Hacker Chronicles 2 (Alt)/The_Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_II-CD2.iso/td2/td14_128.txt

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TELECOM Digest     Sat, 12 Mar 94 01:09:00 CST    Volume 14 : Issue 128

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Competition and Technology (Andrew Hassell)
    Re: Competition and Technology (Bob Goudreau)
    Re: Question About Random Dialing (James Gray Walker)
    Re: Question About Random Dialing (John R. Levine)
    Re: Internet Conferencing (Lars Poulsen)
    Re: Digital Cellular Phones ([e-mail])
    Re: Measuring Network Availability (Al Varney)
    Re: ISDN BRI to IXC? (Al Varney)
    Re: ISO Country Codes (Aaron Leonard)
    Re: Why Caller-ID Instead of ANI? (Clarence Dold)
    Re: Prisoner Starts Own 900 Number (Steve Forrette)
    Re: New Area Code Change Question (Mike Quinlin)
    Obscene Caller Nabbed by Voicemail (Milwaukee Journal via [e-mail])

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Andrew Hassell)
Subject: Re: Competition and Technology
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 00:49:40 GMT


Stewart Fist <[e-mail]> writes:

> Jerry Leichter <[e-mail]> writes:

>> I have great respect for competition, but I have yet to see a sound
>> argument that the advance in services available *since* deregulation
>> is signficantly different from the advance *before* deregulation -
>> AFTER CONTROLLING FOR THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVANCE IN APPLICABLE
>> TECHNOLOGY.

> I couldn't agree more.  I've just spent a lot of time analysing the
> long-distance charges (and the changes thereof) from country A to country B
> using a range of figures produced by the OECD, for a commissioned report.

> It is difficult stuff to analyse, but one thing became quite clear.
> There's been no more drop in international long-distance call prices
> in advanced (OECD) countries with competitive regimes than there has
> in those with monopoly regimes.  I must say I was surprised at these
> findings, because the monopolies actually did slightly better --
> although the difference wasn't significant.

Hmm. I would probably be in the contra camp based on recent Australian
experience with the adjustment from monopoly to duopoly for mainstream
long distance carrier services. Did your report cover this market
Stewart?

> When you dig down to the bottom, the problem is that in an era where
> long-distance connection abundance is the norm (except that in many
> cases this is being deliberately knobbled) the normal competitive
> market forces do not apply in the way that conventional economics says
> it should.

I'd interested to know if your report will be available to folks
outside your commissioning parties. For my 2c worth here, I think
there is a lot of economic sense in monopolizing elements of
infrastructure to take advantages of economies of scale. A beautiful
example would be the information hype-a-highway. Does it make sense to
have multiple fibre connection by multiple carriers? This must be
regulated for sure. Maybe a first carrier in best dressed situation
with Government regulated access and cross access provisions would be
optimal. However, what about outlying areas, less economic areas,
rural areas etc. Would some form of monopoly handle this more
efficiently that a tightly regulated duopoly or oligopoly? Who knows.
These issues are tough but I think you hit it on the head in part of
your post. How can regulators ensure that excessive profit taking is
eliminated in telecommunications? Argument one that you will probably
never escape from alive is the politics of this, you communist! -)
[sic] Argument two is how you actually achieve the objective through
structuring the industry and regulating it. The objective could be to
allow a small fair return on investment, thus encouraging maximum
investment in capital works.

 ... but enough nonsense on a lazy Saturday morning. This is la la land.


Andrew Hassell   [e-mail]   - a technology marketer
Sydney NSW, Australia   Tel: [phone]    Fax: [phone]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 16:32:02 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Bob Goudreau)
Subject: Re: Competition and Technology


Stewart Fist <[e-mail]> writes:

> It is difficult stuff to analyse, but one thing became quite clear.
> There's been no more drop in international long-distance call prices
> in advanced (OECD) countries with competitive regimes than there has
> in those with monopoly regimes.

Sure, but ask yourself what's driving those monopoly PTTs to cut their
international calling prices: competition from the "competitive
regimes"!  A recent example of this phenomenon showed up recently in
the telecom newsgroups from an Italian reader, who noted that the
Italian telco had recently cut its international rates to levels
competitive with the international call-back services that had been
recently capturing so much of its business.  The advent of those
call-back services meant that Italtel effectively *lost* its monopoly
and was thus forced to compete by cutting prices.  Now, how many
people think those rates would have been cut in the absence of such
competition?

