From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 28 22:11:14 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iBT3BD810426; Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:11:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:11:14 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200412290311.iBT3BD810426@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 #622 TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:10:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 622 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Surfing in Secret (Lisa Minter) Tracking Techniques (Lisa Minter) Keeping E-Mail Private (Lisa Minter) What Will the PC of 2005 Look Like? (Lisa Minter) NASA Television Now on Our Web Site (TELECOM Digest Editor) Such Carnage is Hard to Believe! (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Speaking of VoIP (John Levine) www.area-code.us (Mike Schoenberger) 1st 1-900 Number Question on Millionaire Show (carl@mail.centuria.com) Re: Drill Bit Size (Tony P.) Looking For Users Manual For Bellsouth 4300GR Phone (eljainc@ameritech) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: Surfing in Secret Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 12:31:29 EST by Michael Fitzgerald - ExtremeTech A famous cartoon from the early days of the Internet featured a dog surfing his computer with the caption, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." That cartoon implied a level of anonymity that doesn't really exist online. You might tell your online pals you aren't a dog, but it doesn't take much work for someone to figure out you visit puppylove.com, have "Cat Marauder" on your Amazon wish list and spend a lot of time in the DogzChew chatroom. Now, you might be thinking that in truth, no one cares if you're a dog. In fact, at a holiday party, a friend of mine asked me why GhostSurf, a software package that helps you shield your online privacy, was a selling point for his new PC. He didn't think he was doing anything interesting online. Except shopping, checking out various types of news sites, sending e-mail to clients and letting his kids check out their favorite sites. All of these things could prove very interesting, if not to governments and marketers then to bored geeks and more malicious types. But don't get paranoid. It's unlikely that you're being a victim to keystroke logging or some other form of cyber-wiretapping. And most, if not all, e-commerce sites use encryption software to protect their orders. So, chances are slim that someone will capture your credit card data as you type it in online. But the IP address your computer has is tantamount to your home address. It goes with you to every site you visit and gets recorded along with all of your actions there, every time you go there. It's a simple fact of Internet life that "sites do log stuff," says Simple Nomad (Mark Loveless), a well-known white-hat hacker who is a senior security analyst at toolmaker Bindview Corp. You actually may want them to log at least some things about you, in order to get quick access to a site or to place an order. But Simple Nomad warns that you aren't just flitting around the Internet unwatched. He impresses his teenage son by sitting in coffee shops with his laptop and telling his son which joke in a chat room made someone laugh or what their credit card number is. He uses a tool called a sniffer to do this, in unsecure wireless network environments. Sniffing You Out Sniffers do make it easy for others to find out whether you're a dog, but they aren't all that common. They're generally not a threat to someone on a home network with a firewall and good common sense about what files not to open. But malicious hackers can break into logs of Web sites and Internet Service Providers, which might contain things such as your mother's maiden name, your passwords, your date of birth, your credit card numbers and other types of personal information. These can be used to build profiles of you, either for identity theft or for other purposes. Spyware Then there's the scourge of spyware. You can read John C. Dvorak's take on spyware and its various guises in PC Mag's 'Panic Over Spyware.' Typically, spyware is some innocuous-looking toolbar that lets you, say, change the background color of sites you visit and is in fact tracking what you do and sending information back to another site. Spyware can be distributed automatically and even downloaded to your computer without your knowledge, says Chris Wysopal, director of development at Symantec Corporation. He warns that spyware spreaders actually "are just throwing out a wide net and going after thousands and thousands of people. That's more the way it goes on the Internet." Foiling Criminals So, how to avoid having your IP address become some criminal's window into your life? There are a series of tools to consider, and some simple, common-sense steps to take that can help immensely. First, the tools. Surf anonymously, which protects your privacy and may help you reduce your spam levels and limit the amount of junklike cookies that get dumped on your system. There are a wide variety of tools available. A good sample can be