Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #9
From: [email-masked] (Patrick A. Townson)
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 09:43:02 -0500 (EST)

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 9 Jan 96 09:42:30 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 9

Inside This Issue:                        Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Using the Telecom Archives (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    Receiving the Digest via Email (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    Who are ACG and Tel America, Inc? (Bill Price)
    800 Number Abuse Question Answered (Allen Kass)
    Re: 800 Number Abuse Question (Clarence Dold)
    Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet (Ross E. Mitchell)
    Fridays are Free With Sprint (Les Reeves)
    Inter@ctive Week Article About FCC "ISP Tax" (Kevin Mitchell)
    Forbidden Cellular NXXs (Tony Harminc)
    Computer Telephony Expo 96 ([email-masked])

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not
exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere
there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * [email-masked] *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: [email-masked]

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
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* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 20:47:36 EST
From: [email-masked] (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: Using the Telecom Archives

I have received various complaints from people who say getting into
the Telecom Archives is quite difficult ... and I agree that it is.
We have experimented with the number of simultaneous connections to
be allowed with various results.

Like everything else about the net these days, it seems traffic to
various ftp/web sites has increased tremendously. Originally (meaning
when the archives was moved onto this dedicated machine a few months
ago) it was set for 25-30 simultaneous connections. This resulted in
constant 'busy signals' with users almost constantly being refused
connection. The allowable number of connections was moved up to 50
and that alleviated the traffic jam for just a short while but it
soon picked up again, so the allowable limit was set at 75.

That 75 ftp users at a time limit soon maxed out and again got us
to the point of constant busy signals or connection refused to
additional users. We would have none the less left it at 75 but
that resulted in constant disk activity and a massive degradation
in other system performance. It was *s l o w* attempting to do any
work at all on this machine with that many users constantly on ftp.

Now we are back at 35 users allowed at any one time which provides
a compromise I can live with -- I think -- between users wanting
files and my ability to work here also. During the past two weeks
the system crashed several times. It got so backlogged in stuff 
and wrapped up in what it was doing that it just completely shut
down. There were times that 'uptime' was reporting loads of more
than 40. I did not misplace the decimal ... I mean forty. One night
just before a crash the load was in excess of one hundred. Right 
now as I write this, despite the fact that I am the only 'user'
on the workstation, the various ftp connections have the load at
1.55 which still slows me down a lot, but I can live with it. 

There are also people who for whatever reason establish an ftp
connection here and then just sit there all day doing little or
nothing. Or maybe they are getting the same stalled and sluggish
reactions that I am which causes their sessions to go on and on
without ever coming to an end. It is hard for me to believe there
are that many people demanding so much stuff from the archives,
but apparently they are. So in addition to limiting the connections
now to 35, a cron job comes along at five in the morning and 
automatically dumps off all ftp users, so we can start out fresh
each day.

What you can do:

If you get a 'connection refused' message, just keep trying over
and over. Bang at it repeatedly until you jump in on a vacant
connection. Do not put it aside and come back in an hour; you will
get the same all-busy results -- it is almost guaranteed. If it
is possible for you to do your ftp connections in the early morning
hours, I recommend that. It seems to be least busy in the hours of
5-8 AM Eastern time, probably because the cron job just finished
doing a housecleaning. If you can't be up and around at that hour,
try running a cron job of your own. You should all have copies of
the archives directory which are reasonably up to date.

The other thing you can do is make use of the Telecom Archives Email
Information Service. This is not just for people without ftp ability;
it is for anyone who wants to use it. You can retrieve any number of
files as quick as it takes for email to get here, be processed by
the TAEIS script and returned to you by email; many times in just
seconds, or a minute or two. Every new user who is added to the 
mailing list gets a copy of the TAEIS help file, and if you don't have
one you only need to ask. 

I do not have any other solution at the present time, but I did want
to let everyone know I am aware of the massive logjams that have
been occurring when attempting to ftp here. 

