From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 5 22:35:29 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i362ZTt08558; Mon, 5 Apr 2004 22:35:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 22:35:29 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404060235.i362ZTt08558@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #163 TELECOM Digest Mon, 5 Apr 2004 22:35:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 163 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson See Voip (VOIP News) US Bills To Protect VoIP From Regulation (Jack Decker) Book on How the Internet/WWW Works? (AES/newspost) Re: How India is Saving Capitalism (Clarence Dold) Linx "Casper" Chip Available Sept. 2005 (Christopher Calder) Wiring Old Intercoms (Rich) Need Big Picture of Fixed Line Telecom System (relyah@hotmail.com) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle (AES) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle (G Welsh) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle (J Levine) Apparent Hidden Advertisements in the Telecom Digest (Phil Earnhardt) Re: High-Speed Call: Internet-Based Phone Service Goes Mainstream (AES) Re: Cable Modem Hackers Conquer the Co-ax (Martin McCormick) SP2 to Cause Microsoft Support Call Flood? (jmayson@nyx.net) BellSouth Shakes Google's Hand (jmayson@nyx.net) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: VOIP News Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 09:29:18 -0400 Subject: See Voip Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/8358167.htm By Michael Bazeley Mercury News When was the last time you ooohhed and aaahed at your telephone? Probably never, right? Because let's face it, the traditional home phone may be amazingly reliable, but its coolness factor is almost zero. This might be the year that changes. Internet phone service -- also known as VoIP for Voice over Internet Protocol (pronounced 'voyp') -- has been widely available to consumers for more than a year through small companies such as VoicePulse, Vonage and Packet8. So far, Americans have been slow to sign on. About 25 milion homes have broadband access where VoIP would work, but only about 200,000 have bought the service, notes Jeff Pulver, founder of the free VoIP service called Free World Dialup. "If anyone thinks we've gone mainstream, they should reconsider," he said last week at a Silicon Valley conference dedicated to VoIP. But the next 12 months could see a breakthrough. Vonage is moving its service into hundreds of Circuit City stores across the country. AT&T has now formally entered the market in two states (more will follow soon). And other big names will enter the market by the end the year, including Time Warner Cable. Full story at: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/8358167.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 17:13:57 -0400 Subject: US Bills To Protect VoIP from Regulation Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33326.html By Jay Lyman TechNewsWorld Despite the contentions from the growing VoIP industry, Yankee Group senior analyst Zeus Kerravala told TechNewsWorld that VoIP is indeed another flavor of telephone service because people still talk to one another, even if the technology travels over IP. Providers of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services may get their way, preventing state governments from taxing or regulating them, if proposed U.S. federal legislation is approved. Parallel bills from Sen. John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Mississippi) could keep VoIP classified as an information service and free from state regulation. VoIP is being used by both consumers and corporations to replace or integrate existing circuit-switch telephone network use. While there is a general consensus that VoIP should not be overly or heavily regulated, there are concerns that the Internet services might become too deregulated. Gartner analyst Ron Cowles said he questions the need for the proposed legislation because the states are already precluded from oversight by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is contemplating its own VoIP oversight. "Honestly, I don't know what's really behind these," Cowles told TechNewsWorld. "Why would we want more laws on that kind of stuff?" The analyst answered his own question on the cause of the legislation -- pointing out that "it's because of lobbying" -- but still questioned the need for it. [Comment: Okay, let me explain it for Mr. Cowles: We would want these laws because the incumbent phone companies (ILEC's) far too often have managed to have their way with state legislatures and regulatory agencies. If they could, they'd have the states regulating VoIP out of existence, or at least delay it until they could enter the market. Here in Michigan the Public Service Commission has started an investigation into VoIP, and allowed only a miserly two week period for comments, which just today was extended for two more weeks after McLeodUSA Telecommunications Services, Inc filed a motion for extension of time in which to file its comments in this proceeding. We simply cannot afford to have 50 different state legislatures and 50 different public utility commissions implementing regulations on companies which may not even have a presence in their states, particularly given that any such regulations or legislation is very like to, at least in some cases, be inspired