From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 26 14:13:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6QIDMp09372; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:13:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:13:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407261813.i6QIDMp09372@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 #351 TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:11:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 351 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Regulating VoIP in the US (VOIP News) 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (johndee) Dedicated Internet Line (mike3) Network Usage Friendly PC to PC Voice Software (RJANKIR) Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) (John Levine) Re: Hot-Button Issue (Tony P.) Re: Hot-Button Issue (Frank@Nospam.com) Re: Motorola and AT&T Wireless Bringing 3G/UMTS to No. America (Warnock) MyDoom Virus Search Engine Use (Monty Solomon) Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (John Covert) Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (Frank@Nospam.com) National Cell Phone Courtesy Month (Carl Moore) Re: Meridian Norstar - Caller ID (Marise_A_Klapka@withheld on request) Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged (Hammond of Texas) Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill (Paul Vader) 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, 26 Jul 2004 11:47:53 -0400 Subject: Regulating VoIP in the US Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=regulatingvoipint1090836687&area=news The influential US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee effectively re-wrote a draft bill dealing with the regulation of VoIP on Thursday, transferring some powers from federal to state regulators. The draft VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act, introduced into the Senate in April by Republican Senator John Sununu, was intended to reserve the right to regulate IP telephony, also known as VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol, to Federal Government. But two amendments, introduced respectively by Republican Senator Conrad Burns and Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan, mean that US states will now be able to force VoIP companies to provide emergency 911 services, to contribute to the funding of low income or rural-based subscribers, through what are known as universal service fees, and to pay intra-state access charges. Full story at: http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=regulatingvoipint1090836687&area=news http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/s2281report.pdf 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/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:47:37 -0500 From: johndee Subject: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Its my impression the only 911 you can get is you are forwarded to a 7 digit number in the center which defeats the system, its just a phone call on a line that administrators use to call for pizza and get calls from their children you could get a busy if they are using it. I called it here and it took 15 rings and it had no caller ID so if I couldn't speak I would be dead. They said ATT and others would not spend the money to get in the "system". Oh, they said it took so long to answer because they were on E911 calls. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: First, let me say my circumstances here may be somewhat different, in a town of 8800 residents and a mostly rural county of 28,000 people. The *ONE* person (per shift, per day of the week) who takes 911 calls (one or two per day, always on a priority basis should various calls arrive at the same time) is also the police department receptionist/phone operator (on general non-emergency calls) and radio dispatcher. That person also responds for Montgomery County (of which we here in Independence, KS are the 'county seat') Sheriff 911 calls. The Montgomery County Detention Center (which many folks refer to as the 'jailhouse' has a capacity of 50-55 inmates, and rarely if ever is close to capacity. In summary, ours is not a busy 911 center. The mother of our police chief lives directly across the street from my house. I often times see Lee, her son, over in his mother's yard cutting the grass in the summer. With all the above in mind, I would like to say the administrative line for police (620-332-1700) and sheriff (620-330-1000) works just fine for Vonage-style '911' calls. That may not work everywhere, but in our case, the dispatchers are **very well trained** at knowing every nook and cranny in our county -- especially our town -- and the database they refer to on calls has every address listed. If you go in the basement of City Hall (where the 'communications center' is located) the phones never ring twice without a courteous answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mike4ty4@yahoo.com (mike3) Subject: Dedicated Internet Line Date: 25 Jul 2004 19:29:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly into the Internet? ------------------------------ From: rjankir@hotmail.com (RJANKIR) Subject: Network Usage Friendly PC to PC Voice Software Date: 26 Jul 2004 08:34:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My friend recently subscribed to broadband service in India which restricts the number of bytes that can be transfered (upload and download) per month (255 MB per month). Sofware like Yahoo and MSN take up about 12 MB for single hour of conversation. I was wondering if there are any PC to PC voice software that does a better job of compression and optimize on the number of bytes exchanged. I read about the GSM 6.10 codec that can be used. Please advice. TIA ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 2004 22:48:04 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Posted to comp.dcom.telecom > Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill > From: Mike_The_Bike > Reply-To: DaGroup How do you expect the ack-bot to send you an acknowledgement if you give it a forged return address? It's not clairvoyant. > Again, I did not get the auto-ack. I guess we should feel complimented that he expects the automatic response-bot to know how to turn the forged return address in his message into his actual return address. If you look at the mail logs on the MIT machine, you will doubtless find mail to mjs2032@helpivefallenrochester.rr.com, the forged address that he puts on his newsgroup messages. Some people think that putting fake return addresses in messages is benign. They are mistaken. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Hot-Button Issue Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:37:45 GMT In article , monty@roscom.com says: > With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard > Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at > WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a > 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ > -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's > job? > By Charles P. Pierce, Globe Staff | July 18, 2004 > http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/07/18/hot_button_issue/ Having started an eight year on/off career in broadcasting in 1985 I can tell you how the technology changed. First radio station I was at didn't have a gate (That's what the device is known as by the way.) so whatever was said was said and no big deal made of it. But by 1990 or so the gate became a common feature at all radio stations. I believe the FCC should be stripped of it's censorial powers and quickly. Squelching that which the opposing political party finds distasteful is scary. I should also mention this in my post: Why don't we take advantage of the FCC's liberal complaint procedures. Complain that radio is so bland and homogenous now that we find it offensive. Were enough of us to do such a thing, perhaps the FCC would see the error of its ways. How does the saying go, if you can't dazzle them with the truth you can always bury them in bullshit. ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: Hot-Button Issue Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:25:17 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Monty Solomon wrote: > With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard > Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at > WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a > 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ > -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's > job? It's *this* government's job, just like all the other facist governments that have preceded them throughout the world. If the country (re)elects Bush it will only get worse. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Motorola and AT&T Wireless Bringing 3G/UMTS to North America Organization: Rob Warnock, Consulting Systems Architect From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:25:59 -0500 > Can someone clarify, isn't UMTS the EDGE technology ATTWS has already > rolled out? No, UMTS is somewhat faster than the current EDGE offering, though not nearly as fast as the EV-DO that Verizon is currently field-testing in Washington and San Diego. Here's what AT&T WS claims for UMTS: ...average download speeds of 220-320 kbps with bursts up to 384 kbps, compared to an average of 25-40 kbps for GPRS. So on the chart at , this would place their UMTS offering in the "EDGE Phase 2 / GERAN" box. [But look at the "1xEV-DO Phase 1" box!! Rates of 500kb/s to 1 Mb/s would seem more EV-DO's speed.] > I thought EDGE currently is only about 115Kbps and might max out > practically speaking at 230Kbps if they allocate enough "slots" per > user at the tower (which has been debated may not happen for a long > time for various technical and business reasons). I think it depends a lot on where you are. I've been using ATTWS EDGE for several months now in the San Francisco Bay area [mostly in the Redwood City/Menlo Park/Palo Alto areas]. Some time ago I upgraded the firmware on my EDGE card (using a download from the Ericsson site) from GPRS Class 8 (3 slots down + 1 up) to Class 10 (4 down + 2 up). Since then, I've been routinely seeing large-file downloads with peaks [5-second sliding averages] just over 230 kb/s (once I even saw 240 kb/s), though I definitely didn't get rates that good before upgraded the firmware. [I have no hard data on large-file upload speeds, except that I saw frequent ~100 kb/s one-second peaks during a 780 KB upload once.] But that's just one user in one part of one metro area ... > When I did research on this a couple months ago, from what I read > about EDGE on ATT's own customer forums, the initial implementation > does not sound good (slow and buggy). Well, I do have to say that the interactive round-trip time (e.g., "ping" times or typing-to-echo when using "vi" or "emacs") is simply *terrible*, especially the first few packets after any period of more than a few seconds without traffic: % ping rpw3.org # my home system PING rpw3.org (66.93.131.53): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=1594.527 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=659.644 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=580.201 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=530.536 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=610.537 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=560.538 ms ... [Note: They seem to be doing some sort of fast-connect circuit-switching on the transitions from idle to traffic and back, rather than true packet-switching.] But as one who once-upon-a-time had to deal with the "rubber-band" feeling of 110-baud full-duplex ASR-33 Teletype (on a PDP-10), I've gotten somewhat used to it again ... ;-} ;-} [And as it happens, I'm composing this reply in "vi" while logged into my home system with SSH. It's usable for such. Mostly.] And except for that initial ~1 sec. startup delay, web browsing is more-or-less unaffected. The browsing speed for complex pages is *certainly* way better than dialup! The EDGE plan, while somewhat expensive ($80/month), is at least "flat-rate" (with nationwide free roaming), unlike some GPRS plans that are $0.02/KB!! At the latter rate, you would burn $80 with only 4 MB! [I use more than that on a single busy day.] Rob Warnock 627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:47:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: MyDoom Virus Search Engine Use http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=700 