found at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. It covers 16 categories, including ways to e-mail anonymously, surf anonymously and instant message securely. Surfing anonymously might sound geeky, but it's not all that hard. The basic premise involves using software to have your server mask your IP address. It does this by taking, say, the URL you've typed into your browser and sending the request via a different computer, which acts as a proxy for the request; a go-between that cloaks who you are. Good anonymizer tools will also use encryption, so that online snoops can't just grab whatever traffic is going back and forth between you and a Web site. The main drawback to anonymizers is loss of surfing speed. Masking your IP address will slow down your Web surfing, although it's less noticeable in broadband environments. Tools of the Trade Three tools we like are Anonymizer 2004, Bypass Proxy Client 0.78 and GhostSurf 2005 Platinum. All have encrypted communications, and all use their own, company-controlled servers to keep your Web surfing secret. Each is featured in 'Surf in Secret'. The most basic is Anonymizer 2004, which sends any Web request you make; going to Google, say, or buying a book on Amazon.com; first to its own servers and then out to the Web, with a proxy IP address that isn't yours. The service works well, but you are dealing with a single source of servers; all Anonymizers; and it doesn't give you much else than anonymous surfing for its $29.99 a year. You can, however, get a series of other kinds of privacy tools for $99.95 a year. At $49.95 a year, GhostSurf 2005 Platinum costs more than Anonymizer 2004, but it gives you a lot more, too. It's our favorite tool for anonymous surfing, because it offers other tools, such as protection for your instant messaging, and also a way to let you mark sites that you want to allow to see your identity, such as a paid news site you subscribe to. Bypass Proxy Client 0.78 is also an excellent tool, but it's more for advanced users. It requires some skill with software to use, and is best for people who are unable to use Anonymizer or GhostSurf, perhaps because their company IT department decides to block those programs. One nice, though complicated, Bypass feature allows you to route your Web traffic to a proxy server of your choosing. If you're concerned about having your site requests going through servers belonging to just one company, you might try software that uses public servers to route your Web requests. Steganos Internet Anonym Pro 7 is a good tool in this category. This app does take more time to set up than an application like GhostSurf, since Steganos has to go out and search for public servers to use as proxies, but it accelerates with use. It costs $59.95 a year, and that nets you a spyware blocker, an Internet trace eraser and a "shredder" feature. The downside to software such as Steganos is that since the servers are public, pieces of your Web surfing could be tracked. You also can't encrypt your communications, so you could be tracked. There are also free anonymizer tools available, though it's worth checking out the background of any such free service. Now, the habits. Wysopal notes that there are several simple things people can do to protect themselves online: Avoid the cookie monster. You can use your browser to set up a list of the sites that can give you cookies. Don't let any other sites have them, and don't accept their cookies. Don't talk to strangers. Use pseudonyms for your e-mail and chat accounts. Don't give your real name or information about yourself to people you don't know well. Same goes for sites you're unfamiliar with. Don't fill out Web forms. The fewer places that have your personal information, the more protected you are. Use encryption where you can, and finally, when in doubt, fax. Wysopal notes that no one has yet developed spyware for fax machines. And that's just dog-gone good sense. Michael Fitzgerald is an award-winning technology writer and editor. His writing on technology appears in The Economist, Inc., MIT Technology Review and a number of other publications. He's spoken at numerous industry events and frequently appeared on CNN and other major television networks. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance ExtremeTouch and Michael Fitzgerald. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Tracking Techniques Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 12:34:21 EST Michael Fitzgerald - ExtremeTech The classic techniques include things such as sniffing, which captures all of the data coming from a connection and then analyzes it. Sniffers originally were used to diagnose network performance. But since they capture all of the data coming through a network, these tools can be useful for mischief. Sniffers might be a concern if you spend a lot of time surfing the Web at your office, where your company has a right to track what you do online. But from home, you probably have little to fear from it. It would require either dropping software undetected into a home computer, or breaking into an ISP and do the same. And even then, with encryption and Secure Sockets Layer-type