A more interesting analysis would be to compare the costs of
*intra*-national long distance calling.  Most monopoly PTTs still do
enjoy true monopolies in that market, while there's certainly plenty
of competition for that business in the US.


Bob Goudreau  Data General Corporation
[e-mail] 62 Alexander Drive
[phone]  Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (James Gray Walker)
Subject: Re: Question About Random Dialing
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 01:06:36 +0100
Organization: MUC.DE e.V. - Individual Network in Muenchen (Munich)


In article <[e-mail]>,  <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Is there a shareware program or commercial program available that can
> dial randomly within a given area code and when it comes across a fax
> machine log that fax number into a database. If anyone has any
> pointers I would appreciate it.

I find this idea appalling for reasons most anyone can imagine.
Perhaps someone who lives closer to Fannie Mae than I could bring up
the issue of the posting with the poster's employer directly.  I'm
fairly sure Fannie Mae has a policy which would preclude the use of
their equipment for a posting of such questionable ethicality for the
friend of an employee.


WALKER, James Gray - [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 19:13 EST
From: John R. Levine <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Question About Random Dialing


People planning to troll for fax numbers should keep in mind these two
aspects of a recently passed Federal law:

-- All fax calls must have the caller's number displayed on the cover page
   and/or at the top of each page.
-- Sending junk faxes (generally described as faxes not requested or
   permitted by the recipient) is forbidden.

Violations are punishable by fairly severe federal penalties.


Regards from 9600 feet,

John Levine, [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: Internet Conferencing
Organization: CMC Network Products, Copenhagen DENMARK
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 22:59:18 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> Ralph E. Todd <[e-mail].
edu> writes:

> Greetings.  I am a graduate student in the Telecommunications program
> at George Mason University; Fairfax, Virginia.  In preparation for a
> term project dealing with organizational learning, I am in search of
> information regarding conferencing on the Internet.

> Specifically, I envision a moderated forum supporting concurrent
> access for at least 30 user sessions.
> Is anyone aware of the existence of such a forum?  Any knowledge of
> technology or building blocks which could support it?

IRC = Internet Relay Chat is the distributed equivalent of CIS's "CB
simulator" conference tool.

Setup a "private" channel, and there will be room for up to a couple
hundred, located anywhere in the world. IRC has provisions for a
moderator who can kick people out of the group if needed. It also has
support for logging the session to a transcript file.


Lars Poulsen   Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
CMC Network Products  Phone: (011-) [phone]
Hvidovre Strandvej 72 B   Telefax:      [phone]
DK-2650 Hvidovre, DENMARK Internets: designed and built while you wait

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (puma)
Subject: Re: Digital Cellular Phones
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 23:18:20 GMT


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve
Forrette) writes:

> In <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (John Galloway) writes:
>> But if this key is fixed (since it is not transmited I assume it is)
>> then all the cellular blue box builder need to is disect a phone to
>> get it.  This might not be a trivial opeation, but these crooks are
>> pretty smart fellows.

> Are you assuming that the key is the same for all phones?  If the key
> is different for each phone, then the crook would have to get a hold

I think the intention here is that each phone has a unique key known
to that phone and the home service provider.  When the phone makes a
call, it encrypts part of the request using the key.  The system
either has the key for that ESN/phone number or asks the home system
for it, and uses it to decode the encoded portion of the request.  If
the decode works, then obviously you are talking to the *real* phone.

Seems pretty foolproof, unless you have enough data and time to break
the encryption for a particular phone, or inside information.  It
would at least stop the casual grabbing of ESN/MIN combinations off
the air.


[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 18:06:09 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Measuring Network Availability
Organization: AT&T Network Systems


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stacy L.
Millions) writes:

> I was involved in a project, where we helped to migrate a companies
> user base from an IBM mainframe / SNA / 3270 terminal environment to a
> UNIX / TCP/IP / vt220 / terminal server environment. I can remember
> one of IBM network type people made a comment about how they guarantee
> their users 99.8% network availability and he was skeptical that we
> would be able to match that in the new environment.

