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The Telecom Digest for January 22, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 22 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:53:51 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Some unanswered questions from January 2011
Message-ID: <jfdgcv$oh$2@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <98b0b$4f19d52a$adce4530$14461@PRIMUS.CA>,
Geoffrey Welsh <gwelsh@spamcop.net> wrote:
>Garrett Wollman wrote:
>
>> Codecs that couldn't do this were rejected as unsuitable.
>
> ... which kind of brings me back to the original question: if codecs
>that don't handle dropped datagrams gracefully were discarded as
>unsuitable as streaming evolved, why the heck wasn't SIP discarded as
>unsuitable for VoIP when it became apparent that it was not going to
>play well with NAT?
Your question works just as well the other way around, and NAT has the
additional disadvantage that it's Clearly, Deeply, Architecturally
Wrong, And Besides It Can't Possibly Work Once Everyone Uses IPsec.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:20:50 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Some unanswered questions from January 2011
Message-ID: <20120121162050.GA15532@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 04:53:51AM +0000, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <98b0b$4f19d52a$adce4530$14461@PRIMUS.CA>,
> Geoffrey Welsh <gwelsh@spamcop.net> wrote:
> >Garrett Wollman wrote:
> >
> >> Codecs that couldn't do this were rejected as unsuitable.
> >
> > ... which kind of brings me back to the original question: if codecs
> >that don't handle dropped datagrams gracefully were discarded as
> >unsuitable as streaming evolved, why the heck wasn't SIP discarded as
> >unsuitable for VoIP when it became apparent that it was not going to
> >play well with NAT?
>
> Your question works just as well the other way around, and NAT has the
> additional disadvantage that it's Clearly, Deeply, Architecturally
> Wrong, And Besides It Can't Possibly Work Once Everyone Uses IPsec.
NAT may be "wrong" in theory, but it accomplished some important goals:
1. NAT extended the usable life of IPv4 long enough for IPv6-capable
software to become widely available.
2. It saved untold millions of PC's from Internet worms, just by
being in use, since it effectively provides a firewall.
3. By extending the life of IPv4, NAT allows for a gradual transition
to IPv6, which has avoided economic hardships to millions of end
users and small companies that can't buy new equipment in the
current economy.
More to the point of your email: everyone isn't going to use IPsec
with IPv6, and those that do are actually less secure than those who
use NAT-T, since the NAT traversal makes it more difficult for
external attackers to do traffic-based security analysis.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
"Their minds were overflowing with the visions of their day
With many a fortune won and lost, and many a debt to pay"
- Gordon Lightfoot
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:11:44 +0000 (UTC)
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Some unanswered questions from January 2011
Message-ID: <jfev50$20f9$1@leila.iecc.com>
>> Your question works just as well the other way around, and NAT has the
>> additional disadvantage that it's Clearly, Deeply, Architecturally
>> Wrong, And Besides It Can't Possibly Work Once Everyone Uses IPsec.
>
>NAT may be "wrong" in theory, but it accomplished some important goals:
He's being a wee bit ironic. IPsec is a technology that seens great
until you try to use it, at which point you discover that it's
impossibly difficult to deploy, so people use other tunnel
technologies like ssh and VPN that work fine over NAT.
There was a theory in the IETF that if they pretended there were no
ways to use kludges to extend the life of IPv4, that would force
people to switch to IPv6, even though until a few years ago, it wasn't
ready to deploy at large scale either.
R's,
John
***** Moderator's Note *****
I'm announcing a new subject-line option for posts to the Telecom
Digest: the "[Irony]" tag. If you post contains irony, please use the
"[Irony]" tag in addition to the customary ones.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:26:32 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Cracking Teenagers' Online Codes
Message-ID: <MVx7EC.A.4UB.Vb5GPB@telecom>
Cracking Teenagers' Online Codes
By PAMELA PAUL
January 20, 2012
WITH her coordinated zebra-striped scarf, tights and arm warmers (arm
warmers?), spiky out-to-there hat and pierced tongue, 34-year-old
Danah Boyd provides an electric Gen Y contrast to the staid gray
lobby of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Mass., which she enters in
a flurry of animated conversation, Elmo-decorated iPhone in hand. In
a juxtaposition that causes her no end of mischievous delight, her
laptop bears a sticker of Snow White, whose outstretched arm gently
cradled the Apple logo.
But Dr. Boyd - a senior researcher at Microsoft, an assistant
professor at New York University and a fellow at the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at Harvard - is a widely respected figure in
social media research. With a number of influential scholarly papers
under her name, she travels relentlessly, tweets under the handle
Zephoria and has fans trailing her at TED conferences, at South by
Southwest and elsewhere on the high-tech speaking circuit.
