Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA28288; Wed, 14 Aug 1996 23:30:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 23:30:25 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199608150330.XAA28288@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #410 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Aug 96 23:30:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 410 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Modem Access Fees (Tim Gorman) The Free Speech Issue No One is Talking About (Jack Decker) Re: Questions on Multi-Drop Serial Communications (Scott Nelson) Dedicated Rates to the West Indies (Antilles Engineering) Re: Wireless Satellite Communication - A Challenge (William J. Halverson) PBXs and Year 2000 Problems? (John G. Brouwer) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tim Gorman Subject: Re: Modem Access Fees Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 21:29:10 -0500 Bob Wulkowicz wrote in TELECOM Digest Vol 16, Issue 390: > Maybe I took it badly, but I read Mr. Robeson's post as a pompous > dismissal of us as the technologically and managerially unwashed. I don't know if he meant it that way but it is true that with no real understanding of traffic patterns, density, and provisioning requirements it is difficult to judge whether fees established for service are reasonable or not. "Common sense" is not typically a very good judge. > E.G. The telcos send a packet of information along with each call that > contains internally useful information for system and billing > purposes, etc. As a customer of 40 years, I have paid for the creation > of that system and still pay its "costs" as a part of telco overhead. > Then, access to that same packet is sold to various agencies as 911 > information so they can determine information about any callers into > their PSAP. As a taxpayer, I pay for that as well -- and there are no > competitive or market-driven forces avavilable to keep those costs > down -- the telco charges what it wants. If a telco has 200 such PSAP's > inside their jurisidiction, they have 200 little cash cows. The "system" is a design on a piece of paper specifying protocols and requirements and you DID pay for this in the past - it is real overhead. What was NOT paid for in the past as part of overhead is the physical equipment necessary to route each additional packet of information to each various user. Saying the telco "sends a packet of info along with each call" is really meaningless. It doesn't work that way. The telco is NOT selling access to that "same packet" several times.Several call setup packets get sent between the originating and terminating switch to facilitate call setup and to provide information like caller id and transfer number. These data packets ride an SS7 network infrastructure which must be grown and updated as usage grows and technology updates. Other packets of data get sent to the billing system. These ride other infrastructure which is also needs to be grown as usage increases and technology updates. Call information queries for such as caller number or AIN, while riding the SS7 network, may very well propagate partially or totally separate infrastructure which is, again, sensitive to usage and technology changes. > And if I choose to use Caller ID, I buy personal access to yet that > same packet for four or five dollars a month. The sales departments of > the telcos spend large amounts of ratepayer's money to convince us of > the importance of those features and their revenue generation is > significant. Providing that caller id to you required the telco to invest in new software in every central office switch to handle the feature, not a cheap thing. It also required them to invest in the analog modem equipment in every central office necessary to send that caller id down your phone line, again not a cheap proposition. You ARE paying for much more than some access to a "phantom" data packet. > So, it depends on whose side your're looking from: for the telcos it's > a proper "subdivision" of services for different customers. From our > side as wallet owners, we've had real money extracted 3 times. That's > a ripoff. You may look at it as a ripoff. Respectfully, I would suggest that much of your outlook is based on not seeing the "invisible" infrastructure involved in doing all of this that you never see or hear about. Caller ID modems WERE installed in all CO's providing the service. It was NOT cheap. > Also, replacing digital switches for analog has capital life expectancy > extended by a magnitude or two, so the only real equipment issue left > would be additional purchases for capacity. In fact, most telco planners will tell you today that infrastructure (and therefore capital) life expectancy is a fraction of what it was 20 years ago. Then a central office could be expected to last 25 years or longer. Today, central office lives are measured in years instead of decades. Many of the digital central offices installed in the late 80's and early 90's are going to need replacing early in the next decade as