Pat, the Editor

27 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

Previous Issue (Only one)
Classified Ads
TD Extra News

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

 
 
Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 77 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 
  Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 
  References on IP Telephony? 
  Re: References on IP Telephony? 
  Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up 
  Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up 
  VoIP Latency Problem? 
  Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 
  Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 


====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:47:22 +0000 (UTC) From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <gpqqgq$7ij$1@reader1.panix.com> In <6645152a0903171340i17e48e4sb7c8a862ed1e5f59@mail.gmail.com> John Mayson <john@mayson.us> writes: >> There used to be some public stores (eg copying stores, stationery >> stores) that offered fax service for about $1/page, there may have >> even been self-service machines. >> >> Is that still even offered? > Yes, Office Depot and FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos) continue to > offer this service. We don't own a fax machine and every once in a > blue moon have to use their services to send a fax. As does just about every other "copy" and printing shop, and plenty of others. Typical rate would be $1.50 for the first outgoing (domestic) page and $1.00 for the following ones, and similarly $1.00 each for incoming. Lots of variation. -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:43:25 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <557f7621-3dc0-4f17-811c-5000f1917d84@y13g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 4:19 am, Curtis R Anderson <gle...@gleepy.net> wrote: > My mother tells me that at her retirement community, there is a "public" > fax for its residents at the big administrative building, which they > call the "big house". Many seniors probably don't want to bother > excessively with fax unless they must. I suspect for many seniors today a fax is a valuable service. Seniors often have medical needs which means lots of billing and medical forms which need to get sent to multiple providers and health-care insurers. The paperwork seniors have just from medical care is enormous. Seniors may be assisted by their children, who may live in a different place, and transmit financial documents to/from them. I visited a senior in a facility and there was a common-use photocopy machine, with an honor paper cup for 10c a copy. > ObTelecom: When my mother switched her landline phone number in her > dwelling at the retirement community . . . At my mother's care facility, the door entry was interlinked with her phone. But it took forever for the community to set it up, which meant visitors couldn't get in conveniently. Apparently the phones were maintained by a parent organization that operated the facility. ***** Moderator's Note ***** N.E.T. experimented with Apartment Door Answering Service (ASAS), on the Boston University centrex, at Back Bay in the late 70's. The local pairs were wired to an ADAS frame, and from there to the dial tone on the 617-353 exchange, which was served by a #5XB. I don't know what became of it. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:22:49 -0700 From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: References on IP Telephony? Message-ID: <siegman-1EAF2C.07221918032009@news.stanford.edu> Any recommendations for an introductory book, review article, overview, or web site on IP telephony? -- not a highly technical coverage, but an overview of what's currently available, or likely to become available, for people considering moving, partly or completely, to IP phone. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2009 21:55:08 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: References on IP Telephony? Message-ID: <20090318215508.51364.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >Any recommendations for an introductory book, review article, overview, >or web site on IP telephony? -- not a highly technical coverage, but an >overview of what's currently available, or likely to become available, >for people considering moving, partly or completely, to IP phone. My page at http://net.gurus.org/phone/ is a little stale but still pretty much accurate. The main things my page leaves out are Packetcable and the unbundled systems. Packetcable is VoIP running on a dedicated subchannel on a cable system. The technology is VoIP, but the performance is more akin to a normal wired phone. The pricing tends to bundle in a gazillion features and flat rate calling, and to be somewhat but not hugely less than the local telco would charge for a similar bundle. They typically provide battery backup to make it somewhat resistant to power failure and real 911 service. There's now some reasonable options for buying VoIP service piecemeal. A company in Germany called Betamax operates under a variety of names such as voipdiscount.com providing astoundingly cheap outbound VoIP service. Their usual rate for calls to the US is one eurocent/minute, but if you set up an account and put 10 euros into it, calls to most countries you'd want to call (US, Canada, landlines in most of Europe, etc.) are free for 120 days, then after that you use up your money (1000 minutes if you call the US), then when your money is spent down, probably six months since you put in the 10 euros, you put in another 10 euros and start over. They provide a downloadable softphone, but they are happy to let you use a VoIP phone or terminal adapter. I have an old Grandstream VoIP phone I bought on ebay for $20 plugged into my DSL