She is also a kind of rock star emissary from the online and offline
world of teenagers. The young subjects of her research become her
friends on Facebook and subscribe to her Twitter feed.
"The single most important thing about Danah is that she's the first
anthropologist we've got who comes from the tribe she's studying,"
said Clay Shirky, a professor in the interactive telecommunications
program at N.Y.U. and a fellow at the Berkman Center.
There's no shortage of grown-up distress over the dangers young
people face online. Parents, teachers and schools worry about
teenagers posting their lives (romantic indiscretions, depressing
poetry and all), leaking passwords and generally flouting social
conventions as predators, bullies and unsavory marketers lurk.
Endless back-and-forthing over how to respond effectively - shutting
Web sites, regulating online access and otherwise tempering the world
of social media for children - dominates the P.T.A. and the halls of
policy makers.
But as Dr. Boyd sees it, adults are worrying about the wrong things.
Children today, she said, are reacting online largely to social
changes that have taken place off line.
...
http://goo.gl/uYrdW
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:49:55 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: A stake in the ground for IPv6
Message-ID: <jfftgk$jrf$1@dont-email.me>
From an entry in the Cybertelecom-L list:
according to http://www.worldipv6launch.org/, everyone is going to
start using IPv6 on June 6.
I may have to buy a new router: or connect my Linux PC directly to the
net! Has anyone else heard about this 'official' date for IPv6.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:20:11 -0500
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: A stake in the ground for IPv6
Message-ID: <barmar-50B225.00201122012012@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <jfftgk$jrf$1@dont-email.me>, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
wrote:
> From an entry in the Cybertelecom-L list:
>
> according to
> http://www.worldipv6launch.org/
> , everyone is going to
> start using IPv6 on June 6.
>
> I may have to buy a new router: or connect my Linux PC directly to the
> net! Has anyone else heard about this 'official' date for IPv6.
Have you actually read the FAQ at that site? For ISPs, the goal is 1%
customer availability by that date.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:21:21 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: We need to talk about piracy...
Message-ID: <jfg2s2$8kt$1@dont-email.me>
This is a couple of days old, but it's a more nuanced explanation of the
issues surrounding SOPA and PIPA, including links to other
well-thought-out pieces on the subject by other authors.
by Danah Boyd, Apophenia
January 17, 2012
We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first)
Much to my happiness, the internets (sic) are in a frenzy about the
"Stop Online Piracy Act" (aka SOPA). Congress is currently in recess,
but the House announced a hearing on the potential impact to the
Domain Name Service on January 18 and everyone expects the Senate to
begin discussing a similar bill "PROTECT IP Act" when they return to
DC on January 24. There's a lot to these bills - and the surrounding
furor - and I'm not going to go into it, but I recommend reading the
actual bill (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show)
and Open Congress info, the Wikipedia article (http://goo.gl/d7r5S),
EFF's blog (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks), and the various links at Stop
American Censorship (http://americancensorship.org/).
Tomorrow — January 18th — a bunch of geeks are planning a SOPA Blackout Day to
voice their discontent.
I abhor SOPA for the same reasons as other geeks. I'm horrified that
Congress has crafted a law that will screw with the architecture of
the internet in ways that will undermine free speech. I love Josh
Kopstein's post "Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The
Internet Works (http://goo.gl/Hetss)." And I'm glad that geeks are
getting vocal, even if - as Clay Johnson has pointed out - geeks don't
quite get how Congress works (http://goo.gl/C8Wdn). I'm stoked that
the White House has asked (http://goo.gl/ZagIV) for a civil
conversation around piracy (while also opposing SOPA's key
pieces). And I find it utterly hysterical that Rupert Murdoch has come
to geeks' turf (Twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/rupertmurdoch) to
convey his pro-SOPA opinions, even as Obama steps in to state that he
opposes SOPA.
Rest at:
http://goo.gl/wB0I4
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
"She gets up, falls down, breaks even
Gets caught by the wrong Mr. Right
It's a hard town; I wouldn't want to live in it
But I wouldn't want to give up in it"
- Ellis Paul
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:37:18 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Message-ID: <6yLS5D.A.SVB.Vb5GPB@telecom>
How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER
January 21, 2012
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley's top luminaries for dinner
in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a
question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted
with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the
United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America.
Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million
iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were
manufactured overseas.
Why can't that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs's reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he
said, according to another dinner guest.
The president's question touched upon a central conviction at Apple.
It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple's
executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as
the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers
have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the
U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
...
http://goo.gl/Sjoam
***** Moderator's Note *****
I bet that if American buyers started looking for "Made in USA" labels
again, this unwelcome part of Mr. Jobs' legacy would vanish. I also
bet that if our Congress imposed the same tariffs on imported Iphones
that other countries impose on American goods, the price advantage of
making things overseas would also vanish.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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