further advances in optical switching and ATM infrastructure enters the market leaving a capital life expectancy of barely more than a decade. The depreciation expenses associated with this shorter life does result in a change in fee levels required to stay in business in a capital intensive market. > If there is a shortfall, the telcos probably have skimped on needed > equipment purchases thinking they could get along on the float -- > routing based on the average call Mr. Robeson mentions -- but that's > really their problem, they're paid to be smarter. In a competitive environment, infrastructure managers are paid to wring the last dollar out of investment - skimping is a way of life. You are playing the typical game of putting the telco's between the rock and hard place. Damn them if they do and damn them if they don't. > Robeson's equipment issue is vaporcrabbing; modem use isn't a threat, > or if it is, it's not in the area of equipment. ISP's are charged for > new hard lines and where available, they're probably not copper, so > capacity can't be >an issue there. Frankly, this is based on a view of "fiber" from about 15 years ago when it was thought that a few fibers laid around the nation could "never" be exhausted. We are installing a Newbridge frame relay frame every three months in a town of 150,000 in a rural state and STILL can't keep up with demand. As has been usual in the telephone network over the past 100 years, we can barely keep up with the bandwidth demands of the customer base as it moves around from locale to locale and grows and grows. If nothing else provides a foothold for competitors, that does. > Hard lines run, individual and isolated, from residences and businesses > to some collection point where they can be identified and accessed. If > I am connected to some customer at the same CO there is simply a point > to point link that is of no consequence outside that office. The > connection can be three minutes or three hours; the duration really has > no cost despite what may be claimed. If that connection is on a voice channel you are tying up memory in a line frame on each end, network crosspoints (be they physical or memory), and ancillary memory and CPU cycles tracking your call and signaling. There IS a cost no matter what you claim. That equipment has to be there whether it is operating at capacity or is under/over capacity. The fact that YOU are using it and require it to be there means you are requiring a cost to be incurred to provide you service when you want it. You are merely grunching about having to pay the freight for the infrastructure you are causing to be placed. As competition comes you will have the option to move to a lower cost provider. You will also find that you don't get something for nothing. Much as has been found out in the long distance market today, the low cost, niche competitors may provide lower costs for specific things but they either don't provide 24x7 full service, they don't provide the same levels of call blockage, etc. > Any connection between CO's simply ties up a line between.the two, but > it also has no real cost -- again these physical lines were fully paid > for years ago. There IS a cost. You just don't recognize it. If the equipment wasn't there when you wanted to make the call, it would cost *you* something. If nothing else, aggravation for not being able to make the call you wanted. It's kind of the equal and opposite reaction thing. It also costs the phone company to make the infrastructure available for *your* call. If they didn't they could use the infrastructure for another purpose or could forego putting it in altogether. I would also bet the multimillion dollar digital central office serving you has NOT been paid off years ago. If it were all paid for years ago, your phone calls would be free and Internet access would be free and long distance would be free and coin phones wouldn't exist and we would all be living in Camelot. The phone network in this country is NOT a grand conspiracy scheme no matter what anyone tells you. Tim Gorman Southwestern Bell ------------------------------ From: jack@novagate.com (Jack Decker) Subject: The Free Speech Issue No One is Talking About Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 05:40:07 GMT Organization: Altopia Corp. - Affordable Usenet Access - http://www.alt.net Pat wrote: > Mark my words: there will be one battle after another with the government > and the big corporations. First it was CDA and they lost that, now it > is copyrights. They'll probably lose on that also ... then it will be > something else. Funny you should write this. I wrote an article about exactly this topic last week for TechKnow Times, an e-mail newsletter published by a friend of mine. I'm attaching the article below. Also, please review the Web page at http://www.knowledgetech.com/tktmenu.html Select the August 7, 1996 issue. They're going through a DNS/webserver transition there, so if the August 7 issue doesn't show up right away, it should be there within a day or two (I hope!). Jack -------------------------------------- The