router. They also offer local (not toll free) dialaround numbers in many countries, which is really great for those of us whose mobile service offers unlimited calls to local landlines, giving me the same mostly free international calling from my mobile as from my VoIP phone. Incoming calls are a little trickier -- if you have an inbound VoIP number, Betamax will let you point it at your Betamax phone, but I don't know of anyone who will sell small numbers of incoming VoIP numbers. The largest vendor is Voxbone, who used to sell onesies but now has a 500 number minimum. A do it yourself setup like this also does not provide any voicemail or other features; for that you'd need to point it at a linux box running the Asterisk open source PBX or the like. At this point I would not want a non-Packetcable VoIP phone to be my main phone, because they're still kind of flaky, but if you make a lot of calls, particularly international calls, they're a good deal. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:34:46 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up Message-ID: <7924cef7-7ba5-4436-8548-ac50b7f1f72f@41g2000yqf.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 4:34 am, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote: > As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up > > Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted > to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the > Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries > of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, > he got an even bigger shock. This just happened in a Philadelphia Federal trial that just completed; a juror was "twittering". However, in this case the judge determined it was not harmful and the case proceeded. The defendant was found guilty and defense is appealing. ***** Moderator's Note ***** Was the juror using Twitter in the courtroom? Was it related to the case, or just a possible distraction? Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:27:44 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up Message-ID: <c90e45c6-1d8a-4317-988c-0f280c69c677@v19g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 11:47 am, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > This just happened in a Philadelphia Federal trial that just > completed; a juror was "twittering".  However, in this case the judge > determined it was not harmful and the case proceeded.  The defendant > was found guilty and defense is appealing. > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > Was the juror using Twitter in the courtroom? Was it related to the > case, or just a possible distraction? Apparently not in the courtroom. Yes it was related to the case, but apparently not illegally so. Except: "Monday's [guilty] verdict came shortly after the judge ruled that a juror could remain on the panel despite his posts about the case on Facebook and Twitter. "The juror told the judge in a closed-door hearing early in the day that none of his online "friends" had commented back to him about the Fumo case. The juror said the posts were his way of talking to himself and expressing his emotions, and were not intended to communicate anything to others, according to defense lawyer Peter Goldberger, who attended the session." The defense believes the posts "tainted" the jury and said it plans to raise the issue on appeal. [Afterward, in interviews the jurors in this case said the evidence of guilt was strong.] Refs: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/41300202.html http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/41379397.html http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/41310617.html http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/41315402.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:58:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Tom <tdenham735@gmail.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: VoIP Latency Problem? Message-ID: <e585149e-7d17-4ff3-b42d-33352dce3092@v15g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> Hello, We currently have a very simple VPN from our US office to our remote office. Our bandwidth is fine, but our latency is running around 280 ms on average to the remote office. The interesting thing is that at least 70% of the time our calls are pretty good, but often we get very odd noises and dropped calls, even though the bandwidth usage and latency appear to be running at their usual baseline. Once the problem starts it seems to persist for hours at a time. Even at times when bandwidth is [much] lower than our baseline the VoIP problem can crop up. We're not doing any VLAN tagging (we have cheap switches/routers), so QoS is likely out of the question, although I'm not sure that will help because it appears to happen at times when we have plenty of bandwidth, so I suspect that it may have something to do with our poor latency, but then why does it work well most of the time? I'm just puzzled as to why this works so well much of the time, but some days can become unusable. Peeking with wireshark does not show anything unusual during these bad calls, so we're a bit stumped. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks... ***** Moderator's Note ***** Since there is no specification for minimum transit time in the IP specification, you're going to deal with latency on every VoIP call. Although 280 ms is a good figure, I'm at a loss to explain the dropouts if Wireshark doesn't show any anomaly. If some party along the line is "traffic shaping" because they don't get paid for VoIP (and they want you to use the PSTN instead), that would explain the dropouts. I suggest you try encapsulating the VoIP calls in a VPN for some tests: the VPN will hide the traffic signature, so that might reveal if there's sabotage. Hate to be cynical, but Comcast has been doing shaping for years (and denying it), so it's worth checking out. Please pass along the landing country(ies) as well: there might be some history. