From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Sep 25 18:17:19 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8PMHJM02828; Sat, 25 Sep 2004 18:17:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 18:17:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409252217.i8PMHJM02828@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 #447 TELECOM Digest Sat, 25 Sep 2004 18:17:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 447 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Macronix Vomax 2000 (Filpen@aol.com) Re: Rotary Phone Props in New TV Shows (Neal McLain) Re: Rotary Phone Props in New TV Shows (Paul Coxwell) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Paul Coxwell) Re: BUSH Leaked Documents to CBS (AES/newspost) Re: Telemarketing, was Out of Area Calls (John Levine) Re: FTC Do-Not-Call Registry, was Out of Area Calls (Michael Covington) Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications / Networking Problem (AES) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (Stanley Cline) Re: Vonage Voice Terminal Bypass Affects Broadband Line Speed (S Cline) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Al Gillis Re: Out of Area Calls (Garrett Wollman) Share Day, September, 2004 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: Filpen@aol.com Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 15:34:44 EDT Subject: Macronix Vomax 2000 Hi there, I am researching fax machines that allow remote retrieval. I came across the above mentioned and your site showed up but it is pages long and I can't find your referral to this machine. We have had a Charp FO 512 that has this feature but it is on its last legs and apparently isn't made by Sharp any more. We are looking for an alternative. Can you give me your input on this machine? Thanks, PJ > from ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Sep 19 23:16:24 1996 > ... ... Greetings, I have a Vomax 2000 system (which is an > external modem that can receiveand store faxes and voice messages) > which I bought from Macronix a few years ... > massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ > archives/back.issues/1996.volume.16/vol16.iss501-550 - 101k [TELECOM Moderator's Note: I am putting your inquiry here in the Digest in the hopes someone may be able to answer you. What you have to do with the older archives is when a search engine finds your phrase in a *cluster of fifty back issues* capture the entire file to your system then use an editor of your choice to go through the entire file (of fifty issues [several hundred messages]) and possibly use a tool like Unix's 'grep' to search further for the word or phrase you want. Then use what 'grep' found to focus in on the issue in particular (out of the fifty issues in the cluster.) An alternative approach is after the search engine found the reference as shown above (Volume 16 issues 501-550 of 1996), go to the accelerated index of subject titles and search that. The accelerated indexes begin in 1989 and run through last year. Volume 16 would be in book 3 of these accelerated indexes: 1989-90-91 = Book 1; 1992-93-94 = Book 2; 1995-96-97 = Book 3, etc. You would capture Book 3 of the subject lines, which covers 1995 though 1997, then grep the desired subject of the message if known, or the author name, if known, or the voliss number (volume/issues) to get a list of all the topics in that particular part of the book. In either event, now with the file you captured earlier (which you rightfully described as 'pages long') you skip right down to the issue your subject (author) was in and you can read it. Two notes of caution: the accelerated index of subject lines did not begin until 1989 and can be a little bit unreliable that far back. Also, not all search engines can 'worm' or dig deep enough into those huge files (of fifty issues each) to always capture all possible references. Starting a couple years ago, I began keeping each issue of the Digest in a file of its own in addition to the older, original fifty issues to a 'file' scheme. But if I kept going forever that way, or even tried to convert the old issues into individual files per issue, Unix would soon run out of slots or places for files. Someone please remind me what is the finite number of files which can be kept in a Unix directory ... two or three issues per day, on average, over close to a quarter-century begins to add up. But starting this year, I have been doing it that way (retaining issues as files). Anyway, maybe someone has your answer. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:44:02 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Rotary Phone Props in New TV Shows Joseph wrote: > Well, I think it's assumed that most people don't know the > difference between what something is "supposed" to sound like. > It's a fairly common practice that when they'd show a Trimline > phone "ringing" you'd hear the double-gong ring of a 500/2500 > type phone. And not just TV shows. Ann Arbor Civic Theater's 1959-60 production "The Diary of Anne Frank" comes to mind. Toward the end of the play, when the telephone in the office downstairs rings persistently, we hear a tape recording of a modern Bell System 500 set. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Rotary Phone Props in New TV Shows Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 18:21:15 +0100 > Well, I think it's assumed that most people don't know the difference > between what something is "supposed" to sound like. It's a fairly > common practice that when they'd show a Trimline phone "ringing" you'd > hear the double-gong ring of a 500/2500 type phone. Or if you see > someone making a call from a single slot pay phone you'd see them > insert money and hear the "ding-ding" which single slot pay phones > never had and the ding or ding-ding or bong was only on the triple > slot pay phones. Or having a candlestick phone ring with modern dual It happens in British shows as well. For many years one of our commonest VF signaling systems was a type known as AC9, with its characteristic "cheep" sounds on a clear which you would hear when the calling party hung up. AC9 is long gone in the domestic long-distance network, yet people had obviously become so accustomed to hearing those "cheeps" that some producers still seem to think it necessary to include them as effects in what is clearly a modern setting. The only time I've heard AC9 signaling recently was on an overseas call to Belize. I used to be involved with the lighting and sound for amateur theater during the 1980s and early 1990s, and quite often found little technical details which were incorrect for "historical" plays. One case where I remember commenting to the