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The Telecom Digest for April 11, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 93 : "text" Format
====== 29 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 Bill Horne and
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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: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 20:36:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: "www.Queensbridge.us" <NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <f7a304d2-dfb6-4e6a-86c5-a8ed0d1877f9@z37g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 9, 4:45 pm, Sam Spade <s...@coldmail.com> wrote:
> Monty Solomon wrote:
>
> > While e-mail addresses may not seem particularly vulnerable, experts
> > say that if criminals can associate addresses with names and a
> > business like a bank, they can devise highly customized attacks to
> > trick people into disclosing more confidential information, a
> > technique known as "spear phishing."
>
> Rule #1: Never respond to emails that appear to be a legitimate
> institution requesting any personal information. For that matter just
> trash any message like that.
Walgreens' Email to customers says: "On March 30th, we were informed
by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that
files containing the email addresses of some Walgreens customers were
accessed without authorization."
At 1-855-814-0010 Walgreens says that breach really occurred March
31. How could they have been informed about it BEFORE it happened?
What took them so long to inform customers?
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 21:19:38 -0500
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Afghanistan does NOT have more cellular competition than the US
Message-ID: <BANLkTinuWZoCLGza0hfbK4hHb+ddkR304A@mail.gmail.com>
On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> wrot
e:
> Thu, 7 Apr 2011 22:35:58 -0500 John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
>
>> To have true competition in the US we would need complete
>> interoperability (i.e. all providers work off the same standard)
>> and the freedom to take the phones we outright own across the
>> street to another provider.
> There are likely reasons why there was no mandate for one technology
> over the other in the US. One reason is that the US government's
> stance has usually been to let the market declare what the standard
> is going to be. It's been that way historically with wired telephony
> as well to one extent or another. The EU had a mandate to make
> mobile telephony across Europe a reality where previously there had
> been a hodgepodge of various analogue standards. It was decided to
> go with GSM (at that time Groupe Special Mobile nka Global System
> for Mobile communications) so all of Europe could be united with one
> common standard. Later the standard was rolled out to many other
> countries not a part of the EU. GSM wasn't always a world
> standard. It was adopted world-wide later.
Right. I'm a libertarian-minded laissez-faire type of person. But I
think there are times when it's appropriate for the government to
mandate a standard. Imagine back in television's infancy if the
networks all decided to adopt incompatible standards requiring
multiple sets to watch all the channels. TV would never have taken
off. Or what if in the name of small government allowed anyone to
broadcast on any frequency?
IMHO the lack of a standard is what killed AM stereo in the 1980s.
>From what I understand, in Europe, handset makers, cellular
providers, and governments got together and came up with the GSM
standard. The EU then made it law. It was later adopted worldwide,
but its use isn't necessarily mandated outside of the EU. There
everyone cooperated. For some reason we're allergic to such
cooperation on this side of the pond.
> With that said even in the US with the present GSM landscape with AT&T
> and T-Mobile it's all not completely compatible since both T-Mobile
> and AT&T don't have all the same frequencies for everything.
> T-Mobile's 2G network is GSM at 1900 Mhz (PCS) and AT&T's network is
> both GSM at 1900 Mhz (PCS) as well as 850 (cellular). Most phones
> sold by T-Mobile have been able to use 850 Mhz as well over the last
> few years or so and can roam where allowed on 850 networks.
Agreed. I took a quad-band phone from T-Mobile to AT&T and I get 3G
speeds on it. But that's a function of the phone and not T-Mobile's
network.
> Most subscribers on GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile don't
> even know their phones are locked to the network where they bought
> their phones or even know that there is more than one standard used
> for mobile telephony. In fact most people wouldn't have a clue what
> technology their network uses... even those with iPhones since when
> most people get a new iPhone from AT&T they never even see the SIM
> card in the phone since it was pre-installed in it.