> Now my question is simply this:
> How do you
>  a) define
> and
>  b) measure
> 'network availability'? Particularly in the context of
> LANs and WANs.

   For some insight into this issue within the public telephone
network, I recommend:

   "Public Networks - Dependable", by John C. McDonald in April 1992
issue of IEEE Communications Magazine.  He defines and defends the
concept of measuring the "reliablilty" of public networks using a
log(10) scale of "user lost Erlangs" times "outage time in hours".  In
other words, it is a measure of user impact.

   The June 1993 issue of IEEE Communications magazine has several
papers on the measurement of "dependability" and "availability" of
telephone networks.  The consensus seems to be that one must measure
this from the user (or user-to-user) perspective.  Network problems
that have no user impact (because of redundancy, etc.) do not affect
availability.  Problems that prevent a user-to-user connection of
sufficient quality and duration to accomplish a "transaction" do have
an effect on availability.


Al Varney

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 18:25:31 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: ISDN BRI to IXC?
Organization: AT&T Network Systems


In article <[e-mail]> John McHarry <mcharry@access.
digex.net> writes:

> If I have an ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) from my local exchange
> carrier and want to place an interexchange data call, how does the LEC
> interconnect with the IXC?  Somebody told me that this has to be
                                                   ^^^^
      Don't know what "this" refers to -- CPE, the LEC CO or what???

> hooked to a switched 56kb trunk, but I don't see why the LEC couldn't
> just send it in a regular Feature Group D and tell the IXC it was a
> data call in the SS7 message.  Am I missing something?

   Assuming the BRI SETUP specified 56K data rate, the call can travel
over SS7 trunks to the IXC or over "switched 56K" MF trunks.  For the
purposes of data transmission, these trunks are equivalent.  At the
far end of the call, a BRI called party will receive an "ISDN
originator" indication along with the 56K data rate request IF the
call used only SS7 trunks.  A non-ISDN 56K destination will not know
(or care) if the call was ISDN-originated.  In most cases, there
should be no problem interworking with SS7 and/or "switched 56K" MF
trunks.

   The opposite is also possible: A non-ISDN 56K originator can call
an ISDN BRI/PRI number.  The SETUP delivered to the destination will
indicate a "non-ISDN originator" and the 56K data rate request IF the
call used only SS7 trunks.  Otherwise, the SETUP will just indicate
56K data rate request.  Again, the B-channel data looks the same as
from an ISDN 56K origination.

   Note that whether or not the IXC wishes to accept such data calls
is up to the IXC.  The LEC CO routing software can provide different
routing for different bearer capabilities -- and it can block certain
bearer capabilities if the IXC or trunk facility can't handle them.

   Also, "Feature Group D" usually refers to an MF-signaled trunk.
For clarity, and to avoid confusion with MF-only FG-D tariffs, the
preferred term is SS7 NI (Network Interconnect) trunk or SS7 EA (Equal
Access) signaling/trunk.  I admit some documents use the expression
FG-D trunk with the SS7 option or with SS7 signaling.


Al Varney

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 17:45:03 MST
From: Aaron Leonard <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ISO Country Codes
Reply-To: [e-mail]


> A few issues back a woman asked for a list of the two-letter and
> three-letter ISO 3166 codes for most countries.

> While it does not include the codes for the countries that have been
> created as a result of others being broken up (such as the Soviet Union
> and Czechslovakia) one place to look is in my Internet RFC 1394, which
> also shows international telex codes and worldwide telephone area codes.

RIPE maintains an up-to-date table of ISO 3166 codes.  It has all the
FSU countries and everything.

The document is available via anonymous FTP from ftp.ripe.net, in
ripe/docs/iso3166-codes.