producer was a play set back in the 1950s in a small English seaside town. They'd managed to get the right style of phone (thanks to yours truly) and I made certain the ringing was applied in the correct cadence too. At several points in the play somebody makes a long-distance call to London. They'd remembered that STD wasn't around then and that calls had to be placed via the operator, but everybody started picking up the phone and dialing 100. I had to remind them that the 100 code was introduced later to allow 0 as the STD prefix. It was only after I pointed out that dialing just a single zero would be more appropriate that a couple of older members of the cast remembered that they did indeed used to dial 0 for operator themselves. Maybe I was being pedantic, but if I noticed it, chances are somebody else in the audience would. Little details all add up to an overall air of authenticity. By the way, on the subject of ringing cadences this seems to be one area where producers really take liberties with the timings, both on U.S. and U.K. productions. Paul Coxwell Norfolk, England [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And consistency, even in the same dramatic production is not always present either. The other day on television in re-runs of "Three's Company", Jack Tripper makes two telephone calls. He dials *five* digits for one call, and *six* digits for the other call. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 18:28:05 +0100 > I had heard -- but can no longer trace the source -- that an > "octothorpe" is a mapmaker's symbol for 8 fields around a village > common. "Thorpe" means "village," not "beam." Indeed. There are many village names in England which end in -thorpe, especially in the north and east of the country. Quite a few others include it at the beginning of the name as well, for example a few miles from where I live there is a place called "Thorpe End" and another named "Thorpe St. Andrew", at one time separate villages but now almost swallowed up by the urban sprawl of the neighboring big city, Norwich. ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: BUSH Leaked Documents to CBS Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:46:15 -0700 In article , dave@compata.com (Dave Close) wrote: >> BUSH "leaked" the fake documents to Viacom/CBS because ... > I'm a bit confused. I thought I was supposed to believe that W is an > idiot, a moron, too ignorant to manage his own affairs let alone those > of our country. Yet you seem to imply that he was capable of a > brilliant dirty trick which, aside from your suspicions, has not been > detected by anyone yet. Please clarify. I guess we're thinking back to Valerie Pflame (sp?). ------------------------------ Date: 25 Sep 2004 14:51:35 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: telemarketing, was Out of Area Calls Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > What does the law say about when you ask a charity to stop calling and > they refuse? The Texas Paralyzed Veterans keeps calling asking for > donations. I have called their office, spoken to a supervisor, and > explcitly asked that my number be removed from their call list. They > always promise, but three or four times a week I continue to receive > calls from them. They're breaking the law. Solicitors for charities don't have to use the do-not-call list, but if you explicitly tell them to stop, they have to stop. This is due to, of all things, the USA PATRIOT act which modified the definition of telemarketing to include solicitations for charities. (Presumably to help shut down all those nasty Islamic ones.) You can read all about it in the Federal Register announcement of the final telemarketing sales rule: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/01/tsrfrn.pdf As far as what to do about it, I suppose you could record a few of them, including your reminder to them that you've told them never to call you again, then find a lawyer to help you sue. Since these should be slam dunks for $1500 per call, in a week or two it would add up to some serious money. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: FTC Do-Not-Call Registry, was Out of Area Calls Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:42:11 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) John Levine wrote in message news:telecom23.444.15@telecom-digest.org: >> THINK before you start typing! You have to know WHO they are before >> you can sue someone! > Well, duh. The people who sue under the same law for junk faxes have > gotten pretty good at teasing out the junkers' identities. Well said. The thing that makes it possible to punish junk faxing, junk calling, and spam is that invariably, the sender of the message wants to collect money from the public, and they have to identify themselves well enough for money to reach them. ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications / Networking Problem Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:36:09 -0700 In article , jfklein@shaw.ca (Jonathan) wrote: > Here is the situation. I work for most of the year in a third world > country. When I am here I stay in a small compound consisting of two > buildings each with 35 rooms (ie: 70 rooms total. They are like two > small hotels). The buildings are separated by about 15 meters. There > are about 30 to 40 people here at any given time. > We have no internet access at the compound. There are only two > telephone lines coming into the compound and the company which runs > the compound is unwilling to rent more lines and a switchboard system > for the rooms due to the high expense. Therefore, dial-up internet > access is not a possibility. > However, the company does have an office about 18 km away (11 miles) > at which they have high speed internet service. If there is a clear line of sight from the office to the compound, there are commercially available free-space optical or laser communications links that could easily bring broadband to the compound -- this would be a classic situation for using this technology, in fact. One of the major companies in the field is TeraBeam: A Google search should bring up numerous others (and there's some funny business about an unrelated Terabeam company that has the domain name www.terabeam.com). Sorry, don't know prices -- not cheap, probably, but not impossibly expensive either. Maybe you could pluck some heartstrings about the needs of your group, or the merits of putting in a demo unit for other potential sales in the country. Capacities are in the 100 MB range or higher. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Organization: Roamer1 Communications Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 07:15:53 GMT On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 21:08:42 -0400, Diamond Dave wrote: > As far as I know, there are no more step or crossbar offices in the US > or Canada. The last one that I'm aware of was Nates, Quebec in Canada, > which was converted to digital in June 2002. *Nantes*. :) As far as the US goes, it seems that the last steps were in GTE (now Verizon) territory in downstate Illinois and in Sprint and Benton Ridge Telephone territories in Ohio, and were converted to digital (mostly remotes of existing digital switches) in 1999. The places where one would expect to find the last steps (Alaska bush country, small independents in general, etc.) actually went digital quite early on, largely because of things like environmental concerns (Redcom's MDX series switches, popular in extremely remote areas, are specifically built with harsh environments in mind) and human resource needs and in part because small independents' generally higher USF receipts compared to Bells and large indeps allowed for earlier conversion to digital. Last I checked, the LERG still shows a small number of switches with "step" equipment types, but all of the ones I've found are in error; most of them are really Nortel DMS remotes or new next-gen switches like Tekelec's 7000. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Vonage Voice Terminal Bypass Affects my Broadband Line Speed Organization: Roamer1 Communications Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 07:16:03 GMT On 22 Sep 2004 21:26:57 -0700, suma702003@yahoo.com (Suma) wrote: > I hooked up my fibre optic line from the wall (CAT 5 port) to the I'm going to assume here "Ethernet from your fiber optic line"... :) > Motorola Voice Terminal and connected from VT to my computer's network > card The line speed goes down to 392 KBPS with the voice terminal in > the middle. While the line speed if I connect from the wall directly to > my Network card is 1138 KBPS. Is this a known issue? Why would this > happen? Putting the VT1005 in front of your network shouldn't affect your "line speed" (DSL sync speed, cable modem link rate, the speed between your ONU and telco in the case of fiber, etc.), unless there's a speed/duplex mismatch between the VT's Ethernet port and the Ethernet port on your DSL modem/cable modem/fiber ONU/etc., but could very well affect throughput, as the VT1005's QoS isn't all that great. I do QoS with a Linux box running iptables and have very good results. (I don't use Vonage, though.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: 24 Sep 2004 15:15:42 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Ariel Burbaickij wrote: > Hello dear newsgroup participants, > Could someone explain to me why it was decided not to have call > reference ID in at least plain ISUP (i.e. not B-ISUP where it could be > present)? There is call ref id in DSS1, in SIP and again transaction > id in SCCP/TCAP (with transaction being defined as series of queries > and responses), so why no call ref ids in ISUP? SIP and TCAP are end-to-end. What purpose would you expect a "call reference ID" to serve in ISUP, which is hop-by-hop? ISUP signaling messages are associated with trunks between a pair of switches. Until the state machine for the call ends, all messages for a given call can be the TCIC field, which includes the trunk between the pair of switches for a given hop. Furthermore, most national variants specify a use of the Signaling Link Selection (SLS) field that will cause all messages for a given call to flow over the same path through the SS7 network, allowing them to be monitored from a debugging tap at a single location. In article , Phil Anderton wrote: > ISUP does have mechanisms for end to end signalling, but in normal use > it's almost exclusively link by link signalling, and for that all you > need is OPC+DPC+CIC. You know, I hear that from time to time. But aside from the PAM (Pass-Along-Message) which is so loosely defined by the standard that it is unclear whether or not it could actually be used, I'm at a loss as to just what these "mechanisms for end to end signaling" are. I had occasion to try to generate and send PAM messages in a test environment a few years ago. It is difficult, to say the least, to understand exactly what should be in them: one reading of the standard suggests that it should be a complete encapsulated ISUP message, with addresses and all. Now, _that_ begs the question "how do I know what address to put in the inner message, since I don't know the address of the terminating-end switch?" There are many similar issues. The Nortel DMS switch documentation describes one very obscure DMS-only feature that is evidently implemented using PAMs; but as of the time I last studied this, if that feature actually works at all, that's the only environment in which it would. Can you give me better examples of end-to-end signaling in ISUP? I'd love to have some. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com But as he knew no bad language, he had called him all the names of common objects that he could think of, and had screamed: "You lamp! You towel! You plate!" and so on. --Sigmund Freud ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 13:37:25 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Stanley Cline wrote in message news:telecom23.446.7@telecom-digest.org: > On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:08:31 GMT, Mark Atwood wrote: (Much snippage...) > That said, Alaska's policy seems a bit out of line since other > airlines -- namely Delta -- *allow* use of GPS receivers whenever > laptops and the like are allowed. Keep in mind that the airline policies and practices are likely developed by managers who have little sense of how the technologies work and how that might interact with one another. ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 20:50:51 UTC Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , AES/newspost wrote: > or less self-enforcing (at least as easily as DNC lists); and no First > Amendment concerns (callers are free to call anyone; you're free not to > answer). What First Amendment concerns are there in me telling other people (with the assistance of the government) how they may or may not use my property to annoy me? My phone was not installed for their benefit; free speech belongs to those who hire their own hall. -- 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) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:35:29 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For October Instead of changing the Digest over to an advertising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. 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