by the efforts of ILEC lobbyists. The rural telephone companies, some of whom are notorious for gouging their customers (with high rates and small local calling areas), particularly want to see VoIP regulated. They're also at the forefront of opposing access charge reform, by the way. Even the FCC may be vulnerable to undue influence from the ILEC's, and from other entities that benefit from the current outdated taxation and compensation schemes. For example, the Universal Service Fund has rightly been described as a form of "corporate welfare", yet those who are recipients of it are going to fight to keep that scheme intact, whether it makes sense or not. Recipients of taxpayer and ratepayer funds will hardly ever acknowledge that their source of funding is highly questionable. The FCC is going to be hearing from all those special interests. So basically, this legislation would clarify that these special interests aren't going to get their way for once; that we are not going to be saddled with a regulatory regime intended for old technology. And remember, just because it has been proposed doesn't make it a done deal -- I expect it will be hotly debated on the floor of the House and the Senate, if indeed it ever gets out of committee.] Full story at: http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33326.html ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Book on How the Internet/WWW Works? Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 11:16:19 -0700 I'm a technically sophisticated type (EE PhD), use the Internet/WWW all the time -- but I really don't understand how it all "works", from an organizational or descriptive or structural/functional or governance viewpoint more than a technical or protocol viewpoint. (I'm not even totally clear on what the difference is between the "Internet" and the "WWW".) For example, when I or anyone else sends bits over the Internet: -- What segments of hardware (wires, cables, routers, fibers) do these bits typically pass through on the way from my laptop to the recipient's machine? -- Who _owns_ all these segments? -- Who _pays_ who to _use_ these segments? -- What rules or agreements govern who can access or use these segments? -- Routers: Who operates them? Why? How do they get paid? What general rules do they have to obey? How do they get authorized? -- How does an ISP become an ISP? What do they have to do? -- How does this whole world-wide structure all get managed, controlled, and especially built and paid for? and a lot of similar questions. So, can anyone recommend a book or other reference for the technically savvy but general reader on this? (Not a "how too use it" book; not a detailed reference on the IP or other protocols; just a "how it all works" description.) ------------------------------ From: dold@HowXIndiaX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: How India is Saving Capitalism Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 18:38:19 UTC Organization: a2i network Monty Solomon wrote: > For one Silicon Valley company, hiring Indian programmers wasn't > about greed, it was about survival. A special report from Chennai, > globalization's ground zero. Our company recently concluded that India no longer offers the cost savings that it once did, and chose instead to expand in North America. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: ccalder1@yahoo.com (Christopher Calder) Subject: Linx "Casper" Chip Available Sept. 2005 Date: 5 Apr 2004 12:17:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com "Casper" chip available Sept. 2005 I just received a e-mail from Linx Electronics and their new HDTV receiver chip that turns ghosting into a positive signal will be available in Thompson Electronics products in September of 2005. http://www.linxelectronics.com/products/lx2004rx.asp - Linx They are sending out sample chips to other manufacturers the end of this month. I hope Sony and the makers of Intel LCOS sets will use the chips. It will be available built into sets as well as in set top tuners. The cost is said to be the same as current chips. The Casper chip is said to pick up difficult signals 85% of the time in contrast to current chips which pick up those signals only 18% to 50% of the time. You will not need a directional antenna with the Linx Casper chip. HDTV reception should be better and easier in all ways than analog reception. Christopher Calder ------------------------------ From: rerstad@faegre.com (Rich) Subject: Wiring Old Intercoms Date: 5 Apr 2004 12:24:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a set of old Couch intercoms I want to install in our 1912 house. I am able to get a little life out of them with a 12V battery, but I had understood that to ring, I'd need AC power. But, I've found that these ring on DC -- but I haven't been able to figure out how to hook them up right. There appear to be four possible points to wire the intercom, but I'm not sure what wires should go where. I've had no luck locating any wiring diagrams or any discussion of these intercoms, for that matter. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Rich ------------------------------ From: relyah@hotmail.com Subject: Need Big Picture of Fixed Line Telecommunications System Date: 5 Apr 2004 12:32:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I need to get some information about PSTN which should include the following information: 1. access layer 2. signalling layer 3. transmission layer I would like to know how the above three are linked together. A picture would be perfect! Where on the internet can I get such information ? Can anybody help ? Regards, Loic ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 14:09:03 -0700 In article , Mark Atwood wrote: >> Its too bad Walmart's first response was to simply deny any of this >> and tell people to contact their own 'credit card issuer'. PAT] > Probably what happened was that Walmart didn't think they had done > anything wrong (and they hadn't). First Data was probably > stonewalling and lying to them as well. But with all the very bad PR Walmart has been having recently (literally locking their night time employees in their stores, for G_d's sake), it probably would have been a lot wiser to make a lot of very apologetic noises, express their great dismay at whatever has gone wrong, say they hope it's not their fault but they promise to look into it immediately and make things right no matter what, etc etc. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 16:14:25 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada > But this whole exciting weekend has been an > excellent example of *why* I keep a 'financial firewall' in place, and > only keep enough money in my 'working debit card' (the plastic I use > for internet purchases and other small items where plastic is the > preferred [or only realistic] method of payment) in my account. > Imagine if I had used an open ended credit/debit card and instead of > Walmart (a reasonably honest, even if ineffectual) merchant I had > used one of the internet guys. PAT] Actually, the lesson that really stood out for me is that your "financial firewall" didn't work! Even though you were using a debit card with only enough money for one transaction, the vendor was able to "force" the transaction, leaving your account in the red. What's to stop a merchant from "forcing" through whatever transaction they want, regardless of your safety? If the merchant and/or transaction processor did not admit culpability, you'd be on the hook for the dough ... sure, you could walk away from it and it wouldn't affect your bank balance but it would probably show up on your credit report. I, like many people, get along OK but would lose a lot (and set off a chain reaction of unfortunate consequences) if my credit rating were to change from pretty good to pretty bad when the balance I walked away from became a red flag in my report. Geoffrey Welsh Always looking for a good condition original 'chicklet keyboard' Commodore PET [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Nothing would prevent them from denying culpability or marking my credit record. Likewise, nothing would prevent me from countersuing (if they chose to sue) and telling the world about them through the various agencies for same such as Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Small Claims Court, etc. Certainly there is a risk either way, but if you are like me, and have very little actual money, it is prudent to clutch carefully onto what little you have. Maybe it is precisely because I have so little actual cash money, credit bureau reports do not frighten me very much. PAT] ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Date: 5 Apr 2004 18:44:36 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > What I do not understand is why an outfit like Walmart, as big as > they are, does not process their own Visa/MC paper, sending it > directly to Visa/MC instead of going through a third party place like > First Data Merchants? Isn't FDMC in this case a sort of 'bottom > feeder' a lot like the 'operator service companies' Processing credit card merchant transactions is a very specialized business, and there aren't a whole lot of companies that do it, with FDMS being one of the largest ones. Their web site says they did 12 billion transactions last year. I don't know of any merchants that do their own processing, and a lot of banks contract it out, too. My smallish bank contracts out to First Data, too. So far, they haven't screwed up any of my charges, knock on plastic. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Whatever happened to the small merchant with a storefront who sells thing occassionally getting a credit card for payment where the person signs the little slip of paper and the merchant stores these slips of paper away in the event of a dispute and the (swiped) card transaction goes to Visa/MC for processing? A larger store, such as Walmart for example would so something similar but on a much larger scale. Does *anyone* turn their charges into Visa/MC directly these days? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Apparent Hidden Advertisements in the Telecom Digest Date: 5 Apr 2004 13:05:50 -0700 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] In article , Our Moderator says: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But for those readers who have not > experienced this series of disasters with their electricity, cable > modem, etc and want to check out Vonage, I can give you an e-coupon > good for a month of free service.