Aaron Leonard (AL104), <[e-mail]>
University of Arizona Network Operations, Tucson AZ 85721

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Clarence Dold)
Subject: Re: Why Caller-ID Instead of ANI?
Organization: a2i network
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 19:01:27 GMT


Steve Forrette ([e-mail]) wrote:

> In <[e-mail]>, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in
> response to [e-mail] (Scott Baer):

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you misunderstood the results of
>> your prepending 10222 to a local seven digit number. In all probability,
>> your local telephone exchange probably *ignored* the 10222 and handled
>> the call themselves. They have the right to do that.  PAT]

If you follow the carrier selection with #, you will actually draw
dial tone from the carrier's switch.  I can dial 10xxx#, wait for dial
tone from my switch, then follow with the rest of the number.  PcaBell
never gets the opportunity to route the call, except to my switch,
because they don't see the rest of the digits until after my switch
has the connection.  Merely dialing the same 10xxx without the #,
gives me a "not neccessary" message and SIT reorder.  Dialing one long
string, with #, but no wait for dialtone, causes an incomplete phone
number to be heard by my switch.

Some carriers don't allow such access.  10288# draws a reorder, but it
is an AT&T reorder, not PacBell.


Clarence A Dold - [e-mail]
                - Milpitas (near San Jose) & Napa CA.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It used to be the case here that a couple
of the 10xxx codes worked the way you mention, with # causing the call to
be given the carrier's dial tone. This is not so any longer, at least on
the two or three I tried at random just now. As you point out, 10288#
gets re-order. You say it comes from AT&T, so I assume that is correct.
10333# got me a recording saying my call could not be completed as dialed
and to try again or call 'customer service'.  10222# got me a re-order
also. I think at one time, maybe in the early days of 10xxx what you say
was more common; there might have been some tie-in with the equivilent
950-1xxx; ie, 10222 and 950-1222 both got MCI dial tone; the latter when
you dialed it and the former when you allowed it to time out with no
further digits. Illinois Bell seems to not allow it at all now.   PAT]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Prisoner Starts Own 900 Number
Date: 12 Mar 1994 02:27:55 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc.
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Steve Forrette)


The Moderator wrote:

> Now I do not have any love in my heart for prisoners and unlike some
> liberal thinkers I could name (but won't) who are constantly whining
> about 'all the innocent people in prison', my attitude is there are no
> innocent people in prison, by definition absolutely, and most likely
> in reality as well.

But these AOS ripoffs are also found in jails, where newly-arrested
people that have not been convicted or even charged are housed (in
addition to convicted non-felons).  Many jails restrict the phones so
they can't call an 800 number, can't use the arrestee's own calling
card, can't use coins for a local call, or any other method than the
AOS's collect call service.  I guess you could say that the jails have
the inmates right where they want them.


Steve Forrette, [e-mail]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In real practice, persons who have not been
charged with a crime are usually held in police lockups, and the ones here
all have Genuine Bell payphones. Those who have been charged with a crime
are usually free on bond (either because they posted the bond or were given
freedom based on their Recognizance). It is *hard* to get into Cook County
Jail ... very hard. It helps if you are a murderer, a rapist and very violent
as well as being a second or third time offender.

As with the prisons in the USA, there are no innocent people in jail. Despite
this, I agree that the captive customer base consisting of families and
loved ones of prisoners is getting shafted in the process where the phones
are concerned.   PAT]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mike Quinlan)
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 22:22:00 -0700
Organization: Phantasia BBS
Subject: Re: New Area Code Change Question


In message <[e-mail]>, TELECOM Digest Editor Noted:

> Since the general public has never probably understood the way area codes
> were constructed in the past, the general public will probably not notice
> the difference starting next year.

The general public may notice that they will have to dial the area
code when making long-distance calls within the same area code.


[e-mail] (Mike Quinlan)

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 17:57:28 PST
From: puma <[e-mail]>
Subject: Obscene Caller Nabbed by Voicemail


"System Snares Alleged Caller" from the {Milwaukee Journal}, Friday March
11, 1994

La Crosse (WI) - An obscene caller has been caught by his own call,
thanks to some high-tech telephone equipment, police say.

The caller, 30 year-old Richard Armstrong of La Crosse (WI), had left
sexually explicit messages on the victim's voice mail system,
authorities said.

The system is similar to a telephone answering machine, but it
includes a way of retrieving the caller's telephone number if that
party also is a voice mail subscriber, which is what the victim said
she did.


puma grins >  Bravo!  One for the good guys!


[e-mail]

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V14 #128
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