From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 28 02:13:19 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8S6DI627675; Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409280613.i8S6DI627675@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 #453 TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 453 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jdj) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (Dave Garland) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (jdj) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Lisa Hancock) Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free (John Levine) Re: Out of Area Calls (Gary Novosielski) Palm OS Cobalt 6.1;Web Browser 3.0;Email API;Dev Suite 1.0 (M Solomon) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (jdj) Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications/Networking Problem (Wm Warren) VOIP Server Setup (Ted Nugent) 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jdj Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:30:11 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With what I say next, I mean to give no > offense, nor take any: What is the group's general impression of the > NetGear four port wireless router and its companion 'PCMCIA-like' card > to go in the laptop? Good? Bad? Total Crap? I am lucky to get about > 50-75 feet *reliably*. I just remembered, I do have *two* cordless > phones also plugged in which are 900 mhz units, and they get me about a > half block away from home with no trouble. Might *they* be causing > interference with the wireless router? PAT] I would say the combo is near-total crap. The router just does not have the power to reach downstairs. Not reliably. 802.11b is on 2400MHz. No interference problems. For inexpensive, you might try Linksys, except the BEWF11S4 model router, which dies if spoken to even a little crossly. The WRTG54 seems to be reliable. Customer support is not. I think they've done away with it but have not got round to removing it from their website. I have never, ever got a response from them--for anything at all. With the Linksys I have I get a good link from 1/4mile or so away even going 55. After encountering bad interference on 2400MHz, I dumped my really expensive cordless system and got an expensive 900MHz Engenius. The phone interference is gone but I'm afraid I'm now interfering with half the town.(evil grin) But fair is fair: There is a lot of wifi interference from the city, the cops, the Safeway's and all the wireless telecommuters in town. So we're even. Besides, it's all Part15. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of our computer stores here in > town (Computer Generation) is also the Radio Shack dealer, and he > stocks 802.11b stuff. What would *you* suggest I do for replacement > stuff if anything? PAT] Personally, being miserly, I would go for a Linksys 802.11G router for B back-compatibility, such as a WRT54 with Linux. I have a BEFW11S4v4 and it has a habit of failing if spoken to crossly or if a broken windows client tries to connect. Linksys support is limited to whatever you can get from the website, though. I have never got a response from anyone there. Not even a salesperson. Add to that a gain antenna, such as a 6dB desktop stick, placed up high. This antenna would replace one of the two router antennae. I picked a $25.00 Hawking desktop blade and hung it from the ceiling. With this I can reach a PCMCIA card in the car the next street over through insulated (with foil) stucco walls on channel 11. Using the MA401 PC card in the car, that's around 150 feet. If that is not enough then using a PCMCIA card with a separate antenna will help. I remember Windows all too well (shudder). Since I got free of it's grip my hair has grown back. Mostly. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:56:43 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Patrick Townson wrote: > Or is there any way I can make it sort of directional using the > rubber ducky thing? I don't care if it gets ten miles down the road > or not, but I would like to be able to get around my house entirely > or in the front yard (impossible now.) Any suggestions or ideas? http://www.techtastic.ca/articles/homemade-antenna.html http://www.freeantennas.com/ (various designs, including corner reflectors and cardboard/tinfoil parabolic reflectors). These homebrew antennas work with 2.4GHz cordless phone base stations, too. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've been experimenting a little tonight with a tinfoil parabolic reflector. Not a lot of success thus far, but a little bit better. I will look at the other pages you mentioned also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:55:52 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 02:55:18 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: > fOn 25 Sep 2004 19:39:25 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >> Never heard that. But I've heard to turn off cell phones while >> refueling the car, and I wonder if that's really necessary. > According to MythBusters, it's not; but opening the car door (e.g. to > get at a ringing cell phone) has caused incidents, either from static > electricity or the lighting circuit (haven't seen a definitive cause). MythBusters did not test this. Their test was something completely different: No vehicles or petrol pumps were involved. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip snip] to the terrorist his > reward with all those virgins in heaven, etc. There are apocrypha -- both Christian and Muslim that suggest that those who make it to Heaven a virgin remain one. It seems if these heroes plan on getting their whoopee after death, they may be in for a little bit of a surprise. The Bible suggests it too but I have not had opportunity to find the same in the Q'ran. > True Patriots would gladly sacrifice their cell phones in the war on > terrorism if it meant one life would be saved. PAT] No big loss. These new phones are junk. Ok, take my (broken) cell phones but I'll keep the radios! ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: 27 Sep 2004 20:14:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Atwood wrote >> When someone is bearing safety responsibility, it is natural >> to err on the side of caution; and people without any of that >> responsibility might not understand that reasoning. > Ah, the plea of "necessity", mixed with the "precautionary principle". > Too bad things that work worse together. While I agree with your other points, I strongly disagree with this point. Like it or not, we live in a very blame oriented society. If something bad happens, people look for someone to blame, fairly or not. Lives are often unfairly destroyed by that. If by some outside chance, the signals from a modern walkie talkie did interfere with BART train control signals, the BART managers would be hung out to dry. They, like all public officials, are under tremendous pressure to err on the side of caution because any failure would be blamed on them, fairly or not. Further, it is a fact that BART's original train control system was notoriously fickle. I don't know what it is today, but there certainly is a realistic basis to be cautious about stray radio signals. Radio signals are a funny thing. When I use talk on a simple cassette tape recorder, which has no radio in it at all, the playback picks up a radio station on it. I don't know why, but I had a similar problem in another house 35 years ago on a different recorder. How did a tape recorder, without a radio in it, pick up and record radio broadcasts? Somehow it did. It is thus entirely possible that a stray radio transmission close- by could induce unwanted noise in BART's signal controls. Sure it's unlikely, but it would be nuisance or even dangerous if it happened. The radio user wouldn't get blamed, mgmt would. Now, you might argue BART's system should be immune from that and you're right. But BART was designed and built over 30 years ago, and that battle was fought long ago. If I were a BART manager, until I have absolute assurance that such walkie-talkies did not interfere with train control, I would bar them as well. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Sep 2004 03:08:25 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Unfortunately the phone is 850/900/1900 > Er, tri-band GSM phones are 900/1800/1900. The V220 is supposed to be > a quad-band phone, 850/900/1800/1900. All the GSM there is. I have the phone in my hand, and the Band menu gives me a choice of 850/1900 and 900. If you go to the Motorola web site, you find the Cingular V220 which is 850/900/1900 and the ATTWS V220 which is 850/900/1800/1900. > But then I might be wrong. They might have crippled it for Cingular. > Why they would do that, since Cingular HAS roaming agreements with > European carriers operating on 1800, I have no idea, and I find it > unlikely (but not impossible) that they did. It makes no sense to me, either. The Cingular version has software for AOL Instant Messenger, and the ATTWS has both AOLIM and Yahoo IM. That makes no sense either, since Cingular also has a deal with Yahoo's IM. Other than that they seem the same, same talk time, standby time, etc. To answer a question another user asked, my other SIM is from Orange Switzerland, which does indeed have roaming agreements with Cingular and operates only on 1800. So even though the SIM works in the phone, since the phone won't work on the SIM's home network, I'll need a SIM from a different network (Sunrise, probably) the next time I go to Switzerland. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 05:04:44 GMT AES/newspost wrote: > Said it early on, will say it again: The intelligent and effective way > to handle telemarketing would have been legislation requiring that any > and all telemarketing calls be made using Caller ID with a distinctive > and national standardized Area Code, e.g. 311 or something similar, so > that recipients who didn't want to receive such calls could easily > filter and reject them. Say it all you want, it's a bad idea. It's much better to require the companies to provide their REAL phone number in the Caller ID than some fictitious number. You claim that it would be cheap and easy to filter the calls, but you ignore the fact that Caller ID is a rather expensive service. If everyone on the Do Not Call list was forced to subscribe to Caller ID that would be a nice multi-million-dollar windfall for the telcos, but what extra functionality does the customer get, other than paying money? Furthermore, none of the commonly available Caller ID boxes has any feature to filter or reject calls, based on the area code of the number or, for that matter, any other reason. They simply record the number, which is only transmitted AFTER the first ring, so calls can't be rejected even in theory. In contrast, the Do Not Call registry costs the customer nothing to install, has no monthly fees, requires no equipment, and it works. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:11:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 ; Web Browser 3.0 ; Email API ; Dev Suite 1.0 PalmSource and RIM Announce Release of Email API to Developers - Sep 28, 2004 12:01 AM (BusinessWire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43887990 PalmSource Releases Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888221 PalmSource Introduces Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888227 PalmSource Introduces PalmSource Installer - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888229 PalmSource Honors Leading Palm OS Developers With Euro Powered Up Awards - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888237 PalmSource Adds Bitfone Corporation, DAT Group and Notify Technology Corporation to the Palm Powered Mobile World Program - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888242 PalmSource Launches New Online Tools for Palm OS User Groups - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888246 PalmSource Releases PalmSource Web Browser 3.0 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888262 ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:16:08 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:44:51 -0700, Lisa Hancock wrote: > Some other rural areas may not be as rural anymore and facing growth. > Going to ESS over SxS allows a bigger switch to fit in the same size > building, saving expensive building expansion. Another advantage of the modern ESS, such as a 5E, is that the switch can be spread around geographically. The first I saw of this was a 5E used as a PBX. Parts of the switch were in distant buildings. That increased line capacity enormously. In the outskirts of this town, Pa Bell did not lay new cable with the new housing. They just put the line and group cards in the field and used the old telephone pairs for trunks. But things grew beyond the normal capacity and instead of laying more cable or replacing copper with fiber, they took the cheap way out and started using pairgain. Very soon there will be too many new lines even for pairgain. Maybe they'll figure out how to do DS3 over a copper pair by then? The only fiber out here now belongs to ATT Long Lines (or whatever they call it now) and the cable company. Modern switches also can handle multiple exchanges. Where mechanical switches could handle only one exchange or prefix, the modern ESS can take many more. The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. A nearby independent had a SxS PBX-type switch up to about seven years ago then cut to an ESS when it became impossible to get parts. I used to call it just to listen to recordings and the translation as it completed the call. Another nearby GTE city had a SxS and I would call into just to hear it translate too. I would dial in with DTMF, which would be translated to pulse + MF, then to pulse. Then there was that Continental Telephone switch that let one hear it hunting for dialtone, translate to and from DTMF, translate a toll number to a routing code, etc. One could tell whether a called number was busy before the connection was completed. I used to wish I lived there. Don't get me started on old switches... ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications / Networking Problem Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:40:08 GMT Jonathan wrote in message news:telecom23.449.13@telecom-digest.org: > AES/newspost wrote in message > news:: >> In article , jfklein@shaw.ca >> (Jonathan) wrote: >>> Here is the situation. I work for most of the year in a third world >>> country. [snip] ...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: >> [snip] >> Capacities are in the 100 MB range or higher. > I believe there are no geographic obstructions (ie: hills) between the > office and the compound. However, there is a lot of haze and fine sand > in the air. Because of this I don't think it is possible to see one > location when at the other. I am guessing the laser won't work in > these conditions. [snip] According to the Free Space Optics website - http://www.freespaceoptics.com/AirFiber-Physics-FSO.pdf, "The maximum range in realistic atmospheric attenuation situations is about 500 m." So, I suggest you concentrate on a non-optical solution for the distance you must cover. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies.) ------------------------------ From: nicholasbecker@gmail.com (Ted Nugent) Subject: VOIP Server Setup Date: 27 Sep 2004 18:37:55 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I would like to set up my home computer so it acts as a VOIP Server. I have a home phone line, voice modem, and a broadband connection. I would like to be able to make phone calls through the Internet via my home phone line. Is there any software out there that allows you to do this? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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