From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 20 02:04:39 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7K64dg11086; Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:39 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408200604.i7K64dg11086@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 #390 TELECOM Digest Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 390 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson EFFector 17.30: EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Monty Solomon) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (John McHarry) Re: Dating an Old Phone Number (Arthur Kamlet) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Jim Haynes) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Al Gillis) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Neal McLain) Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (Daniel McDonald) Re: FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition (G. Wollman) Re: Number Not in Use (Nick Landsberg) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Levi) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Joseph) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Robert Bonomi) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:05:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.30: EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P EFFector Vol. 17, No. 30 August 19, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 302nd Issue of EFFector: * EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P * Hypocrite, Thy Name Is Real * Texas Secretary of State Backs Down, Agrees to Postpone Closed E-voting Meetings * EFF Releases "Best Practices" Guide for Online Service Providers * EFF Weighs in on Plan to Improve Public Access to Government Documents * EFF Welcomes Four New Hires * MiniLinks (7): Blacklisted Lately? * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/30.php ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:16:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Paul Brown, environment correspondent Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments. The problem has damaged the company's reputation and the "trust rating," which is seen as key to keeping the company competitive, has dropped, a senior Microsoft executive revealed yesterday at the International Geographers Conference in Glasgow. In a frank assessment of the company's problems in trying to be a global player without offending local sensibilities, Tom Edwards, its senior geopolitical strategist, said employees' lack of basic geography was to blame. The company has now launched geography classes for its staff to avoid further bloomers which have caused embarrassment and cost money on a grand scale. He said that as a geographer himself it was depressing that Americans had a reputation for being particularly unaware of the rest of the world. The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of the Pacific Ocean. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286066,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone could tell you how downright awful American citizens when it comes to geography. Do the schools even bother to teach geography any longer? Not only does Microsoft embarass everyone with their stupid and inconsiderate employees, the old AT&T employees were the same way in the traffic department. I used to shudder when I had reason to place an international call through one of the operators in White Plains or later Pittsburgh. While operators in other countries were very polite and courteous in explaining things, the American operators were frequently just atrocious. And if a customer happened to be able to speak the foreign language (when the USA operator could not) if he *dared* to speak up and talk directly (in that language) to the foreign operator the USA operator would shut him up in a hurry. The fact that Americans are arrogant and (among other things) totally ignorant on geography should come as no surprise. Now you would think that USA troops in other countries could and would respect the sensibilities of their host nations, the same way you or I would behave ourselves if we went to someone's home. But that's not true; and they wonder why Americans are hated in so many places. I am reminded of a book from several years ago which was entitled 'The Ugly Americans' where some tourists from USA went to some country and proceeded to act like rude, ignorant pigs, and made fun of the local customs and things like that. The fact, as Monty points out, that a large number of people do not know where the Pacific Ocean is located is not amazing at all. Those are the same people who do not realize Hawaiian people and Puerto Rico people are American citizens either. Disgusting! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 19 Aug 2004 20:40:29 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. > Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. Nope. Cingular has an agreement to buy AT&T Wireless, but it's waiting for regulators to OK it. Until then, the two companies are operating separately. It's not out of the question that the regulators will turn them down, since that'd be a merger of two of the three largest wireless companies in the country. When AT&T spun of AT&T Wireless, part of the deal was that AT&T woudn't compete with their namesake under the AT&T brand. Since the plan is that ATTWS will be absorbed into Cingular and use the Cingular name, after that AT&T is free to start using the AT&T name for wireless service, which they say they will. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:03:43 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400, Ankur Shah wrote: > MR wrote: >> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. > Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. Not *yet* they don't! AT&T has hardly turned over the keys at this time. They are still two distinct companies and are still doing business independently even though there are reports that some AT&T subscribers are able to use the cingular network in *some* locations. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:26:45 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada qazmlp wrote: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. It doesn't, really, because you specifically said an IP network and the time it takes for a signal to travel three hundred kilometers (about one millisecond each way, IIRC) is only a small part of the round trip time that affects throughput. That throughput depends on the protocol you choose for two reasons: overhead and capacity utilization. Generally speaking, the overhead is small compared to the question of whether you're actually taking advantage of the capacity of the link. For instance, if your transfer protocol is XMODEM, which requires you to send a 128-byte block of data and wait for an acknowledgement before continuing, and your round-trip time is 50 milliseconds, then no matter how fast your link is or how little time it takes for each end to send or receive data, compute checksums, and move on, you're simply not going to get speeds in excess of 2,560 bytes/second (50 milliseconds per exchange means no more than 20 128-byte blocks transferred per second.) At 300 or even 1200 bps, the time required to send 128 bytes of data made the pause during which nothing was sent (and capacity was wasted) very small and Ward Christensen was a hero. However, at even dialup speeds today, using XMODEM is a waste of criminal proportions and thus it is never used over high speed links; I describe it here only to illustrate the issue in ridiculous extreme. For things like web surfing, HTTP is used, and it in turn uses TCP. TCP has what is known as a "receive window", which defines how far a sender should let transmission get ahead of the receipt acknowledgements it gets. If the acknowledgement of the first segment of data gets back to the sender before the amount of unacknowledged data reaches the size of the receive window, then the sender never stops transmitting and the throughput of the connection approaches the bandwidth of the link. To accomplish that, the receive window must be as large as (or slightly larger than) the amount of data that can be transmitted before the acknowledgement of the first segment gets back to the sender, which will be at least the round-trip time multiplied by the overall link speed (possibly the speed of the slowest link.) Since it still takes some time to send data, to read it, compare checksums, etc. the actual acknowledge time will be at least slightly greater than the ping time. Now for a possible bad side effect for the average user: the above calculation is for using the entire capacity for a single TCP connection, such as an ftp transfer, and usually results in a pretty large window. If you have a high-speed link such as cable or DSL and configure your TCP receive window to be that large, what do you think is going to happen when you have multiple connections open, as when you are downloading a couple of different files plus surfing the web plus getting your USENET fix? You've just told umpteen servers each to blast you enough data to fill the slowest link (for most consumers, that's your last mile), and (ideally) the data will queue up at the bottleneck and increase the round-trip time for your link; no matter, you have multiple connections going so the fact that each might pause intermittently is not going to affect your total throughput. However, no queue is infinite in capacity (even less so for consumer broadband access servers) and eventually data will be dropped. Your receiver will notice sequences missing and request retransmission, which will set your download back a bit ... and cause even more data to be sent, and again some will be lost, etc. etc. etc. Generally users should think twice about tuning their TCP receive window to guarantee maximum throughput even from servers hundreds of milliseconds away. I'm guessing that I've gone far beyond your original question and the warning may not apply to you but I wanted to finish the answer properly for those who would be tempted to set their TCP receive window in the gigabytes and then tell me that it's my fault their system doesn't work well anymore. Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 00:19:20 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net wolfgang+gnus20040819T111755@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com wrote: > a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) writes: >> Electrons move at the speed of light. > Not really, and we should be very glad that they don't. TV's of old > already had a problem with X-rays being emitted when the relatively > slow-moving electrons from the cathode slammed into something hard at > the front of the CRT. Now picture what would happen if an electron > moving at *relativistic* velocities did that. The energy released > would be immense. (Edward Teller is probably smiling in his grave > just thinking about the "interesting" uses such an electron would > have.) > I suspect you might be thinking the speed of an electrical *signal* in > wire. The speed of a signal in typical electronic wiring is anywhere > between half of the speed of light in a vacuum to just short of the > speed of light in a vacuum. Substances with very low propagation > velocities (eg. much slower than the speed of light in a vacuum) also > exist and are heavily studied. The reference has to be to photons, or any emf for that matter (lower frequency photons are rather porcine and more wave like at our scale) in a vacuum. They are always somewhat slower in media, since, like dogs, they tend to pause to sniff things as they pass. Transmission lines tend to give 65-80% of c as velocity constants. ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: 16 Aug 2004 16:39:08 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , Joseph wrote: > On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:31:29 -0700, wrote: >> I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" >> phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone >> number located in Brooklyn New York: >> TRiangle 5-7871 >> Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = >> luck. My best guess is East New York around late 40s early 50s. Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:35:09 GMT There is a Yahoo group named "strowger" which deals with old telephone systems and the like. Mostly English membership, but some U.S. members might be able to get you a lead. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/strowger A number of years ago I got some from Herbach & Rademan, in the form of some junked equipment containing them. Probably long gone by now. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:56:10 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com You might look at www.surplussales.com under switches. They didn't have any telephone-type rotary switches nor Strowger switches but they had some "moterized" switches than might have enough noise and motion to draw the attention of the unwashed masses. If you really need an actual Strowger switch you may be in for a loog look! Al John Schuch wrote in message news:telecom23.388.9@telecom-digest.org: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. > I searched the web ad-nausium with no luck. > Thanks, > John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:10:05 -0500 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays John Schuch wrote: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old > relays. Search for "strowger" on eBay. Strowger switches seem to pop up every few weeks. As of today (8/19/04), two connectors, some mounting hardware, and several diagrams are listed. A word of warning however: if you want a complete Strowger switch, *including* the contact bank, contact the seller before bidding to make sure it's included. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:39:13 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Nothing special about it. The address just gets translated. Now since > RTP is basically UDP, which is connectionless, some NAT boxes will > have problems. (It's harder to track NAT tables for a connectionless > protocol.) I remember back in the mid 90's, most nat solutions > wouldn't handle UDP at all. Nowadays most do, but some do better than > others. Essentially, they treat UDP conversations as if they were connections, but use idle timeouts to guess when the conversation is over. Unfortunately, a 'one size fits all' timeout could be too short for some applications, causing them to lose touch with each other, and too long for others, causing the NAT device to leave an inbound channel open after it is no longer needed. The latter doesn't sound like a problem at first, but applications which make many UDP-based queries to a wide variety of destinations (my fave example is Half-Life querying online game servers for status information) fill the NAT connection table and prevent any more UDP (or possibly any protocol) connections out until all of the UDP 'connections' in the NAT table time out; this was a common problem with early broadband routers/NAT boxes and I believe the fix was to close the least recently used UDP connection prematurely, which was deemed a lesser sin than being unable to make any more outbound connections for a fixed period of time. Sorry, I seem to be determined to earn a "too much information"/"who asked you anyway" prize today. Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Organization: io.com From: djmcdona@fnord.io.com (Daniel J McDonald) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:31:59 -0500 In article , T. Sean Weintz wrote: > JustSomeGuy wrote: >> How do RTP packets travers a NAT? > Same way UDP packets do. Not quite. RTP uses a dynamic negotiated port range. The NAT device has to know to listen in on that conversation and adjust all of the ports, particularly when dealing with PAT. I'd suggest you contact your NAT equipment vendor. Cisco in particular recently released new code for the PIX firewall to fix a bunch of RTP problems. Daniel J McDonald CCIE # 2495, CNX Visit my website: http://www.austinnetworkdesign.com ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:25:30 UTC Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Neal McLain wrote: > Note that although low-band channels (2-6) are in the core group, the > FCC is allowing any low-band station to move to a higher channel > during Round Three. The Commission's Public Notice doesn't explain > why this provision was included (and the actual R&O hasn't been > published yet). The problem with Band I is that there is an enormous amount of EMI on those channels, and the digital transmission system is not as robust against this noise as the stations would like. Band III has the transmission efficiency characteristics that one would like (in terms of cost to operate) while being out of the range of most of this noise. Band III is also not subject to sporadic-E propagation, the effects of which on digital reception are not well-studied.[1] (It is, however, subject to other propagation anomalies, although not to the same extent as in UHF where tropospheric ducting has already caused significant conflicts among broadcasters, and between broadcasters and other spectrum users such as land-mobile radio.) -GAWollman [1] There are documented receptions of Band I digital TV stations by this mode in the TV DX community. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003) ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:14:12 GMT T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Owain wrote: >> Ned Protter wrote: >>> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >>> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed >>> again with the same result. >>> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? >> Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company >> announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the >> line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to >> ring first. >> Owain > Likely was a real telco recording. Back here, the recorded "not in > service" messages ALWAYS ring first -- sometimes as many as five or > six times before the message plays (one time I counted 8 times!) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Five or six times? Eight times? By > that point most people would be ready to assume their party was > not at home, rather than had the phone turned off. I am reminded > of when Chicago-Wabash central office was very old, back in the > panel/step-switch days. If you called someone whose line was busy > only occassionally would you get a busy signal right away; usually > it would ring one or two times *then* cut into busy. If the handful > of 'busy noise makers' were all in use, you could wait four or five > 'rings' before you got cut into one. PAT] Most folks in this forum already know this, but it may be worth repeating. When you hear ringing, you're not actually hearing the phone you just dialed ringing, you are hearing a "ring-back tone" being played from the CO or other piece of equipment in the network. So, Pat is right, if the "busy tone generators" were all busy you might hear any number of rings until one of them became clear to provide the buzzing sound. Similarly, you may hear any number of rings while the far-end system is trying to complete the call, only to eventually hear " We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service, please hang up and try again. Code 9523" By the way, I had heard an urban legend that "ring back tones" were established in order to try to prevent what the Telco termed "theft of service." Consider the following example: "Mom, I'll call you when I get there and hang up after exactly two rings. I should be there around 8 PM or so." Some say that the Telco's were concerned that they were losing money because the customers were communicating "out of band" but never completing a billable call. Can anyone confirm this (or deny this)? Can anyone put an approximate date when they started using "ring back tones" rather than you hearing the electrical buzz from the actual ringer on the far end phone? Thanks, NPL "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The way I heard it was, telco only put the (artificial) ringing on the line because they did not want people thinking the line was of order. On the old style manual switchboards you did not hear ringing tone, just silence after asking the operator for a connection until eventually either your party responded and spoke up or the operator returned to say 'there is no answer' or 'the line is busy'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lee317@yahoo.com (Levi) Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: 19 Aug 2004 14:19:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > When I read drivel like that, I say, damned right you're looking > elsewhere! Vonage has its place, but not yet as a utility, and > certainly not a replacement to five-nines service. Right now it's a > convenient way to save money in applications that *aren't* critical. Hey guy, this wasn't a personal attack on your choice to use Vonage. I agree it has a place as a prototype experimental technology and that's why I am registering my complaint and looking to spark discussion. I am one person who had a problem and I am warning others to consider my sole experience among others before diving in head first and porting your POTS line to Vonage. My opinion is no more or less "drivel" than yours. Let's keep this kind of unwarrented criticism off the boards. -lee317 ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:09:02 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:47:12 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor opined: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read NY Times articles, many Digest > readers use our group reading name: operator10 and password > operator10 in order to preserve their own privacy and prevent spam. > PAT] The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are slandering the company unduly. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their subscriner list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of outfits who *do* spam us. I am sure they don't personally send out spam, but they close their eyes to spam from companies which buy their mailing list. And why do they need to give cookies out to people who read their web pages? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 04:04:52 +0000 In article , Kyler Laird wrote: > I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack at > getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on my > home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit > someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a > thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. > I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch > and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? How > do I find that person? No it is _not_ reasonable. Not for a _residential_ POTS phone line. If you want to pay for a 'commercial rates' _trunk_ line, Then you can start talking about things like "wink start" vs "ground start" vs "loop start", "E&M" vs "T&R", "MF" vs "DTMF" signalling, etc., etc., ad nauseum. ------------------------------ 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'. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org 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! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #390 ******************************