610 Contacting the President of CAIS John FX Berns E-mail: jberns@fxmm.com Phone: 312-787-3966 x102 Announcing the first CAIS meeting: Time: Doors open at 6:00 pm (networking), 6:30 pm Program starts Location: Loyola University (Downtown campus) Rubloff Auditorium, 1 E. Pearson St. Subjects: Webforce web authoring tools and Electronic Retailing Strategies for the Internet The speakers for this meeting will be Tineka Pullens from SGI who will talk about their WebForce line of Internet authoring tools and Loren Freedman of the E-Tailing Group, who specialize in consulting on electronic retailing with clients such as ISN (Internet Shopping Network), AT&T, US West, Ameritech, who will talk about how to use the web as a way to effectively sell to customers--without violating Internet ethics. Donation: $5.00, students free. John FX Berns President Chicago Area Internet Society ------------------------------ Hi everyone, I know I posted a similar posting some time ago, but I did not get the total, world-wide NUMBERS that I was looking for, although I'd like to thank the people who sent the lists of operators. So could someone please give me a pointer/source to recent statistics on international GSM usage? I don't know where I got the information, but I think it is 5.4 million subscribers. Thanks in advance, John Scourias http://ccnga.uwaterloo.ca/~jscouria University of Waterloo jscouria@neumann.uwaterloo.ca Waterloo, ON, Canada ------------------------------ DAIS Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a new company with a vision. | Envisioned by a team of entrepreneurs interested and experienced in | state-of-the-art technology, DAIS has an imaginative business plan, | superb government support and contacts, utmost professionalism, and | excellent projected returns. | The core technical vision of the company is provided by | o Prof. Gautam Mitra (Phd from Imperial College with near 30 years | association with Information Technology both in academic and | commercial capacity) and | o Ms. Sramana Mitra (M.S. in Computer Science from MIT) | For the VLSI Design division of the company we are looking for | A SENIOR VLSI DESIGN ENGINEER | for a leadership position in ATM, SONET and other communication | system design | DAIS is headquartered in Calcutta, India, and the design center will be | located in Calcutta. An intensive training period will precede starting | work in Calcutta, during which candidate will be working at the site of | our US collaborator to get familiar with project details. | Candidate should have a Masters or a Phd with concentration in either VLSI Design or Telecommunication ATM/SONET Technology, and strong familiarity with the other. The projects will involve design, layout, simulation, testing, and verification of communication VLSI chips and systems. At least three years industry experience is required in a relevant field. DAIS is setting up state-of-the-art design facilities in Calcutta. Equipments will include Sun SPARCs, 486 PCs, Cadence / Mentor Graphics / Viewlogic Tools. Infrastructure will include a fully networked office, email and internet access, and other communication facilities. Compensation includes competitive salaries, performance based profit-sharing options, housing subsidy, etc. Interested candidates are requested to submit resumes to or contact: Ms. Sramana Mitra OR Mr. Jayanta K. Dey- Sircar Executive Director Department of Computer Science DAIS Information Technologies University of Massachusetts c/o Laboratory for Computer Science Amherst, MA 01003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (413)-545-3179 (work) 545 Technology Square, NE43-632 (413)-546-4580 (home) Cambridge, MA 02139 (413)-545-1249 (fax) (617)-253-7768 (work) dey@cs.umass.edu (email) (617)-441-0697 (home) (617)-258-8682 (fax) smitra@lcs.mit.edu (email) DAIS InfoTech also has three other divisions, namely, MULTIMEDIA, ONLINE SERVICES and SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. Please contact one of the above persons if you are interested in any of those divisions. ------------------------------ Is it just me? I've been following these NPA changes and it seems almost every split or overlay has some group of people really torqued off at the "big, evil telephone company". We hear the same tiresome argument. "We don't want *OUR* children (as if its society's collective responsiblity to rear them) to have to memorize a ten-digit telephone number.", implying millions of children will somehow die by having a ten-digital phone number. If that were the case, think of how many children die because of seven-digital numbers. Let's shorten them to five. A shining example is the 404/770 split in Georgia. By avoiding an overlay, we prevented people from having to dial ten-digits, right? Wrong. There's a lot of cross-Perimeter dialing, meaning callers will have to dial not just ten, but *ELEVEN* digits. And look at the case of our precious, helpless children. Billy is lost at Perimeter Mall. He finds a mall security guard who offers to