I know. It was funny, in Malaysia even very non-technical people know
all about SIM cards and shopping your phone around to a different
provider. I've tried to explain it to my fellow engineers who also go
to Malaysia on business and few really get it. And they really don't
get why they can't take their company issued Verizon phone there and
put a SIM card in it.
John
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 09:21:29 -0400
From: Pete Cresswell <x@y.Invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <ihb3q6l0pgjksqu0dbo9v56600fta7n9sg@4ax.com>
Per Sam Spade:
>
>Rule #1: Never respond to emails that appear to be a legitimate
>institution requesting any personal information. For that matter
>just trash any message like that.
Rule #2: Never, ever give out your "real" email address to
anybody in any kind of business. Not your lawyer, not your
financial advisor.... Nobody who will be entering it into a DB
other than their personal mail client.
I've got an email provider that allows me unlimited email
addresses, but if I didn't, I'd set up "junk" addresses on any
one of the free providers and have mail to them forwarded to me -
deleting/disabling the forwarding as needed.
--
PeteCresswell
***** Moderator's Note *****
I used to have my own GNU/Linux server, which offered me an
inexhaustible supply of throw-away email addresses. The email system
allowed me to make up addresses like <company>.bill@myserver.invalid:
i.e., I could just put the company name in front of "bill", and it
would be delivered to my email account without any need to establish a
"new" email address at the server. That way, I could just put the
company name in front of mine every time some mega-corp demanded an
email address from me, and track who they sold the name to without
needing to modify my server at all.
I don't choose to maintain a home server right now, but I do follow
Pete's advice, and maintain several gmail and yahoo addresses that I
can drop anytime I want. The strange part is that Google and Yahoo
have such good spam detection set up that I find those "throwaway"
addresses to be at least as usable as the ones on my server.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 10:33:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: "harold@hallikainen.com" <harold@hallikainen.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud
Message-ID: <50a24323-234a-4afa-86c6-6f4826be84ba@x18g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 10, 6:21 am, Pete Cresswell <x...@y.Invalid.telecom-digest.org>
wrote:
> Per Sam Spade:
>
>
>
> >Rule #1: Never respond to emails that appear to be a legitimate
> >institution requesting any personal information. For that matter
> >just trash any message like that.
>
Instead of trashing them, I forward them to spamcop.net .
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> I used to have my own GNU/Linux server, which offered me an
> inexhaustible supply of throw-away email addresses. The email system
> allowed me to make up addresses like <company>.b...@myserver.invalid:
> i.e., I could just put the company name in front of "bill", and it
> would be delivered to my email account without any need to establish a
> "new" email address at the server. That way, I could just put the
> company name in front of mine every time some mega-corp demanded an
> email address from me, and track who they sold the name to without
> needing to modify my server at all.
>
This reminds me of an email feature I haven't thought of in 20 years
or so. That being Address Tags. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address:
|
Address tags |
|---|
|
Some mail services allow a user to append a tag to his email
address (e.g., joeuser+tag@example.com). The text of tag may be
used to apply filtering and to create single-use
addresses.[5][6][7] However, some mail servers violate RFC 5322,
and the recommendations in RFC 3696, by refusing to send mail
addressed to a user on another system merely because the local-part
of the address contains the plus sign (+). On the other hand, most
installations of the qmail and Courier Mail Server products support
the use of a hyphen '-' as a separator within the local-part, such
as joeuser-tag@example.com or joeuser-tag-sub-
anything-else@example.com. This allows qmail through .qmail-default
or .qmail-tag-sub-anything-else files to sort, filter, forward, or
run an application based on the tagging system established. It is
also quite common for web forms to either refuse to accept the plus
sign as a part or the username or to even misbehave in an
undetermined manner[citation needed]. Disposable email addresses of
this form, using various separators between the base name and the
tag are supported by several email services, including Runbox (plus
and hyphen), Google Mail (plus),[8] Yahoo! Mail Plus (hyphen),[9]
Apple's MobileMe (plus), FastMail.FM (plus and Subdomain
Addressing),[10] and MMDF (equals). The name sub-addressing is the
generic term (used for plus-addressing and hyphen-addressing) found
in some IETF standards- track documents, such as RFC 5233.
|
I just tried it on a couple of my email addresses. harold
+tag@hallikainen.org (my local Fedora server) works properly, but
harold+tag@hallikainen.com (hosted by an ISP) reports an unknown user.