PAT

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 21:22:41 EST
From: [email-masked] (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: Receiving the Digest via Email

Now let me address another problem which has been a thorn in my side
for awhile ... the number of complaints which have been coming in from
people saying the Digest has not been arriving in a timely way. Some
have written to say they have not received it at all for several
days at a time. You *should be* getting ten to fifteen issues of the
Digest every week. Typically in mid-week, two or three issues in one
day is not uncommon as output here. When I have investigated the
delivery complaints, time and again I find a mailer daemon for the
user in question saying that 'connection refused by xx' or 'service
unavailable at xx'. In other words, your site for some reason is
saying to my site that you cannot accept the mail at that time, and
for whatever reason, everytime this site calls on yours, you are
refusing the mail.  Another problem is the mailers (yours and or
mine) will hang, and eventually time out. If you are not getting
the Digest in a regular way as mentioned above (do NOT write two
weeks after the fact and ask me if I have published any issues in
the past two weeks ... the answer is yes, at least 20-30 issues)
then please ask your sysadmin to see if his logs indicate for some
reason the mail was bounced. That is not to say there are not possible
problems here -- I beleive there are -- but they seem to be very
pervasive at times. 

The other thing is, I honestly do not know what to do when a mailing
list becomes as large as this one has. The people near the bottom of
a list alphabetically sorted by site name (for maximum speed and
effeciency in running sendmail) are always going to be hours away
from delivery, and the amount of time required for delivery increases
daily as new names are added and sorted into the list. I am typically
seeing a net increase of ten new subscribers per day; that is, the
number of 'adds' to the list minus the number of 'deletes' removed
off the list. At any given time of the day or night here, 24 hours
per day, there is always one or more invocations of sendmail running
doing delivery of the Digest. Anytime I examine the mailq, I find
one or two thousand names there waiting for sendmail to make delivery
on. Then maybe sendmail gets cranky and shuts down completely for
several minutes to an hour; maybe there is network congestion at
other points which cause it to hang or other problems such as the
entire system crashing due to the excessive demands on ftp. 

I have tried breaking the list into smaller pieces and running three
or four invocations of sendmail at one time, but that only adds to
the overall sluggishness of the machine as sendmail sits there 
fighting with the ftp users over who is going to get the next machine
cycle.  :(   So if your site name begins with an 'x' or 'y' or 'z'
I am sorry that this message may not reach you for eighteen hours
after it was written. Those of you who know something of how mailing
lists operate know that all the names on the list are inserted into
the 'bcc:' so that recipients don't have to sit through screen after
screen of subscriber names in the envelope before the actual text
starts flowing. Ihave sat here and watched the mailer take upwards
of 15-20 minutes just to merely load the 'bcc:' before it started
the actual distribution. 

Like Northwestern, MIT is very generous with me on resources. I can
invoke sendmail day and night in massive quantities for all they care
and entertain as many ftp connections as possible. But there are
technical limits to things, and right now I just do not know where to
turn next at resolving some of the lengthy delays many of you are
experiencing. I am in this for the long term as most of you know;
and perhaps we are just going to have to wait it out until a few
million of the newcomers in recent months get tired and/or bored
and unplug their computers for good, if they ever do.

Someone suggested perhaps a mirror site could be found for the
archives to relieve a little of the crunch here, and if anyone
wants to do that, let me know. In the meantime, if you write to
me about long delays on ftp and long delays on receiving my email,
be assured I am seeing all those letters even if I do not write back
in response ... mainly because I have no solution at present, and
nothing to really say in response other than I am sorry and fully
aware of how things are going. 

PAT

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Date: 08 JAN 96 18:10:00 GMT   
Subject: Who are ACG and Tel America, Inc?

A friend of my wife has appoached us to sign on with Tel America, Inc.
T/A's literature identifies themselves as having some association with
ACG, whoever they are.  They deny that they are a multi-level marketing 
operation, but all I've seen in their literature just screams "multi-
level" and "scam" to me.