call Billy's home. Billy knows his number is 555-9876, but can't remember his area code. Well, Billy could conceivably live in 404 or 770, who's to know? I know there are far worse things in the world to get upset at, but state regulators are really making a royal mess of our phone system. Had the Georgia PSC allowed Southern Bell to do the 404/706 split right, we wouldn't have this problem today. I just hope in the future, regulators look at Chicago, Atlanta, South Florida, and L.A. and learn not to micromanage private industry who knows how to do the job best. John Mayson (MS 100/2243) Senior Engineer Harris Electronic Systems Sector PO Box 99000, Melbourne FL USA 32902 Voice (407) 727-6389 | Fax (407) 729-3801 | Pager (407) 635-3606 internet john.mayson@harris.com | http://p100dl.ess.harris.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am told by some very old-time people who were with the Bell System and are since scattered all over the various Baby Bells today that if it were possible to set the clock back a half century and plan things over again, that many changes would be made. There were lots of very far-sighted well meaning people involved during the 1940's and 1950's with planning for future expansion of such things as area codes and local numbering schemes, etc ... but the general consensus today -- of the few who are still alive and that I have chatted with at one time or another -- that *no one* could have begun to anticipate the growth. There were plans even fifty years ago by some at Bell for eight digit local numbers and *four* digit area codes; the majority of the people involved thought such schemes to be outlandish and the majority involved in the process of planning 'area codes for the future' did pretty much correctly guess the time the old numbering system would be exhausted; what perhaps they failed to understand would be the social ramifications involved in the new system. PAT] ------------------------------ I need to locate Mortorola 7200 "Original Label" phones. I need 75,000 (ideally, 25,000 x 3 months). The funds are already in place -- can move now. Call ASAP, Jeffrey Reed 414-761-8690 ------------------------------ I recently did some work investigating CDPD. One observation I made was that CDPD is an excellent way to gain redundancy. In most areas (most populated areas?), there are two cellular carriers. Since the last mile is what is at greatest risk, half of any circuit is protected 100%. My question is about the other half. Does anyone know if there is an easy way to, for example, have a router connection to both the A-side carrier and to the B-side carrier? Then, you'd have almost perfect reduncancy. I would hope that you could just register the same Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) with each carrier, much they way you might register a single portable PC bootp servers on two networks. (Is that a violation of bootp?) What I am not clear about is, where the IP address is looked up. Does the CDPD Mobile End Station know its own IP address? I would think it WOULD NOT need to know it, because the Data Service Manager would do that. If this is the case, the device would just have two IP addresses, one on each network. My company's routers would need to be configured to rout via whichever path is available. Thanks Seth ------------------------------ Does anyone know of any IP software that would be able to "tunnel" (wrap up) IP packets so they can be directed to a far-away lan with a variable IP gateway? We need to "readdress" IP packets with a different destination and then unwrap them at the far end. Do you know of any sofware that would do that? Both end machines are Linux machines. For a short period of time each day, we'd like to link our lans (in different states) via dialup with the Internet. Thanks! Garry Adkins adkinsg@ianet.net USnail: 712 Chestnut St. BELLNet: +1-304-453-5757 Kenova, WV 25530-1511 ------------------------------ I am looking for someone that has a working E1 interface using the DS2153. Does it work right? Any bugs I should watch for? Any appnotes? ------------------------------ ·_ In article was written: > Imagine a hospital, it has 40 DID trunks to service 500 patient beds and > 400 administrative personnel. The hospital would pay the telco for the 40 > DID trunks and also would pay to block out 1,000 numbers. (500 + 400 + > 100 spare). OK. I can deal with that. Then pagers and perhaps cellular works the same way with a bunch of trunks? :-). Then if said hospital only has 40 trunks (assuming trunks are what the rest of us call 'lines') then only 40 of the 1000 extensions may be connected to outside calls at one time which would explain why I've been in the hodpital and hit 9 and gotten PBX reorder type things. Insufficent trunks to complete my request, right? GTE mobilnet has a bunch of "reserved" numbers in our area. 216-801 thru 805 are their's from 0000 to 9999. Cellular One only has three complete "reserved" exchanges. Not much competition. :-). Plus there are four or five