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:17:00 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <64e5ef73-8075-4423-97f7-66b3e1085193@q9g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 4:29 am, wleat...@yahoo.com wrote: >        As to the Western Union prices in 1960, for many custonmers and > certain documents the price was not the significant factor; the fact > that the service was available at any price was of more importance. Price is always a factor. Sure there are people willing to pay a very high price for quickness (such as people who flew the Concorde), but they are relatively few. The Concorde, despite its high fares, did not make money and has been discontinued. It's high speed simply wasn't/isn't worth the fares to make it sustainable. I can't help but wonder if WU's public fax service didn't get many customers due to its high price and limited convenience, that is, it just wasn't cost effective. The article said more cities would be added if demand justified, but I don't think the demand ever did nor the service ever expanded. It is easier to communicate via a two-way phone conversation (instant feedback) than a terse one-way telegram, but until long distance rates dropped, businesses used telegrams instead of the phone to save money. Back then, making a long distance call was reserved for the most important of issues due to the high cost, otherwise telegraph or plain mail would do. When toll rates dropped around 1960, long distance usage went way up and telegrams went way down. Years ago companies had copying machines but they were expensive to use and people were expected to use carbon paper instead. If something had to be copied, it was logged; perhaps there was one copier in an entire building. Today we don't even think about cost and freely use our copying machines, indeed, can't even conceive of running an office without one, but obviously, despite their convenience, people had to make do in the past due to high cost. Remember, for this service, one had to physically take or messenger their document to the central WU office in a city; which was time consuming and cumbersome in itself. The destination had to be in one of the above mentioned cities and there was delivery time as well. The ads said WU would deliver free "within city limits", but what about Los Angeles which had a huge metropolitan area outside the city limits? The other issue is what other modes were available for speedy transmission. As mentioned, the post office offered air mail and special delivery which may have been overnight in 1960 and a heck of a lot cheaper even with premium postage. There may have been air or railway express services that delivered overnight; I know overnight rail service was available from NYC to Chicago via the 20th Century, though I don't know the cost. In a sense, WU was competing with itself in that someone could send the text (say of a contract or contract changes) via telegram. I don't know the charges for a lengthy telegram, but a night letter was relatively cheap. Also, back then sending a telegram was much easier-- it could be done over the phone or a more convenient branch WU agents. A larger organization would have Telex or TWX and could route the text of the message that way. I could see a need to quickly send engineering documents like blueprints and schematics, but such documents are usually much larger than 7.5" x 10". Cutting up a document into sections for transmission is cumbersome. Also, documents would be needed on site, not necessarily in the big city. I don't know what WU technically required to transmit documents, I presume it was a broadband connection, not their plain 50 Baud lines. I don't know if their fax machines were extremely expensive that limited rollout. I would guess that this service would've been much more popular if offered in more principal cities throughout the country, like Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Denver, Miami, Houston, as well as growing areas like Atlanta and Las Vegas. I wonder if the big three television networks could've used the service between NYC network HQ and Hollywood development studios. There must have been a high volume of scripts, script changes, and contracts moving back and forth. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:56:39 -0700 From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <siegman-B5472D.15560918032009@news.stanford.edu> In article <64e5ef73-8075-4423-97f7-66b3e1085193@q9g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > > Price is always a factor. Sure there are people willing to pay a very > high price for quickness (such as people who flew the Concorde), but > they are relatively few. The Concorde, despite its high fares, did > not make money and has been discontinued. It's high speed simply > wasn't/isn't worth the fares to make it sustainable. > Nor its highly negative environmental impact, or limited available routes, or requirements for special ATC handling. Not to mention that, as I've read somewhere, at the time it was "discontinued" the Concorde had accumulated by far the _worst_ cumulative safety record (deaths per passenger mile) of any major model of jet airliner ever operated in commercial service. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition 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. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://feeds.feedburner.com/telecomDigest Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (9 messages) ******************************

Return to Archives**Older Issues