Free Speech Issue No One is Talking About! Far too often, looking closely at the workings of government is like turning over a rock or a log out in the woods. Once in a while you may find something good -- a few coins or a hidden treasure for you. But more often than not, you'll see slimey, disgusting things that tend to run and hide when exposed to the light of day. For several months now, folks have been up in arms about the Communications Decency Act. They turned Web pages black, and protested mightily about the loss of "freedom of speech." I wasn't really worried about it, for two reasons. First, I don't necessarily buy the argument that if you restrict pornography on the net, it follows that all forms of expression can then be restricted. People have this illusion that our Constitution guarantees absolute freedom of speech, any time, any place. Try getting on a commercial aircraft sometime, and start joking about explosives in your suitcase, or make cracks about hijacking the plane -- or, if that isn't a big enough thrill for you, try threatening the life of a high government official. You will quickly find out that your "freedom of speech" AND a few hundred thousand dollars MIGHT get you out of jail on bail until your trial. And that's just two examples of where "freedom of speech" is restricted. You don't have the absolute right to say anything at any time and any place. You never did. And yet, our freedom to express political dissent in a peaceful manner has always been protected by the courts (well, unless you want to picket outside an abortion clinic, but since that's not a "politically correct" form of protest we'll just look the other way on that one. I'm not trying to pick a fight with anyone here, just pointing out that the courts HAVE recently restricted the "freedom of speech" of a particular group that holds a political view that is not looked upon favorably by some. Who knows, but if these same judges had been around during the days of the civil rights protests of the 50's and 60's, Martin Luther King might have remained in jail for quite a long time). But putting that aside, the CDA was simply "showcase" legislation from the start. The legislators that passed it knew from the beginning that it wouldn't hold up in court, but it lets them go home to their constituents and say, "Look, we TRIED to put an end to pornography on the Internet, but the courts stopped us." Since federal judges are appointed and not elected, they can't be voted out of office, and therefore can be made convenient scapegoats at times like this. Still, I wouldn't have any problem with the protests if they weren't so narrowly focused. You get one piece of legislation that threatens "freedom of speech" (mostly pornographic speech, although I do realize that there were potentially serious implications for all of us), and everyone on the Internet is up in arms -- yet these same folks ignore the laws that place some of the most serious restrictions on freedom of speech. Maybe it's because we've lived with them so long that nobody thinks about them anymore, or maybe it's because when "common folk" break these laws on an occasional basis, they are seldom punished, although the threat is ever present. I'm speaking of so-called "intellectual property" laws, and copyright in particular. Like many laws, these started out with a good purpose -- to encourage creative people to develop their ideas and talents. And like many laws, they have come to be exploited and misused by a few rich and powerful people, at the expense of the rest of us (even some of those that they are supposed to protect). And also, as with many laws, our legislators seem to have bought the argument that "if a little is good, a lot is better." So now we are about to see copyright protection extended yet again, so that works from back in the 1920's that would have fallen into the public domain in the next year or two will now be "protected" for another 20 years, at a minimum. You can find out more about this at the Public Domain Information Project's page on the Copyright Extension Act, at this URL: http://ne1.bright.net/pdinfo/copyrite.html It seems to me that this is a movement in exactly the wrong direction. We are living in a day when things have a much shorter "shelf life" than ever before. It must be comforting to software authors, for example, to know that the software they write today will be obsolete in a couple of years, but protected by law until 70 years after they are dead and gone! Common sense ought to tell us a couple of things. First, an author is probably not going to be more motivated to write if copyright protection extends to 70 years after his death rather than 50. The fact is that in most cases, the only beneficiaries of this copyright extension will be the large companies that have been assigned copyrights on works that still may be of commercial interest. But also, when works are under copyright, it imposes a "gag order" of sorts on those who wish to discuss them, or share them with others. Yes, there is the so-called "doctrine