They peddle prepaid cards, pagers and paging services, and a business-phone
service with 800 numbers through MCI.  The business rates seem to be in
the $.15/minute range; the card rates seem to be $.33/minute.  The cards
seem to be bundled with down-line salesman slots:  pay $100, get one card
and a license to sign up two people; for $300, you get three cards and
four licenses; $700, seven cards and eight licenses.  They also mention a
Voice Mail offering.

All that I have said above comes from a brief encounter with some random-
looking marketing literature.  The literature extols the virtues of their
marketing plan, with only scant mention of products and services:  this
is typical of a scam, though not definitive.  They do mention an "LNX 2000"
switch as their major asset.

T/A gives an address in Oakland, CA.  Can anyone report on Tel America and
ACG?  What's the LNX 2000, and what's it good for?

Bill Price
"To DO the impossible, you must first THINK the unthinkable."
                                   (courtesy Ian Farbrother)

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 15:02:35 -0500
From: Allen Kass <[email-masked]>
Subject: 800 Number Abuse Question Answered

Pat,

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your interest and
information about a question that I submitted a week or so back about
800 number abuse. I have really gotten an education in the past few
days. Both from yourself, several other readers that have replied and
from AT&T and Cable & Wireless. Fortunately, we did find out the
"source" of this recent problem. Would you believe that one of our
weekend part-timer news department operators was convinced that she
should transfer an incoming 800 call to another outside line. The
caller posed as another radio station needing a "special feed" and
then instructed the operator to transfer his call to a 900 number not
once but our SMDR indicates at least 15 separate time using at least
four different sets in the news department. The 800 number appears on
all the sets in the news department.

We have changed all passwords and remote access codes and we have also
limited what states (area codes) can call into this 800 number. We
have also checked the progamming on all public access phones in the
building and removed several features and added restriction to help
prevent this from happening again. We have also put out a memo to the
entire staff explaining that they are not to transfer any calls
outside the building for any reason without the permission of their
department head. These people have been explained the problem in great
detail so that they can instruct the staffs.  Again thanks for all the
help and information.  

Regards,

Allen Kass, Chief Engineer   WRVQ Radio Q94  Richmond, VA.
Voice: 804-756-6481          Fax: 804-755-6077
Email: [email-masked] 
Home page: http://www.infi.net/~allenk/index.html

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome Allen. That is
the purpose of my being here day after day; to help educate people
on the topic of 'The Telephone Company' and all its manifestations.
Stick around and learn some more. All of us, including myself, share
through the collected wisdom of the group.   PAT]

------------------------------

From: Clarence Dold <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: 800 Number Abuse Question
Date: 8 Jan 1996 18:08:54 GMT
Organization: a2i network

TELECOM Digest Editor noted:

> that this exists on their PBX; they were never told about it when
> the PBX was installed, or if they were, they never were told how to

Every PBX or voicemail system that we install has this ability turned
off.  It is irresponsible for a vendor to do anything else.  If there
are digital announcers on the system, we turn the ability off there as
well.  Some systems have maintenance features that answer the phone
after 15 rings, for maintenance access at night.  These are password
protected, or they are on lines that only rnig under special
configurations that we have the customer enable the night we need to
get in.

Again, it is irresponsible to expose your customers to such a gaping
security hole.  I know it happens, but I think there is some
culpability on the part of the installing company.  In our case, we
handle the long distance traffic for most of our hardware customers,
so I suspect that they would refuse to pay us, if an exposure was our
fault.

Clarence A Dold - [email-masked]
                - Pope Valley & Napa CA.

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Ross E Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Compuserve Censors Usenet
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 18:41:45 GMT

I think it's important to point out, for the record, that I agree that 
Compuserve has the right to decide what to carry and what not to carry.  
My argument was only with PAT's requirement for restricting the meaning 
of the term "censorship" to government-imposed censorship.