other complete prefixes given to GTE Mobilnet here. :-). They own the Akron Cellular market. Except for one strange prefix given to something I've never heard of (independant cellular). ------------------------------ > I think what happened in California is that when the telcos wanted to > offer CLID, the California Public Utilities Commission (your > representative government) placed so many different kinds of > restrictions on what offering it would allow that it became > economically unattractive for the telcos to offer. The market > determines the price, remember ... the telco can't charge more than > what people will pay, and the fewer people who buy the service, the > less capital the telco has to buy software to implement the service. Well, you're almost right. The CPUC insisted that per-line-blocking be available (I don't remember if it was to be free or fee.) GTE and PacBell said "forget it" and that's why California has no Caller-ID. TTFN Bruce Roberts, bruce.roberts@greatesc.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But the latest word is that California will be having Caller-ID real soon now. In an issue of the Digest I will send out later today, Lauren Weinstein writes to the Digest with some recent developments. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest Editor writes > It seems that when you call from a payphone ... a recorded message comes > on the line saying 'your party does not answer' and inviting you > to leave a message 'for delivery at a later time' I had a similar and scary experience with AT&T USADirect. I was calling from Switzerland to the US via USADirect for an airline reservation. The airline answered immediately with an automated response system which would forward to a "ringing" phone after making the appropriate selection. After a few rings, I would be prompted by USADirect to leave a message for later delivery. I called the USADirect operator and asked to put me through without this "service", but the same "service" kicked in during my call. In fustration, I swore out loud about how stupid this was, when I heard... "AT&T Operator, let me put you through again...." I didn't know he had stayed on the line with me. :-( As I remember it, I was able to use USADirect on other occassions and allow the line to keep ringing. I was just surprised the service worked even after the initial call had been completed. Jens von der Heide, Network Engineer +1-708-955- 4919 Swiss Bank Corporation, Capital Markets and Treasury FAX: +1-708-955- 6929 4225 Naperville Rd E-Mail: jens_von_der_heide@il.us.swissbank.com Lisle, IL 60532, USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Accidents' will happen! . For how long have telephone operators been abused? ... oh, since the dreadful instrument was first invented, I suppose. I have a microfilm copy of the 1919-1920 alphabetical directory of the Chicago Telephone Company, which was the predecessor to Illinois Bell until about seventy years ago when AT&T bought out CTC about 1924 and renamed the company to be part of the Bell System. From the inside front cover in small, yet quite readable type, a notice entitled 'Admonishment to Subscribers': "Subscribers are admonished to refrain from cursing our operators or using foul and profane language in their requests for telephone connections. Subscribers are requested to address our operators in a courteous manner; the operators have been instructed to respond in a similar way. Would you want the operator to curse you when a connection was impossible because the called line was engaged or out-of-order conditions prevailed? Speak to our operators in the same way you wish to be spoken to. Thank you." Remember, in those early years of this century, telephone connections were established entirely manually, by the subscriber asking the oper- ator to plug things together. Ignorant subscribers, frustrated by trying for hours to reach someone whose line was busy might well say something to the operator like, "#@@@!!77$ operator! Cut in on the line and tell them to can the shit so someone else can get through! #@@%!&%!!! " Or they would blame the operator for being incompetent if they got a wrong number (after having *asked* for the wrong number!); they would flash to get her back -- especially if they had deposited money in a payphone coin box they were about to lose -- and give her a good general cussing out in the process of trying to reach the right number. The operators had to sit there and take it; a single profane word passing their lips in response to a beligerant subscriber was grounds for immediate dismissal. But if a particular subscriber was always, consistently raunchy and rude -- cursing at the operators or making sexual propositions to them, and that happened a lot also -- then the operator would complain to the supervisor who in turn would tell the Business Office; the subscriber would be notified to cut it out or risk losing his service. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #231 ******************************