of fair use", which says you can quote portions of works for specific purposes, but nobody seems to be really sure of how much quoting is too much -- and in any case, you're limited to quoting bits and fragments out of context, which is hardly the best way to present anyone's work. Another problem is that works that are not commercially viable tend not to get distributed. For example, let's say you find a book from the 1940's or 1950's that seems to contain a lot of wisdom. You'd like to share the thoughts of the author with others, but the book is out of print and nobody seems to know where the current copyright holder(s) are. Yet you don't dare just reprint the book without permission -- for one thing it's illegal, and for another, the current copyright owner just might crawl out of the woodwork and sue you for infringement. By the time the book actually falls into the public domain, it will in all probability be long forgotten, so neither the present generation nor a future one will benefit from this work. Now there is a lot of talk about tightening down on the information that is presently freely available on the World Wide Web, by yet another expansion of the scope of the copyright laws. Someone sent me a clipping earlier this week, where an author was quoted as saying that the slogan "Information wants to be free" is equivalent to saying "I want information to be free ... and I want gasoline to be free." That is utter nonsense, of course. Gasoline is a product -- it has to be manufactured, and there is a fairly fixed cost to manufacture it (probably a lot less than what the oil companies would like us to believe, but still there is a very definite cost). But the big difference is that if you have a gallon of gasoline, you can burn it in your car, or you can give it or sell it to your neighbor and they can burn it in their car, but you can't both use the same gallon of gasoline. Information is quite different -- much of the information we come by in life is information we acquire for free, and even if we do pay, there's no set price for any given piece of information -- it's whatever the buyer and seller can agree on (at least, this SHOULD be the case in a truly free market, which isn't what we have now in some cases -- music licensing in particular comes to mind, although admittedly that's "entertainment", not "information"). But the biggest difference between information (and, indeed, many types of so-called "intellectual property") is that you can give it away and still keep it for yourself. If you have specific knowledge, you can pass that on to others, and yet retain it yourself and continue to use it in your daily life. What's really slimey about this is that no one talks much about copyright issues (except of course for the lawyers that are making big bucks off of the copyright laws), and there's a reason for that. First, the entertainment industry is a big contributor to various political campaigns. As the saying goes, "money is the mother's milk of politics", and when they are getting $10 to $15 for a CD that costs about fifty cents to manufacture, you know they have plenty of money to throw at cooperative politicians. But also, what major publication or news organization is going to come out attacking copyright protection? They are all making money from it! So it would hardly be in their interest to come out and tell all the negatives about existing intellectual property laws. In my mind, this is one of the biggest news stories that is not being told, because people ARE losing their rights to freely share information and knowledge, if someone else can possibly claim "ownership" of that information. I could go on and on about this topic ad nauseum -- we could talk about how "intellectual property" is a legal fiction, similar to the idea that a corporation is the same as a person. We could talk about how copyrights often benefit the folks who didn't do the actual work, while those who actually did the work got peanuts -- and how in other cases it's more like a giant lottery, where certain "superstars" get big money for little effort while others expend great amounts of time and effort and have little or nothing to show for it. We could even wonder why those who write, or make films or music, should be entitled to be paid over and over for work done once, when most of the rest of us only get paid once for the work that we do. I'm sure that any of the topics could promote a heated argument for quite some time (indeed, I've seen it happen in various discussion groups). But let's cut to the chase here, as it pertains to the Internet. Quite simply, there are people who are unhappy that a lot of information is being given away free of charge on the Internet. They don't like it a little bit, because people can access the Web or Usenet News and find out the same things that are in high priced books sold at bookstores. And these people would dearly love to have the copyright laws further tightened, to the point that you'd hardly be able to put anything useful on a Web page (unless it was entirely your own original