Harold
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 11:11:49 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Once the hobby of tech geeks, iPhone jailbreaking now a lucrative industry
Message-ID: <p0624084ec9c778e6c09f@[10.0.1.4]>
Once the hobby of tech geeks, iPhone jailbreaking now a lucrative industry
By Ian Shapira, Thursday, April , 11:30 PM
Kevin Lee, a George Mason University senior, says he earns about
$50,000 a year with an illicit-sounding pitch on Craigslist: "Get
Your iPhone Jailbroken Today."
Within minutes, the computer science major can download code onto his
customers' iPhones and fling open the portal to an alternative world
of apps and software that Apple condemns. The jailbreak perks
include: tethering the iPhone's Internet connection to a laptop or
iPad without paying extra AT&T charges; swapping out the AT&T or
Verizon service for a cheaper carrier; or, customizing the iPhone
with 3-D screens, bouncing icons or funkier fonts.
An early form of jailbreaking started shortly after Apple unveiled
the iPhone in 2007, but the practice has now evolved into a lucrative
industry with millions of consumers. Quashing many doubts about
jailbreaking's legality, the Library of Congress ruled in July that
the practice did not violate Apple's copyright.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/once_the_hobby_of_tech_geeks_iphone_jailbreaking_now_a_lucrative_industry/2011/04/01/AFBJ0VpC_story.html
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:55:20 -0400
From: "Gary" <bogus-email@hotmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Does FiOS support rotary phones?
Message-ID: <insqub$99e$1@dont-email.me>
"AES" wrote in message
news:siegman-4A6399.17001304042011@bmedcfsc-srv02.tufts.ad.tufts.edu...
> So, the fiber cables for FTTH could certainly contain a copper pair or
> two to deliver low-power AC or DC all the way to the premises end.
> Wouldn't significantly increase the size or flexibility of the cable,
> I'd guess. Would add noticeably to the cost of the cable, however,
> along with the cost of spllcing or connectorizing the cables -- and
> somebody would have to be responsible for supplying the power.
You've missed the main problem with powered copper - water. Water WILL get
into the cable, no matter how fancy the connector and how properly it is
torqued. It may take 50 years if done right or a few days if done wrong,
but water always wins. Once the water is in the metal starts corroding.
Powered cables corrode much faster than unpowered ones. Then, they stop
working or pass noisy signals.
In short, water is the bane of powered copper installations and is one
of the big reasons PON (Passive Optical Network - Ed.) is so much more
reliable than copper. With nothing powered between the OLT and ONT,
there is nothing to get damaged by water. When my FiOS drop was
installed, the installer literally fished the drop cable out of a foot
of water in the access vault, removed the protective cap from the drop
cable, screwed on the fiber to my house, and dropped the whole thing
back in the water. Even when water seeps into this connection, it'll
have little effect on the glass and plastic fiber cable assembly.
If we start passing power along with the fiber, the eliminates one of the
major advantages of PON - lower maintenance costs due to no powered stuff in
the field.
Now, I did see that the drop cable does have a ground wire attached to it.
It is grounded at the access vault and my house. It's purpose is to allow
the cable to be located. It doesn't pass power or signal. Even if it
corrodes (and it will), it'll still show up when the cable locator is passed
over it.
-Gary
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 14:10:47 -0400
From: "Gary" <bogus-email@hotmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Does FiOS support rotary phones?
Message-ID: <insrra$c4c$1@dont-email.me>
"David Lesher" wrote in message news:incs58$5lr$1@reader1.panix.com...
>
> As for power backup, I can't grasp why people are putting the
> ONT's on a UPS. A UPS takes AC and makes DC to charge a battery
> to later turn it back into AC again...so the ONT can make DC
> from it. And loses efficiency at every step.