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/26/1649245&tid=217&tid=1 http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-07-26 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:07:51 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage In Pat's note at the end of the original question, Pat wrote: > Vonage allows the minutes to be spread over all the various virtual > numbers" Except for "800 Service" numbers, there are no minutes at all associated with any incoming calls to Vonage numbers. Vonage does not charge Vonage customers (either the called Vonage customer or the calling party if also a Vonage customer) anything for calls to regular or virtual Vonage numbers. Each virtual number assigned in geographic area codes costs $4.99 per month plus a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee. (Vonage charges $1.50 as a regulatory recovery fee per assigned number regardless of the type of service associated with the number.) Calls by non-Vonage subscribers to Vonage geographic numbers (virtual or regular) are billed at whatever rate would be charged by the caller's carrier for a call to that geographic location, as determined by the area code plus first three digits of the number. Each Vonage "800 Service" number costs $4.99 per month plus a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee. Additional incoming minutes are 4.9 cents per month. I do not see any indication that the minutes are pooled if you have more than one 800 number, but they might be. However, additional minutes on a single 800 number are only $4.90 for another 100, and you pay only for those you use, whereas another 800 number would be $6.49 for 100 minutes, whether you use them all or not. /john ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:23:08 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications arjay wrote: > My area code is not available for Vonage. I can choose another, but I > assume that anyone who calls from within my own area code will be > charged for long distance. Is that correct? > I have been unable to get an answer from Vonage. Don't know why? The answer is pretty simple. You have to ask yourself: Why do I want Vonage? To be the only telephone in my home? Or, is it to have unlimited calling and a second line? I have had Vonage since March of 2003 and receive calls on it from only one person. Other than that it is an outgoing line only. And, I'd sure hate to have it as my only phone, because it is so much more vunerable to failures than my primary inbound line from SBC. Just last week carpet installers cut my cable service, so I was out of Vonage for two days. I tired plugging everything into my remaining cable outlet that was still working but the signal wasn't sufficent there for the cable modem. With DSL you're a little better off, but still dependent upon household electrical power being up and running. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Couldn't the carpet installers just as easily have sliced your telephone line and left you without SBC service for a couple days? Or consider last Saturday here when a drunk driver on Second Street crashed his car into a utility pole, knocked it over completely and left an entire city block on Second and Walnut Streets without electricity or phone or cable for a couple hours after police arrived and took the man away with them in a drunken stupor. Crews from SBC, electric and CableOne came out and uprighted the pole and re-established their services an hour or two later. Stuff happens. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:30:15 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: National Cell Phone Courtesy Month I just found (via KYW news-radio site) that July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. It says to make sure your environment is comfortable for you to make a cell call (considering yourself, others near you and the person you are calling). And it suggests shutting your cell phone off if you are away from your office and "not involved with business and with other people". And it says "don't pick up your cell phone and carry on a conversation with someone else standing there"; it sounds stupid to me to use a cell phone when the other person is physically right there. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Meridian Norstar - Caller ID Install for Only One Line From: Marise_A_Klapka@Withheld on request Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:04:44 -0500 Please do not print my address. rich@virtuallearning.net (Rich) wrote about Meridian Norstar - Caller ID Install For Only One Line on 22 Jul 2004 08:59:35 -0700: > Hello, > I have eight(8) lines coming into my Meridian phone system. The 8th > line is going directly to a phone set bypassing the Vmail and the > Autoattendant. > The user of the phone set wants Caller ID. I have called the BELL and > had them install it on the line. However, I can't seem to get Call > ID/Call Display to work on the set. > I have used Feature 811 but it only shows me the name of the line that > the incoming call is using. > I don't know how to set the Call ID/Call Display in the Admin Console > for Meridian. > Can anyone help me out? > Thanks, > Rich Rich -- In addition to using the feature code, the trunk cards must be Caller ID capable. We recently added Caller ID to a Norstar MICS 4.0. The label on the trunk card will have the letters "C I" on it. If it doesn't, you won't get caller ID no matter what info the LEC sends. Marise ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 08:20:10 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged Ray wrote: > It does contain a virus ... beware ... NO! Really? Ya think? ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:53:14 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations anonfwd774@witheld at request writes: > I'm not really sure how handheld GPS receivers work and I've never > owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work too well inside buildings! They don't work AT ALL inside buildings. As you guessed, they need an unobstructed line-of-sight to the satellite. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ 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. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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