thinking), unless you (or the viewers of your page) paid some sort of royalty to someone. Now I can understand that if you are the author of a current book, piece of music, or software title, you're not going to want to see people accessing your work free of charge. I have no quarrel with those who want to make sure that people receive fair compensation for work done. It's just that I think that "intellectual property" laws have reached the point of absurdity. If they'd had the type of "look and feel" lawsuits that we've seen recently back in the first half of this century, no two automobiles (from different manufacturers) would have the same layout for steering wheel, foot pedals, etc.! And while some may see the rationale for allowing people to make money off their work for seventy years after they are dead, I certainly do not -- particularly, again, when the vast majority of people in this world get paid only once for the work they do! So the point is, if you truly value freedom of speech -- if you really want to be able to communicate ideas and concepts to people on your Web page, or in other material you'd like to make available on the internet, you have to be aware of what your politicians are doing all the time. Just because the magic words of "obscenity" or "pornography" or "sex" or "profanity" aren't used in a particular piece of legislation, does not mean that your ability to communicate with others is not under attack. And folks, right now there's not a whole lot of light being placed on this issue by the media, so don't just assume that because you're not hearing anything about it, all is well. Take a lesson from history -- the most damaging attacks are the sneak attacks that you don't see coming until it's too late. I'd give you some examples from the American Civil War, but for all I know, that might be violating someone's copyright! * * * * * Here are a couple of more Web pages that deal with intellectual property and copyright issues: Intellectual Property Issues http://sunsite.unc.edu/negativland/intprop.htm "If creativity is a field, copyright is the fence." http://kzsu.stanford.edu/uwi/vircomm/anticopy.html ------------------------------ Date: 14 Aug 96 18:05:06 EDT From: Scott Nelson <73773.2220@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Questions on Multi-Drop Serial Communications On 8/1/96, Don Nordenholt wrote: > My company makes a SONET multiplexer that offers a wide variety > of low speed interfaces (voice, data, video, LAN, etc.). I would like to know more about these products. I admit that I am a little confused, however, because the bulk of your post seems to be focussed on overhead telemetry channels in the SONET mux -- not the actual payload. Am I correct? > 1. I am familiar with a scheme that was used in the old days > for monitoring microwave and fiber optic equipment in long-haul > repeater sites. Me too. My experience came from Rockwell International's Collins Radio division (purchased from Rockwell by Alcatel in 1991). We could create "fault alarm" networks using the analog modems you described. The transport would be the analog orderwire link that was bridged between all the radios in the network. For modems, we could use standard 202T modems rigged to transmit data to the RMU when they detected an active carrier and only to transmit (activate their carrier) when data was coming from the RS-232 port. The RMU was responsible for determining if the incoming data was addressed to that particular RMU or not. We also had proprietary modem cards that weren't used that often to do the same function. When digital microwave came along (and later, fiber optics), we still supported the analog telemetry channel, but also provided a digital channel. This was synchronous as you described. It had separate TX and RX data as well as corresponding clocks. There was a 5th signal, but I cannot recall its purpose at the time ... The point to note is that all this was Rockwell-proprietary format called MCS-11. It initially ran at 32 kb/s, and moved up to about 56 kb/s with the later fiber transmission systems. A few third party vendors like Westronics (now part of Harris) developed compatible remote units that would talk MCS-11, but it was already being displaced by TL-1 by that time, so not a whole lot more came out of it. > 2. The next question is jump ten years to the present. How would > something like this be done now? We can lease data circuits or > provide them directly out of muxes made by manufacturers like > Premisys, Newbridge, etc. You will mainly want to focus on SONET. With SONET, you at least get an analog orderwire channel that is bridged between all terminals in a network. (With most manufacturers, the orderwire can be blocked from being received over a span or selected sites as well. And some products incorporate a DTMF function right on board that will ring a local buzzer when the local site is dialed -- the channel is still a party line; however, so you can always "listen in" ...) There is also an express orderwire, that not all vendors provide, that bypasses repeater/regenerator