>
> It's my understanding that all the ONT's have a 2nd battery
> input, and if you feed it 13.8vdc, it runs. So go buy a big
> "gel cell" or if you have the space, a 50AH deep cycle marine
> battery; and a $5 trickle charger. THAT will keep you going when
> Reddy Kilowatt goes on strike.
To answer your question (at least for me):
A) It's easy. A brand new small (~500VA) UPS can be had for <$50 on sale.
Plug it in and go. Buy a new one every few years as they are often cheaper
on sale than the cost of a new battery.
B) Said small UPS can also run the router and any other necessary network
gear, so I can still access the internet. One of my computers is a laptop,
so it's got it's own built in "back up power;" it's battery. If I put a
deep cycle battery on the ONT, I'd still need the UPS to keep the router up
and running.
C) I don't care about the efficiency looses. I'm only running an amp or two
at most through this setup (ONT, router, switch), so the energy lost isn't a
big concern.
It all boils down to how much runtime you think you need, how much battery
you need to buy to cover potential outages, and your budget. For me, I've
got reliable power. In the last 10 years, I can't recall an outage over 30
minutes. So, a small UPS is perfect for my home. If I lived somewhere with
longer outages, I might have a deep cycle battery and a big UPS, or even a
back up gas fired generator depending on what I felt like spending.
Hope that helps you grasp why a small UPS is okay, at least for me. YMMV.
Thanks,
-Gary
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 14:30:29 -0400
From: "Gary" <bogus-email@hotmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Does FiOS support rotary phones?
Message-ID: <inst0c$f4t$1@dont-email.me>
***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> I suppose it's possible that the cable which came in from the street
> was, in fact, a fiber-optic cable: the Verizon tech told me it was
> coaxial, but that might be a misnomer.
>
> The tech told me that the cable used "Moca" format, and when I asked
> how it compared to Docsis, he just said "It's better".
>
> I'll leave it to the experts to explain my confusion away.
DOCSIS was developed to pass data over coax used for cable TV services. As
such, a single DOCSIS channel uses exactly one (analog) TV channel's worth
of bandwidth. This is 6 MHz in the United States (8 MHz elsewhere in the
world). DOCSIS uses QAM modulation to pass 38 Mbps of data (after error
correction) downstream using one of the 100's of channels available in a
typical cable systems. Typical cable systems use RF spectrum from around
100 MHz to 650 MHz, 750 MHz, 850 MHz or even 1GHz. Upstream channels are
carried in the low end of the spectrum and are much slower.
DOCSIS signals pass through the cable system just like any other video
signal (in fact, they are identical to digital video at the lowest OSI
layers). If a cable system can pass digital video, it can pass DOCSIS.
DOCSIS 3.0 allows channels to be bonded to get data rates higher than 38
Mbps.
MoCA, on the other hand, was developed to distribute high speed data WITHIN
a home. It runs over coax, based on the assumption that most homes have a
coax distribution network but not cat-5 or cat-6. It operates above the
frequencies used for cable channels (including DOCSIS) so as not to
interfere with the TV services on the coax. I think it is centered around
1.5 GHz, but I could be wrong. I don't recall the data rate of MoCA, but I
believe it is higher than DOCSIS. MoCA is designed to go backwards through
coax splitters to allow most home coax topologies to be supported.
Verizon uses MoCA to communicate between the set-top boxes and the ONT. The
router acts as a gateway and manager for the control communications. MoCA
carries upstream commands from the set top boxes to the ONT, then the ONT
sends them over the fiber back to the video head end. Video on demand can
also be carried over MoCA, as the data bandwidth is sufficient for video
service.
In my home, I've FiOS for data and phone - no video. I've got Ethernet from
the ONT to my router. I don't use MoCA or coax. If I ever use FiOS for
video, I'll have to change to coax/MoCA.
In short, DOCSIS is a WAN technology while MoCA is a LAN.
-Gary
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