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The Telecom Digest for December 13, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 317 : "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
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
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that address. 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, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:44:50 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digets.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: History: Cell phone early days
Message-ID: <0becdc63-88a0-4566-9aad-70ce594fc611@q16g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On Dec 9, 10:27 am, Wes Leatherock <wleat...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> That, as you suggest, was before cellular. I had occasion to use
> such a phone many times in Oklahoma City. While I am sure it was not
> as congested as in New York, there were only a few channels (fewer
> than 10, I believe, in Oklahoma City) and that made for much
> congestion, too.
A friend of mine had a job as a driver for a politician who had a car
phone circa 1973. I strongly suspect that the newly elected
politician used his office to jump the waiting list to get a phone for
his car.
Anyway, during weekend evenings my friend would call me from the call
while he was waiting for the politician. He did not have any trouble
getting through, presumably, like now, weekend nights were of less
use. We kept our calls very short since the billing was steep.
To call out he merely dialed (on a rotary dial) the number. To call
him I dialed a plain seven digit number and the car phone rang (real
ringer). There were a bunch of buttons he did not touch. Sound
quality was noticeably not as good as a normal landline connection--
about the same as an analog cell phone.
The phone in the call looked like a regular G handset. I wonder if it
was that or if they substituted a special microphone and speaker
designed for radio use.
As an aside, said politician was not re-elected and served only one
term. ob. telecom: he built up a law practice and ran a big ad in the
back cover of the Yellow Pages every year, complete with a color photo
of his firm.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Politicians didn't have to "jump the waiting list": they had their own
queue by law, and always got priority in assignment.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:12:51 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: BufferBloat: What's Wrong with the Internet?
Message-ID: <4EE67C63.1020503@horne.net>
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3D2076798
BufferBloat: What's Wrong with the Internet?
"A discussion with Vint Cerf, Van Jacobson, Nick Weaver, and Jim Gettys"
Here's my take on the BufferBLoat issue: I think this is a great
discussion of how difficult it can be to change a widely-implemented
protocol like TCP: engineers keep doing work-around solutions until
the solutions create new problems.
At the heart of the TCP/IP protocol suite is a design philosophy of
trading time for reliability: the whole idea was to make a reliable
path using unreliable links (remember that in the 1960's, link
reliability was horrific by today's standards), and because of that,
there is no "minimum transit time" specification in the IP
protocol. We have added on QOS and other hacks to improve traffic flow
for near-real-time applications such as IPTV, but the bottom level
protocols don't know about them and don't deal with them.
At some point, the Internet will need a major overhaul. For what I do,
which is mostly email, it worked as originally designed. For what many
ISP's and content providers are attempting to do, which is
near-real-time content delivery, it can be "bent to fit" by adding
ever-fatter pipes and ever-larger buffers, at the expense (as the OP
pointed out) of degrading key performance metrics like latency.
For what common carriers are trying to do, which is to substitute
common-channel bandwidth for the virtual-circuit design of the Public
Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), TCP/IP can't be made to fit. There
isn't enough elasticity in the available bandwidth structure to
accommodate the (sometimes incredible) variability of telephone
calling patterns, where by-hand intervention is still done, on a daily
basis, to prevent outages due to mass-calling-events such as
hurricane-or-other-severe-weather-related traffic, media outlet
call-in promotions, and excess-demand holidays like Mother's
Day. Unfortunately, the cost-per-transferred-bit of the Internet is so
low compared to using virtual-circuit protocols such as ATM, that most
executives put blinders on and opt for the cheap solution, usually
with the assumption that we diode-heads will find a way around any
problems like we always do.
I don't have any magic bullets to solve this issue. I think that
voice-traffic will migrate to the Internet until there are service
problem too obvious to ignore, such as those Comcast Voice customers
are experiencing on a daily basis, and then the powers-that-be will
push for a new protocol suite that preserves low cost-per-moved-bit
price advantages at the expense of higher (I think MUCH higher) rates
for anyone doing "anything but" traffic.
The battle of the titans is coming, but it won't be a fight about who
sells which movie or who gets to download which song. This fight will
be about which mega-corporations carve out virtual slices of Internet
bandwidth so that they can avoid paying for their own.
My 2 cents. YMMV.
--
Bill Horne
339-364-8487
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:29:31 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: BufferBloat: What's Wrong with the Internet?
Message-ID: <20111213012931.GA7065@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
The URL in the original post wasn't valid.
Please use
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2076798
instead. TIA.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:01:17 +0000 (UTC)
From: Lee Choquette <leec@xmission.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Broadband choices in Europe
Message-ID: <jc64kd$8gf$1@news.xmission.com>
In article <jc0pnp$g9d$1@dont-email.me>, Tom Metro wrote:
>The problem with the purely commercial provider model is that the
>company investing in the infrastructure may not see a payback [...]