(Whatever kind of service you decide > is best, you get the second month of it for free with an e-coupon. > Just write ptownson@telecom-digest.org and request it. PAT] I'd been wondering about these comments that you had been putting in the Vonage messages. I just went to http://www.vonage.com/features_affiliates.php . These coupons you're offering are apparently part of Vonage's affiliates program; you apparently receive between $10 and $40 for every customer who signs up with Vonage after using one of your coupons. The moderator's apparent compensation for promotion of a telecommunications product in the Digest is a conflict of interest. At the very least, if you receive payments from Vonage, you need to disclose that financial interest every time you post such a promotion. If I misunderstood -- if the e-coupons you are offering are not part of the Vonage affiliates program -- I apologize in advance for presuming that they were. You've told us in the past that the TELECOM Digest follows the funding model of PBS or NPR stations where they have periodic "pledge breaks". I would be outraged if these broadcasters started sprinkling hidden advertisements in their normal programming. I fondly hope that you will maintain the same integrity with the TELECOM Digest. Thanks, Pat. phil [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do generally follow the NPR/PBS model except that where NPR (like our local classical music station KRPS 89.9 FM) tends to have seven or ten days of mostly pledge stuff with a small sprinkling of music inserted once a year, I stay with mostly 'programming' all the time and insert a 'pledge request' message once a month or so. Also, like NPR/PBS there are various categories of donors, but I consider that part a little crass, and don't really make an issue out of that part. The vast majority of PBS/NPR contributors, like the vast majority of mine, send in small amounts from time to time and receive thanks from the station (or myself). On KRPS, the donors who make 'larger than average' contributions are given a half dozen little thirty second or so blurbs on a non-commercial basis to wish happy birthdays, or happy anniversaries, etc. Slightly larger contributors such as small businesses (on KRPS) are given in one or two sentences as the 'sponsors' of programs. No 'commercials', no program interuptions, just a simple statement at the start of the program that X is the sponsor, and blah, blah. Major corporate donors are well known in the literature and programming efforts on NPR/PBS. That is sort of how I do things, only as I said, I do not make any distinction between class of donors, except regular, generous donors (such as Mike Sandman, Judith Oppenheimer, etc) are mentioned in each issue. I do not give premiums, or such. That is very crass to me. Just because some guys cannot give as much as others does not mean they should be ignored or mistreated. A *very big, very powerful* donor, or patron of mine would be given more space of course. This was the case with Microsoft a few years ago. Mike Rowesoft was the only one of those I have ever had, and everyone here was told about it, and asked (as a personal favor to me) to kindly refrain from being too abusive of the company. They are no longer around here. Now, your next question no doubt is where does Vonage fit into this picture. Vonage has two programs: an 'Affiliates' program and a 'Refer a Friend' program. They are quite similar, but different. I am **not** an Affiliate. An Affiliate is paid in cold, hard cash money once per month, gets a 1099 tax return annually, and the commissions are subject to the new customer sticking around for three months and paying his bills (to Vonage). A prospective 'Affiliate' fills in some paperwork for Vonage and has to stick to their terms. I think -- am not sure -- an 'Affiliate' gets $40-50 for each one of those signed up. Cold, hard cash once per month. If I were an 'affiliate' I would have a banner on a web page for them, etc. The other category is one that was used on me (when I first started with Vonage), which any new customer using my e-coupons can use and which I certainly use liberally. If I use 'refer a friend' to get you to try Vonage, I get a month of free service *at the service level I use* equal to a month of the service *you sign up for*. Example: My own Vonage phone bill is about thirty dollars per month. You sign up, I get 'next month' free, and you get a month free. You have no other obligations; you get a month free of whatever you paid for to start with. I get no money, ever, just (in my case) an infinite number of 'next month free' for my redeemed e-coupons. You might choose to purchase from Vonage the 'super extended deluxe business package' or whatever they call it, quite expensive IMO, forty dollars per month or something. I get my 'next month free' although the service I use is the 500 minutes per month long distance thing which costs $14.99 to which is added my virtual number, $4.99 and the 'regulatory recovery fee' which everyone has to pay. You of course get a free month also. But Vonage never pays me cash, since I am not an Affiliate. Nor do I hang up any banners for them. What I do have from Vonage is an infinite number of e-coupons redeemed for an infinite number of 'next month free' things. I have not paid for my Vonage service since the day I bought my ATA-186 adapter box and paid for the first month service. By the time I was into my paid for second month free, my own issued e-coupons were rolling in. I have not paid a nickle since, and I have at least a couple year's worth of redeemed e-coupons waiting to be used. When I now and then have occassion to chat on the phone with Vonage (very rarely) I can