protections built into most Web sites that handle transactions, there's a good deal of data that sniffers can't see, says Chris Wysopal, director of development at Symantec Corporation. He warns that it's far simpler for malicious cyber-types to write and distribute spyware, or phishing, which involves building sites that mimic a bank or retail site and then sending out mass e-mails alerting people to an "emergency" such as the closing of their account if they don't go to the site and give their personal information. These are his top two concerns for privacy violations online. While there are tools for battling spyware, both schemes are best fought through avoidance. Don't download toolbars for your Web site or other such packages unless you know the vendor is a legitimate one (not always clear in the case of spyware, since adware can look like spyware to some, and legitimate business use to others). And don't believe any company that claims it needs your credit card number or other personal information in order to preserve your account. It isn't true. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, ExtremeTech and Michael Fitzgerald. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Keeping E-Mail Private Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 12:36:27 EST by Michael Fitzgerald - ExtremeTech Surfing anonymously is one thing. But wouldn't sending e-mail anonymously be an online version of mash notes? The quick answer is no. There are plenty of ways to protect your identity when sending e-mail while still making sure that the person who gets your e-mail knows it's from you. And there's good reason to figure out how to do so. Unless you do something to shield your e-mail, "it's basically a postcard," says Chris Wysopal, director of development at Symantec Corporation. In other words, anyone at any ISP can see the headers to your e-mail, which says who you are and who it's going to, and can read it if they so choose. So can a hacker who has compromised the ISP. Wysopal recommends using encryption software such as PGP, which effectively seals the envelope, though the headers; the to and from addresses are still readable. But encryption continues to be a challenge for most of us. That isn't so much because it's complicated; it's much simpler than it once was; but because you can exchange encrypted e-mail only with someone who uses the same software. A simpler method, and one that also will shield your address, is to use a re-mailer service such as Hushmail. These services strip off the original address and put on a new one. It's like a forwarding service in the real world, and it makes sure that unwelcome eyes can't see your e-mail, know you sent it or who's getting it. You can read of free services in PC Mag's 'Hiding Your Identity'. Re-mailers range from easy to use to very difficult, as noted on privacy advocate and author Andre Bacard's site dedicated to the topic. They also can vary the level of anonymity (so yes, you could send e-mash notes). While it might seem simpler still to just set up a Webmail account with a fake name, that's not as anonymous as you might think. For one thing, if you use it from your home computer, and you don't use proxy switching software to hide your IP address, it won't be hard for someone to connect the IP address with the Webmail system. Naturally, you could go to the public library or another publicly available Internet site and use machines there. That does eliminate the IP address problem. But even there, you have to remember that unless you clear the browser cache and take other steps to erase your tracks, the next user can figure out a lot of things about you. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Extreme Tech and Michael Fitzgerald. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: What Will the PC of 2005 Look Like? Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 12:39:38 EST by Martyn Williams and Tom Krazit, IDG News Service Consumers thinking about buying a new computer in 2005 might be better off putting off their purchase until 2006. With few major changes in PC hardware or software due over the next year, the PC of 2005 is likely to look awfully similar to the PC of today. Big changes aren't due until 2006, when the Longhorn operating system from Microsoft, 64-bit applications, and optical drives based on the Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will become available to the average user. Still, that doesn't mean there are no technologies worth looking out for if you do plan to upgrade in 2005. Chipping In: Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to unveil dual-core chips -- which contain two processor cores on a single piece of silicon -- by the end of 2005, although they probably won't appear in mainstream PCs until well into 2006, says Stephen Baker, director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld in Reston, Virginia. Intel will likely boost the cache memory in its Pentium 4 processor and AMD is expected to increase the clock speed of its Athlon 64, but these changes will be incremental. A more substantial shift in processor performance, the move to 64-bit computing, probably also won't