>
>So the answer seems to be some combination of public-private
>infrastructure. [...]
Some communities have built TV translator stations (e.g. K30BQ) through
voluntary contributions to a local club, without which there would be no
over-the-air TV in these communities. I suppose this model would not
work for broadband Internet because this infrastructure costs much more?
Lee
***** Moderator's Note *****
Some communities are able to take advantage of their local terain, and
employ WiMax or similar line-of-sight radio technologies to provide
Internet service to subscribers. However, in my area, there is no
viable location for a central broadcast tower, because there are too
many hills in my area.
I don't know if the WiMax costs a lot more than to install than would
a TV translater, but there are other costs too: ongoing antenna
maintenance, plus rent and power and insurance for a central site
WiMax transceiver, servers, and DS-3 or higher speed Internet
connection. In addition, members of a co-op would have to pay for
their own antenna installations and radio transceivers, and possibly
for additional home insurance.
You bring up an interesting idea, though; communities that have good
lines of sight to an available tower or mountaintop might benefit from
a cooperative WiMax system.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:55:05 -0800
From: Steven <diespammers@ikillspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Broadband choices in Europe
Message-ID: <jc6eqa$tlk$1@dont-email.me>
On 12/12/11 4:01 PM, Lee Choquette wrote:
>
> Some communities have built TV translator stations (e.g. K30BQ) through
> voluntary contributions to a local club, without which there would be no
> over-the-air TV in these communities. I suppose this model would not
> work for broadband Internet because this infrastructure costs much more?
>
> Lee
>
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Some communities are able to take advantage of their local terain, and
> employ WiMax or similar line-of-sight radio technologies to provide
> Internet service to subscribers. However, in my area, there is no
> viable location for a central broadcast tower, because there are too
> many hills in my area.
>
> I don't know if the WiMax costs a lot more than to install than would
> a TV translater, but there are other costs too: ongoing antenna
> maintenance, plus rent and power and insurance for a central site
> WiMax transceiver, servers, and DS-3 or higher speed Internet
> connection. In addition, members of a co-op would have to pay for
> their own antenna installations and radio transceivers, and possibly
> for additional home insurance.
>
> You bring up an interesting idea, though; communities that have good
> lines of sight to an available tower or mountaintop might benefit from
> a cooperative WiMax system.
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
>
In the Yuba Foothills North East of Sacramento there are a couple of
companies that run a Wifi system on old AT&T towers and on other high
point, trees are a problem at the end users sometimes, the speed is a
little slower the DSL and much better and cheaper then Satellite, ATT
has said no DSL, but in the future U-Verse, so they have said. I work
in the area and have been able to use my Sprint Overdrive or pickup WiFi
at places that offer it free. The problem is still the costs , they
need a lot of subscribers to make it pay, at least until the government
kicks loose the money they have been collecting in Universal Service Fees.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2011 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:50:33 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: An experimental switching system using new electronic techniques
Message-ID: <4EE6D999.2050308@horne.net>
I came across a fascinating paper by A. E. Noel, Jr. , in the Bell
System Technical Journal: it gives an amazing insight into the coming
of the "digital" age in telephone switching, and into many "what if"
technologies that never made it off the drawing board.
It's titled "An Experimental Switching System Using New Electronic
Techniques"
This is the first of a series of articles describing an
experimental electronic telephone switching system employing a
number of new techniques. These include use of a stored program,
a network employing gas tube crosspoints, time-division common
control, and large-capacity barrier grid tube and photographic
storage systems.
The article is at
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol37-1958/articles/bstj37-5-1091.pdf
.
--
Bill Horne
(Filter QRM from my email for direct replies)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:31:31 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: LightSquared calls leaked GPS test report a "distortion of truth"
Message-ID: <4EE6F143.9080303@horne.net>
By Matthew Lasar
LightSquared is furious over a news report suggesting that, in various
trials, the satellite broadband company's proposed transmission system
bumps into GPS devices around 75 percent of the time. A leaked
preliminary draft of the government test report quotes the document
concluding that LightSquared signals "caused harmful interference to
majority of GPS receivers tested" and that "No additional testing is
required to confirm harmful interference exists."
The experimentation, which was carried out between October 31 and
November 4, showed that 69 of 92 GPS receivers "experienced harmful
interference" when within 100 meters of a LightSquared base station,
according to the Bloomberg story.
But the disclosure was foul play, LightSquared executives protested in
a Monday telephone conference call. And [they claimed that] the data
is a "distortion of the truth."
http://tinyurl.com/bllmbh9
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
though in truth we were at sea
so I took her by the looking glass
and forced her to agree
saying, 'You must be the mermaid
who took Neptune for a ride.'
But she smiled at me so sadly
that my anger straightway died
- Procol Harum
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