almost 'hear' their eyes bulge out of their heads when they see my account pop up on the screen, and the rows and rows of credit memos going past still waiting to be redeemed for a 'month of free service'. I use the redeemed e-coupons as fast as I can; I changed my service to get a virtual number out of Chicago which I do not need (plus my local Kansas number) and to get a virtual 800 number which is a nice frill but hardly neccessary. Now instead of having three or four years worth of waiting e-coupons, I only have a year or two of them, because of how frivilously I spend my money. (?) But if YOU sign up with Vonage and become eligible to use 'Refer a Friend' and your friends sign up, you'll soon be in the same position as myself. The reason is because VOIP is where things are at these days as you must know. The handwriting is on the wall for Traditional Bell; they've only got a few years left, at best. I hope this answers your questions. PAT] ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: High-Speed: Internet-Based Phone Service Goes Mainstream Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 11:25:03 -0700 > http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2062849,00.html > By Eve Mitchell, BUSINESS WRITER > NOEL FRANK LIKES to talk to his friends and family both in the > U.S. and Canada. Now, the Oakland resident has found a way to talk to > them as much as he wants without racking up a big long-distance bill. > Frank is one of the growing number of consumers making inexpensive > voice calls via his high-speed Internet connection and a regular phone > instead of the traditional phone network that has been around since > the telephone was invented more than 125 years ago. I've read between a dozen and a hundred news stories like this in the past few weeks (one in the San Jose Merc this very morning) and am still not clear on the basic questions: -- If I acquire one of these VOIP hardware/software packages for my DSL-connected home computer, or subscribe to one of the commercial services like Vonage, can I now phone not just other VOIP users, but anyone with a regular phone, anywhere, just as I can with my regular phone? -- Or only people with their own VOIP installations? -- Or only people with their own VOIP installations who are using the same brand of VOIP gadgetry? -- Or does it depend? (and on what?) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, and you are going to be seeing a lot more VOIP reports in the papers and on the net in months to come. VOIP is the 'killer application' of this century, IMO. It is every- thing the telephone itself was at the start of the 20th century, and the traditional wired telephone is quickly becoming obsolete. As Jack Decker said recently when he started the VOIP News on Yahoo, this generation may well be the last one to know what a wired tele- phone is all about. After all, how many readers here remember seeing or sending or receiving a telegram? To try and answer your questions, the more flexible the VOIP application the more you can do with it. I prefer Vonage because it uses the telephone public switched network as needed. Vonage to Vonage calls are make on their own network, but thats only a very small percentage of the calls. With a VOIP system like Vonage you can reach anyone with a 'telephone' at all. I do not say that just because I get some considerations for the redeemed e-coupons (I frankly do not expect to ever pay for VOIP again in my old age; see the other message this issue about credits stacked up everywhere in my name; so instead of getting an e-coupon from me get it from someone else in the 'Refer a Freind' program if you wish; write ptownson@telecom-digest.org if you have no other friends to help you out.) With Vonage the calls are *practically free*. If practically free is not good enough and you want a limited subset of VOIP for totally free, then consider FWD (Free World Dialing) by Jeff Pulver. His is only good for other folks with the same software installed. Well, I stand corrected. At Christmas time, he was giving free calls anywhere by having the VOIP call 'drop off his network' and go on the public telephone network as needed. And I think he now has a deal with another VOIP service to interchange traffic by means of dialing some prefix at the very start. You buy one of his hardware boxes with a phone, then all the calls are free **on his network**, plus or minus. I think you will begin seeing more and more of the smaller VOIP companies begin interchange agreements with the others in order to be able to get away from Damnable Bell whenever possible, but interchange is not all that common yet. That's sort of why I have stuck with Vonage (although my Windows 98 has FWD on it also); mainly the flexability of it since 90 percent of the world is still on wired phones and the ease of use (standard eleven digit dialing, easy interchange to a Bell phone, etc. Yes, I *do* get paid with Vonage (if you consider that when I die sometime soon my estate will consist of a jillion redeemed e-coupons for 'next month free' on Vonage is payment) and Mr. Pulver does not give e-coupons (in fact I think once he said that the whole idea of coupons for a month of free service was a cheap gimmick) so I would pick between one of those two VOIP carriers myself. But VOIP is where things are at. Just ask Congress or the FCC if you don't believe me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: martin@okstate.edu (Martin McCormick) Subject: Re: Cable Modem Hackers Conquer the Co-ax Date: 5 Apr 2004 15:27:24 -0500 Organization: Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK Net-ops > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although I do not know the particulars > of this, I do know that Mr. Mike Flood, the general manager of Cable > One, here in Independence told me 'that was all taken care of recently' > when I asked him 'what prevents everyone on the cable from showing up > in my Network Neighborhood, and the other way around. There may be limits on the type of traffic that can go from node to node, but here is a partial answer. There are a couple of ways the cable is a little more secure than you might think, but not as secure as we'd like it. Your local section of the cable is apt to be like the LAN or Local Area Network in a building. Traffic on that section of cable is said to be in the same VLAN or broadcast domain. All the Internet addresses for everybody in that section of the cable will most likely start with the same network number. Somebody might be 192.168.3.4 and somebody else 192.168.3.7. You can probably see your neighbor's traffic if it is not encrypted and he/she can see yours. The reason why you don't see everybody's traffic on the cable for a whole town is because there are limits to how much traffic can safely fit on to any given segment of the cable system. If everybody was on one huge VLAN, you not only could spy on everybody else, but the packet traffic would eventually reach a point at which collisions would paralyze the whole network. What you end up with is a sort of compromise in which the cable company engineers fit as many customers on to a segment as they can without reaching the point of gridlock. I believe that a congestion rate of about 30% is the beginning of the melt-down phase. If you get above this level, the collisions and countermeasures to allow stations to re-transmit happen so often that the network is overloaded and slows to a crawl. If you have DSL, your traffic looks more like traffic on a switched Ethernet network. In a switched network, the only traffic you see on your port is broadcast traffic for the network or traffic meant for you specifically. You can't see your neighbor's packets at all. It isn't practical for the cable company to deploy switches everywhere so they break their Internet number ranges in to several smaller groups and those groups are what get put in to the segments of cable. Another advantage to having a subnetted network on a cable system is that a malicious customer or malfunctioning modem can't tie up the entire cable system. He may trash his segment, but that is still a lot better than trashing the entire cable system in the whole city. In short, the cable system may deliver entertainment from a central point called the "head end" to each house, but the data portion of the system behaves more like a bunch of small LAN's to both keep down congestion and isolate faults. This explanation is terribly oversimplified because there are even more technical measures that the cable company can use to prevent data broadcasts by one modem to others, but this is a start. It is certainly advisable to encrypt when you can and be smart and not send sensitive information across the cable when you can't encrypt. -- Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK Information Technology Division Network Operations Group [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points here: One, OSU (Oklahoma State University/Stillwater) has an excellent masters degree program in telecommunications, and I **strongly suspect** the telecommunica- tions program is coming aboard here as a sponsor real soon. To address Mr. McCormick's main point, I am on Cable One and I do not see a thing on my 'network neighborhood' except my own site's stations. I live in a private house, with two cable drops on the same line; my computer room, my bedroom (a television set) and my living room (television set and radio.) The bedroom and living room are wired in series; my computer room is in parallel to the other drop. I would say there are about a dozen households in the block or two around me. Anyway, if someone moved in the empty house next door with cable on their computer, would they see me naked here, or would they only see the NetGear router on 192.168.0.1 ? Or ....? Mr. McCormick, can you talk about this a bit further? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 15:39:35 -0500 From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: SP2 to Cause Microsoft Support Call Flood? Organization: Nyx Net, The Spirit of the Night http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5185106.html?tag=nefd_top "Microsoft can expect thousands of extra technical support calls after the release of its security update for Windows XP this summer, according to security analysts." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 15:38:23 -0500 From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: BellSouth Shakes Google's Hand Organization: Nyx Net, The Spirit of the Night http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5185076.html "BellSouth announced on Monday that it has teamed up with Google to provide search capabilities to its Internet and broadband customers." ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. 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