happen next year, even though Microsoft is expected to finally release a 64-bit version of Windows XP in early 2005. Bigger changes can be expected in chip sets, which handle the flow of communication between the processor and the rest of a PC. A new series of Intel chip sets supporting the PCI Express interface and DDR2 memory will trickle down to mainstream systems, or those priced at about $800, in 2005, Baker says. PCI Express will allow data to travel faster between the chip set and peripheral hardware such as graphics cards and storage. Intel has billed its introduction as one of its most important upgrades in a decade. While that might be stretching it, mainstream users will begin to see more and more products that take advantage of the increased bandwidth in 2005, Baker says. DDR2 will allow memory chips to move data at faster clock rates. The older DDR standard is reaching the limit of its effectiveness as memory clock rates exceed 400 MHz. Memory chip vendors are expected to produce larger amounts of DDR2 in 2005, bringing costs down and allowing vendors to put faster memory chips in cheaper PCs. PCI Express and DDR Memory will also appear in notebooks from early 2005 with the introduction of Intela??s next-generation Alviso chip set. Notebook sales have been growing faster than those of desktops for several years, a trend that will continue into 2005, says Roger Kay, vice president of client computing at IDC, in Framingham, Massa- chusetts. Technologies that make it easier to handle music, video, games, and other multimedia are also on tap for 2005. PC vendors will release more PCs with Microsoft's XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system, designed to make it easy to burn DVDs and manage digital media files, as well as pause and record live television. To help users handle their expanding collections of music and movie files, PC vendors will also increase the storage capacity of hard drives in mainstream PCs. Today they are typically between 80GB and 120GB. In 2005, expect to see $800 PCs with around 200GB of storage, Baker says. A disk technology called Serial ATA is also becoming established. It includes a feature called Native Command Queuing (NCQ), which allows a drive to manage multiple commands from the PC in whatever order it deems most efficient, rather than the order in which they were received. It can deliver a substantial performance boost to users, and that's good news for data-heavy applications such as those involving video. In the optical disc space, users are likely to see incremental increases in DVD read and write speeds. In the latter half of the year the first PC drives supporting new, blue-laser based disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, are expected to make their way onto the market. Both formats are aimed primarily at high-definition video and can store several times more data than today's DVDs. Single-layer Blu-ray Discs can store around 25GB, while HD-DVD isn't far behind. Hewlett-Packard recently became the first to go on record with its plans for shipping Blu-ray Disc PCs, saying it will offer them in 2005. However, the move towards PCs with better multimedia features will only work if they provide a simple, rewarding experience for users, notes IDC's Kay. PCs captured the hearts and wallets of buyers by making tasks such as word processing much easier. Televisions and DVD players are also easy to use. People won't want a PC in their living room if it doesn't provide them with a good experience for their money, Kay says. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance IDG News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:04:23 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: NASA Television Now on Our Web Site For persons who are interested, you can now watch and listen to NASA (National Aurenotics and Space Administration) audio *and video* here on the telecom web site. Go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nasa.html to watch and listen. In addition to news/documentaries programs, you will also be able to hear radio transmissions between Houston, Canaveral and whatver vessel is in orbit at the time. I hope you will enjoy this Telecom Digest Extra feature. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:36:53 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe! I realize what I say next is not a telecom topic; but ... I say it and hope you will give it some thought as I have several times today. That disturbance of the earth over around s.e. Asia on Sunday has certainly taken its toll. AP Network news (in our td-extra section on the web site) said as of Tuesday afternoon, USA time, the body count was now over *fifty thousand* men, women and children, in Sri Lanka and surrounding areas. Government authorities are instructing the living people to 'carry the bodies as you find them out to the curb and leave them; we will do mass disposal of the remains.' It sort of reminds me of Monday morning here in Independence, as the sanitary disposal trucks move through the alleys collecting the garbage. I mean, can you even begin to grasp or understand the horror of the whole scene in Sri Lanka? Stacking the dead bodies at the curb where workers will take them away over the next few days .... Meanwhile, the United Nations called on Dubya to do more than the stingy pittance he offered. He said he would 'think about it'. Trouble is, Dubya has gotten so badly in debt on account of Iraq, he does not have a lot of money left over for things like alleviating human misery. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 2004 20:50:53 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Speaking of VoIP Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > But then I realized, Cox is an FCC regulated voice carrier so all the > fees and crap will kick in and the price will be > $24.99 I pay now. > The guy trying to sell me this service was explaining my VoIP line > isn't secure. That's a pretty lame sales tactic. He should have pointed out that Cox's service has real 911, real operators, real battery backup so it works when the power fails, and includes a real phone book listing. Poking at their web site, I'm surprised to see that they don't bundle long distance so if you don't like their not particularly cheap LD service, you can use someone else's. ------------------------------ Subject: www.area-code.us Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 17:00:11 -0500 From: Mike Schoenberger Mark, Linc or Patrick, I was unable to find another contact email so I hope that you receive this and can forward my email to someone who can fix a link on this site. If you go to Codes -> Services -> Rocky Mountain Telco it goes to http://www.rockymnttel.com/. This is now a porn site for whatever reason! Michael Schoenberger Quality Assurance Cutting Edge Media, Inc 1.800.561.9297 Ext 1119 =20 Fax 717.361.0860 mike@cemedia.com www.CuttingEdgeMedia.com "Exceeding Your Expectations is Our #1 Priority" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know Linc Madison reads this Digest now and then but I do not know that he has any control over that web site other than possibly dropping it off of any listing he maintains on his own web site. But there are numerous webmasters of telecom related sites who read this Digest, and after they ascertain that the 'change in policy' at that web site was not the work of a hacker and is, in fact real, they may choose to (a) either remove it from any links at their own site or (b) contact the webmaster there if they know who it is and ask what is going on. My opinion is the webmaster may have failed to pay his 'dues' to the registrar of .com so his site was put up for sale, just like our Internet History Org site was, (which Mikka, writing from the numann mail server in Canada) assured me was perfectly proper. Maybe -- if this latest instance was a grab by a cybersquatter as my internet-history.org was, he can get a place somewhere in the '.tf' or '.tc' domain, like I did for the internet history archives. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: 1st 1-900 Number? Question on Millionaire Show Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 00:40:10 +0000 From: Because of Christmastime, I am away from my usual email. I am Carl Moore (cmoore@arl.army.mil). On ABC-TV "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" show which aired last Friday (Dec. 24), there was a question about the 1st 1-900 number (in 1980?). The answer given was that it was used for Reagan-Carter debate (in U.S. presidential campaign that year). What about the 1-900-242-1611 used for Carter's call-in in 1977? Notice that BOTH of these involved President Carter. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The correct answer **should have been** the 1977 call-in program. Someone should notify the producer of the show and challenge his 'correct answer'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Drill Bit Size Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 17:37:53 -0500 In article , nospam@crashelex.com says: > Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Can anyone on here tell me what the standard bit size that is used by >> telephone installers to drill the holes for running standard, four >> pair telephone wire through (like drilling a hole through the >> baseboard into the floor to pull the wire in to wire a jack mounted on >> the baseboard)? > I have a 5/8" spade bit, 6 feet long with a 6 foot extension. Spade > bits are easier to aim, IMO, than twist bits. Standard caveats apply > wrt knowing what's ahead of your bit :-) > I also have a "shorty" that's only 18" long, for special occasions. 5/8" seems huge. You can get CAT-5 through a quarter inch hole so I'd recommend a long quarter inch bit. The 5/8" would be good for dropping cable from the pole into the house but that's about all. ------------------------------ From: eljainc@ameritech.net Subject: Looking For User's Manual For Bellsouth 4300GR Telephone Date: 28 Dec 2004 14:50:36 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I am looking for the users manual or any documentation on the Bellsouth 4300GR 4-line telephone system. Does anybody have this in PDF format? Thanks in advance, Mike McWhinney ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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