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Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 165 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  Re: parity of service, was ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: parity of service, was ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI 
  Re: ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: Usenet newsgroups 
  Re: Usenet newsgroups 
  Re: Usenet newsgroups
  Re: Usenet newsgroups
  Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI 
  Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI 
  Re: Pulse dialing overhead, was: ANI vs. Caller ID 
  Re: ANI vs. Caller ID  (fwd)


====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:50:42 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: parity of service, was ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <e5545c68-90bb-4e7c-b7fc-1a48e42ddb79@y7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com> On Jun 14, 11:42 am, John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote: > On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:08:37 -0700 (PDT), hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> However, the books I referred to in an earlier discussion said the >> newcomers offered nothing better. > > Putting nonsense in a book doesn't make it true.   Could you name some other published books with a different point of view? > Oh, man, I don't know where to start.  Back in the old regulated days, > everything was priced by its "value" rather than its cost, _All_ businesses try to charge for _value_ rather than cost, if they can get more money for an item. For instance, new medicationss under patent are priced very high until a generic or alternative comes out that undercuts them. They say generic brand aspirin is the same as national brand aspirin but national brand costs more. (AFAIK, aspirin is very cheap to make.) With phones, they say text messaging is cheaper to handle than voice traffic, yet most cellphones give a better deal to voice users than text users, charging for texting unless one upgrades to an expensive plan. Thus, they're charging for _perceived value_. If teenagers ever get bored with texting, watch the price drop. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jun 2009 15:57:40 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: parity of service, was ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <20090617155740.3991.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >> Putting nonsense [about ILECs providing better service than their >> competitors] in a book doesn't make it true.   > >Could you name some other published books with a different point of >view? Not offhand. On the other hand, I don't see why one would prefer claims in some unnamed book to the observable fact that all over the counrtry the ILEC's share of phone lines is shrinking. >> Oh, man, I don't know where to start.  Back in the old regulated days, >> everything was priced by its "value" rather than its cost, > >_All_ businesses try to charge for _value_ rather than cost, if they >can get more money for an item. Hmmn. Two days ago you said that in the old days phone users paid for the cost of the services they use. Now you're agreeing with me that they didn't. If we review our Economics 101, in a competitive market, marginal price meets marginal cost, with the difference between the price and the "value" kept by buyers as consumer surplus. (This is one of the good things about markets.) Sellers can only keep the price way above cost if there are market distortions, e.g., price regulation or monopoly power. Deregulation has had the predictable effect of increasing the prices of stuff that used to be deliberately underpriced, e.g. residential POTS, and decreasing the prices of stuff that used to be deliberately overpriced, e.g. long distance. >With phones, they say text messaging is cheaper to handle than voice >traffic, yet most cellphones give a better deal to voice users than >text users, charging for texting unless one upgrades to an expensive >plan. Right. This leads us to the not very surprising conclusion that US mobile carriers don't compete very hard on price. Here in the UK they do compete on price, there are all sorts of really cheap text bundles, and the overall cost of mobile service is (to my surprise) less than in the US with the exception of the monopoly-priced calls from landline to mobile. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:54:24 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <2958872d-31e5-4d41-88e0-6fb3ff7052ec@z14g2000yqa.googlegroups.com> On Jun 15, 2:43 pm, bon...@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > Your experience apparently extends only to residential service. > > Believe me, business service _is_ different. The business services in many cities and suburbs that I know of, pay only one message unit, untimed, for local calls. In a city like Philadephia, that would include the whole city. Obviously there may be other cities that time even local calls. In any event, I doubt many businesses today have rotary phones, and if they do, they're not used very often. (eg an old store open irregularly, or an old dial phone in a back room.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:51:34 EDT From: Wesrock@aol.