sites on a SONET network. You can use this orderwire channel just like in "the old days", but it will be incredibly slow versus the information that can be obtained from the in-board data communications channel on the SONET equipment (the section DCC is 192 kb/s, and the line DCC is 576 kb/s). On the other hand, SONET also specifies two 64 kb/s "user channels" that are supposed to come out on all terminals -- one of them (the path user channel) skips regenerators. Specifically, the user channels are part of the STS-1 overhead and are present in every STS-1. For instance, an OC-3 would be made of three STS-1 and have 3 discrete section user channels and 3 discrete path user channels, and OC-12 would have 12+12. But technically, you only have access to the user channels if you fiddle with the STS-1 (ie. manage it's payload: drop a DS3, add/drop DS1 in the VT mux, terminate the DS1, etc.), and I am not sure if it is passed from one device to another that are connected via an electrical STS-1. Also, I am not sure if any vendors bring out any more than just the path and section user channels that are part of the 1st STS-1 in an OC-n system. So how do you use the 64 kb/s channel? As far as I know, it is a balanced TX/RX connection only. No sync/lock signals. For terminals, the application is fairly straightforward, but what about add/drop terminals and rings? Does the signal get dropped/added and added/dropped at each box? In other words, for a route running east to west, is there a TX/RX for the east route, and a TX/RX for the west route. Of course, hubs make this even more demanding. I am most familiar with Lucent (AT&T) SONET gear, and they don't bring it to a physical connector at all. As for other vendors (if they provide user channel access), my hunch is that the TX from your RMU is broadcast to all the outgoing STS paths and the RX to your RMU is a bridged version of all the user channels from incoming STS paths. Scott Nelson Director of Sales ANTEC - Digital Systems Division 73773.2220@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:16:43 -0400 From: Antilles Engineering Subject: Dedicated Rates to the West Indies The only segment of the telecom industry that I have grown to loath is in dealings with aggregators and brokers. Many promises, much hype and very little delivery. We're an engineering firm that runs over 70,000 minutes a month on a T-1. Seventy percent of this traffic is to the West Indies (not including PR and USVI). The balance is equally divided on calls to Europe, US and Canada. Is there someone on the list who can provision us (or has direct contact with someone who can provision us) with dedicated (T-1) service using a reliable underlying carrier at highly competitive rates, particularly on the West Indies route? Please respond to us directly at our e-mail address. Best, Doug Terman Antilles Engineering, Ltd. PO Box 318 Warren, VT 05674 Tel: (802) 496-3812 Fax: (802) 496-3814 ------------------------------ From: William J. Halverson Subject: Re: Wireless Satellite Communication - A Challenge Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 08:06:51 -0700 Organization: Pacific Bell's Healthcare Market Group Mark Rivers wrote: > Marvin Demuth wrote: >> WHAT WE NEED: >> We need facilities, preferably involving satellite communication with >> voice, fax and email capabilities, at low cost. I have seen figures >> from $1.49 to $9.00 per minute on the Web for satellite service. We >> need something better than this. We need to be spending our funds on >SNIP< > It can be done now but it is not inexpensive! I suggest you check out what Iridium and Teledesyc [sic] have planned for LEOS systems. Iridium [Motorola initiated] is designed to provide voice comm, while Teledesyc [a Bill Gates venture] aims to provide mobile videoconferencing via satellites. Hughes also has a project called Spaceway that will use satellites to provide greater bandwidth at lower cost. Bill Halverson Pacific Bell PH 415 542 6564 wjhalv1@pacbell.com FAX 415 542 4744 PGP Key at http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Aug 96 14:12:18 PDT From: John G. Brouwer Subject: PBXs and Year 2000 Problems My question for all of your wise and knowledgeable readers/ participants is this: Will the "year 2000 issue" which is reported to be threatening so many mainframes, workstations and PCs also have an impact on PBXs or other telephone equipment ? For those who aren't familiar with the issue: simply put, it appears that the internal representation of date in many systems will cause them to crash or otherwise misbehave on or about the first of January, 2000. More details about the problem can be found on the web; there's a good collection of information at http://www.year2000.com John Brouwer Tel. +1 604 360 7128 Fax +1 604 356 0237 Fundamental Planning, Voice Communications ITSD, Ministry of Finance, BC jgbrouwe@bcsc02.gov.bc.ca ---------------------- TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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 TELECOM Digest V16 #410 ******************************