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <bf1.55d31747.376ae996@aol.com> In a message dated 6/17/2009 10:55:03 AM Central Daylight Time, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > In my opinion, the present arrangements are broken and indefensible. > I think the Federal Trade Commission ought to order that the > carriers block spoofing on the grounds it is fraud. It's no > different than when the FTC orders a company to stop deceptive > advertising. How about the privacy of communications? I don't really want my carrier or ISP from looking into my private affairs, which they have to do to see what is going on. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:15:02 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI Message-ID: <aa969879-4fbc-4292-9939-e50a8ab3b7f8@3g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> On Jun 16, 2:57 pm, Sam Spade <s...@coldmail.com> wrote: > What do you say to the argument about the cost of assigning real-time > priorities to the switch's CPU?  The gentleman who commented on that > seem to have a great grasp of the concept. I'm not sure what you mean by "assigning real time priorities". In computers, task-switching priority assignment is a built-in integral part of the multi-tasking process, so it's already there. Also, many people have commented, I'm not sure which person you're referring to. > Either hardware has to be present to buffer the origination dial pulsing > or the switch has to "see" it as it's happening.  I suppose the call > program could create a software file each time someone goes off-hook but > that would represent processor time as well. In the time even an automatic dialer could input a Touch Tone number, the computer could be executing many other instructions. But often times it's a human tapping slowly on the keypad. Thus, the switch computer has to always be ready regardless what is entered. I'm pretty sure a software entry is made everytime someone goes off- hook so as to have a tracking record of the call as it makes its way through the switch, waiting for the other party to answer, talking, and disconnecting. Remember, the switch is handling many calls at once. I suspect the percentage of rotary-pulse calls placed through a switch (of all calls placed) is extremely low today. That means their impact on the switch is miniscule. It'd be like shooting a paper clip at a tank, the armour is so thick and the paper clip so thin it isn't noticed. Now, in the old days, the difference might have been more significant. HOWEVER, electronics were terribly expensive in the old days and the cost of Touch Tone receivers/converters were very expensive. Actually, they were so expensive Western developed several models, expensive ones for heavy duty busy switches, and cheaper ones for PBXs and low volume Step exchanges. The Bell Labs history (Vol 2) goes into detail on this. Cheap electronics--which allows for cheap terminal equipment--is a big reason that long distance calling is so inexpensive today. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:45:24 -0800 From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <h193mq$ifi$1@blue.rahul.net> Adam H. Kerman wrote: > The term "spoofing" has been used inaccurately throughout this subthread. > Caller-defined Caller-ID isn't spoofed unless a number has been input > that isn't a line number subscribed to at that call center's location > (or perhaps at another call center of that company). If another number > was input that's subscribed to by an unrelated telephone subscriber, > then spoofing rises to the level of forgery. And if it's done for the > purpose of initiating a scam, it's fraud. If it's done for the purpose of preventing you from successfully filtering out unwanted calls, that's fraud too. "Meaningless" numbers qualify, IMO. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:52:39 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <d977d2e4-9e2c-47da-b502-4042938d3f17@h11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> On Jun 17, 8:31 am, John David Galt <j...@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote: > If it's done for the purpose of preventing you from successfully filtering > out unwanted calls, that's fraud too.  "Meaningless" numbers qualify, IMO. I appreciate the many views people have contributed to this discussion. In my opinion, the present arrangements are broken and indefensible. I think the Federal Trade Commission ought to order that the carriers block spoofing on the grounds it is fraud. It's no different than when the FTC orders a company to stop deceptive advertising. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jun 2009 09:07:58 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Usenet newsgroups Message-ID: <h1apre$q9$1@panix2.panix.com> In article <y1TXl.12989$im1.12538@nlpi061.nbdc.sbc.com>, Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> wrote: >Koos van den Hout wrote: > >[Moderator snip] > >> Running a news-server at a university is a (very) small part of my job (and >> our user community is not prone to spamming). I think there would be a >> market for text-only Usenet service, authenticated (to make spammers >> traceable) and for a modest price. > >There is a system being tested which they clain will do away with spam, >I'm waiting to see it. It's called 'cleanfeed' and we've run it for years. It's remarkably effective. It needs careful setup and some reasonable attention, but it does a remarkable job of discarding multiposts, spam, binaries posted to discussion groups, etc. I can't imagine Usenet without it. Occasionally when I need to look up long-expired articles I will use the Google web interface, and I am always blown away by the huge amounts of spam postings that Google picks up (the majority of which sadly originate from Google as well). I don't see any of that stuff here, thanks to cleanfeed. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:45:39 -0700 From: Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Usenet newsgroups Message-ID: <W49_l.39$OF1.9@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com> I finally got an official e-mail from AT&t stating they were doing away with their USENET servers as of July 15,2009. I also received an e-mail from Motzarella saying that on July 1, 2009 they were replacing their 5 servers with 3 new one. I configured today and all seems to be good. I wonder why? -- The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jun 2009 09:10:04 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Usenet newsgroups Message-ID: <h1apvc$nq8$1@panix2.panix.com> In article <bf0615e4-41eb-4172-bd18-8f826f94e453@q2g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>, <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote: >On Jun 10, 10:15 am, tlvp <PmUiRsGcE.TtHlEv...@att.net> wrote: > >> Worse, those who *post* from the googlegroups web-access Usenet system >> are likely *not* to be seen by purists (using "real" newsreaders, and >> fed by "real" nntp-servers) who filter out all posts (many of which >> tend, in fact, to be phish or other spam) emanating from googlegroups. > >Google has instituted filters. Is spam and the like a problem from >Google-Usenet _today_? Yes. Looking over my server logs for the past nine hours, I would say about 90% of the stuff that the server filters have discarded is stuff that came from google. That's in terms of number of messages, though, not kilobytes. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ***** Moderator's Note ***** Are you checking "From:" fields, or actual IP addresses? Almost all spammers forge the From: field to avoid getting caught by MTA's that check for valid addresses. If you check IP addresses, you may find that Google isn't the source. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jun 2009 13:48:57 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Usenet newsgroups Message-ID: <h1baa9$e2r$1@panix2.panix.com> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote: > >Yes. Looking over my server logs for the past nine hours, I would say >about 90% of the stuff that the server filters have discarded is stuff >that came from google. That's in terms of number of messages, though, >not kilobytes. >***** Moderator's Note ***** > >Are you checking "From:" fields, or actual IP addresses? Almost all >spammers forge the From: field to avoid getting caught by MTA's that >check for valid addresses. > >If you check IP addresses, you may find that Google isn't the source. Neither one, I am looking at the path field which shows where the message is injected from. The crap from google comes up with all sorts of different stuff in the From: field, because it's injected by all sorts of different people with different accounts. Hell, for a while we had a huge flood of junk from Google, all advertising web pages hosted on blogspot.com, which seems to be run by Google and which has no valid abuse address. I think we stuck a rule in there to just drop everything from Google mentioning blogspot.com, which seems a little extreme but frankly it's a wonder folks are even willing to carry postings from Google these days. The scary part is that most of the Google users appear to believe that Google Groups is some sort of proprietary messaging system or a web blog of some kind, and Google seems to encourage this. Take a look at the interface and there is no mention of Usenet or newsgroups at all. I think this in part is helping to encourage their spam issues. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:49:52 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI Message-ID: <968eb71d-3a31-4994-820f-69196693680b@h11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> On Jun 15, 9:33 pm, Sam Spade <s...@coldmail.com> wrote: > This is probably true today.  But, when the premium was being charged > the predominant switches were the 5XBAR and 1 or 1A ESS.  Both had > origination hardware that had to be held on the line longer to accept > dial pulse. In the No. 5 crossbar, only the receiving register was occupied while the customer was dialing. Once dialing was completed, the receiving register was released for other calls, and the other components of common control were brought in. Telephone equipment, then and now, is a series of tradeoffs. For example, while multiplexing saved line costs, it had terminal (multiplexing equipment at each end) costs. Depending on the circumstances, it may have been cheaper to run basic lines between two points rather than use carrier lines. (Today terminal costs are much lower). The Bell System recognized that Touch Tone made better use of receiver registers. However, back then, the cost of providing Touch Tone service exceeded the savings it permitted. (They anticipated that would change in the future). Note that crossbar and ESS supported faster 20 pulse/second dials, which would've made better use of registers. Certain subscribers (operators on big PBXs) had them, but the vast majority did not. One would think it would've been to everyone's advantage to give all crossbar and ESS customers 20 pps dials, but they obviously chose not to. (This was discussed on this group a while back.) Also note that even in Step, the equipment is doing stuff 'behind the scenes' as a subscriber is dialing. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:03:36 -0700 From: Richard <rng@richbonnie.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Pulse vs. touch tone, was ANI Message-ID: <tcli35truc9umaimtegko2pl0440ob7nd9@4ax.com> On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:54:19 -0400 (EDT), hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >Telephone equipment, then and now, is a series of tradeoffs. For >example, while multiplexing saved line costs, it had terminal >(multiplexing equipment at each end) costs. An extreme example of this: In the 1950's, for the TAT-1 transoceanic telephone cable, the terminal equipment would connect a user to one of the undersea voice circuits only when there was actual speach on the circuit in that direction. The path was disconnected not only when the other person was speaking, but also whenever an active speaker paused for a second. This process was called Time Assignment Speech Interpolation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-assignment_speech_interpolation They also used 3 kHz channel spacing rather than the normal (for land systems) of 4 kHz. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:48:56 -0500 From: Michael Grigoni <michael.grigoni@cybertheque.org> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Pulse dialing overhead, was: ANI vs. Caller ID Message-ID: <4A38F448.9030201@cybertheque.org> Robert Bonomi wrote: <snip> > I repeat, "FALSE TO FACT". > > First, there is _NO_ repetitive 'scanning of all lines' for > on-/off-hook status. That approach is TOO *DAMN* EXPENSIVE (in terms > of resource consumption) to be practical. > > I'm not going to go into all the gory details, but the basic outline of > switch architecture is that it has some functions that *must* be done > at specific time intervals. These are 'real-time' tasks. Each of these > tasks has the exclusive, and *un-interruptible* use of the CPU until it > finishes its processing. Obviously, these routines are written to use > as little CPU as possible, and return control to the scheduler. "Bigger" > real-time tasks are broken down into "whatever" number of smaller pieces > as are needed to get the execution time of each individual piece under > the size of the real-time scheduling 'slot. <snip> I have no knowledge of the RTOS or operating code in WECO switches, however I have programmed hard realtime systems and know that the best use of slots is for coding shared DSP tasks (such as filters) which run to completion or exit early to give more time to background tasks, and that pulse decoding, whether for bit-banging a serial interface or interpreting dial pulses from a telephone line can be handled by a properly managed priority interrupt system and do not consume realtime slots. I can't imagine that modern switch hardware would have any overhead issues with dial pulse decoding. Even 'asterisk' supports it without caveats on FXS hardware that detects it. Any perceived cost to an operating company regarding time to complete a call is also probably a red herring in today's environments. BTW, a polled environment is more deterministic and may well be the method of choice for scanning lines in a truly hard realtime implementation, and with modern hardware may well require less machine cycles than an interrupt-driven method (it would be my choice if designing a switch). N.B. All of the automated environmental alert boxes that I have, from a variety of vendors, use pulse dialing and do not even offer DTMF. Michael ***** Moderator's Note ***** I'm sorry to say that I don't know the internal architecture of the #5 ESS or the DMS-100. I invite CO Engineers to clarify the design goals and tradeoffs involved here. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:31:43 -0700 (PDT) From: jmeissen@aracnet.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: ANI vs. Caller ID (fwd) Message-ID: <20090617203143.56958340A9@john> Dave Close <dave@compata.com> wrote: > The term "spoofing" has been used inaccurately throughout this subthread. > Caller-defined Caller-ID isn't spoofed unless a number has been input > that isn't a line number subscribed to at that call center's location > (or perhaps at another call center of that company). If another number > was input that's subscribed to by an unrelated telephone subscriber, > then spoofing rises to the level of forgery. And if it's done for the > purpose of initiating a scam, it's fraud. > > If a meaningless string of digits was input, say 9 digits in lieu of 10 > or nonexistant area code-prefix combination, nothing has been spoofed. According to Merriam-Webster, a definition of 'spoof' is 'deceive', and the defintion of 'deceive' is "to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid" So it seems to me that most, if not all, of the uses of the term "spoofing" have been accurate so far. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (15 messages) ******************************

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