My own view is that Compuserve's censoring of newsgroups is perfectly 
appropriate; as a private company it is under no obligation to provide a 
forum for all points of view.  People who disagree are always free to 
leave the service, as PAT points out.

It is interesting to note that when a company does edit material, it
leaves itself open to charges of libel when it permits libelous
material to remain on its service.  This recently happened to Prodigy.
The court ruled that since Prodigy had taken on the responsibility of
deleting objectionable material, it had also taken on the
responsibility of ensuring that what remained did not libel others.
This responsibility, as I recall, would not have applied had Prodigy
exercised no editorial control, much as the phone companies are not
responsible for crimes committed through the use of their services.
In the case of Compuserve, I wonder if this rationale could be
extended to cover material contained in newsgroups it chooses to
continue to carry.  Personally, I think they're safe there.

Ross Mitchell

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Les Reeves)
Subject: Fridays are Free With Sprint
Date: 8 Jan 1996 12:25:54 -0800
Organization: CR Labs

Fridays are FREE

Sprint has gone nuts.  Their beancounters have consumed too much
champagne.

They are offering a limited time (through 2-27-96) offer that may be
just the ticket for you TD readers who lust for the days of free toll
calls.  The offer is available for all customers (residence or
business) who call 800.347.3300

You sign up for Sprint Business Sense, which gives a flat rate of
$0.16 / minute.  This is a good rate during the day.  It is a bit high
after 5:00 pm, and many carriers will give you < $0.16 / minute with
no strings attached.

But wait, there's more.

FRIDAYS ARE FREE !!

No kidding.  Free to anywhere.

Anywhere means International anywhere.

So, you get a $50 per month minimum bill from Sprint.  They limit you
to $1000 in *FREE* Friday calling per month.

Let's give those beancounters a headache.  Sign up now.

Les     [email-masked]       Atlanta,GA      404.874.7806  --

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Les and I discussed this at length on
the phone a couple days ago. According to Sprint's literature, they
will give you a year of free calls on Friday up to a thousand dollars
per month. That works out to $12,000 in calls for $600 (50*12) in
charges. The best part is, the $50 minimum per month can be taken
out of the free calls on Friday. I am not sure if you have to default
one of your lines to them or not. I don't think you do, and as Les
points out, both business and residence phones are eligible. So if
you like the idea of getting a bill once a month for $50 from Sprint
while holding as many of your LD calls as possible for Friday where
you have 24 hours once a week for a year to jam them all in, then
you should sign up.

Indeed, I think Sprint has gone nuts. Is this promotion going to
turn out to be another fiasco for them like their 'free fax modem'
offer?  I would say $11,400 in free calls over a year's time is
going to be just that, especially if multiplied by many thousands
of new customers. I imagine they are betting that no one user can
wrack up a thousand dollars in calls in a month's time on Friday
alone. I think if we held over all those hours-long international
calls each week and always made them on Friday we could. What would
really be the pits for Sprint would be if we used them for nothing
at all but Friday free calls, took that thousand in calls each
month and cheerfully sent them their required check for $50 in
payment. The bottom line is ($12,000 minus $600) = $11,400. I guess
Sprint thinks they are going to win on this; that you will be so
enamored of their service that you will make calls via their
network the other six days of the week as well ...  

Sign up today: 800-347-3300. Sound enthusiastic, don't ask too many
questions or make too many smart comments. Just sign up ... then show
them what 'totally free calling' on Friday's is all about for the
next year.  PAT] 

------------------------------

Subject: Inter@ctive week article about FCC  "ISP Tax"
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 16:24:11 CST
From: Kevin Mitchell <[email-masked]>

Pat,

I found the Inter@ctive week article about the "ISP Tax". The URL is:

http://www.zdnet.com/~intweek/print/951218/upfront/doc11.html

IMHO, the FCC is up to its usual misunderstanding of what's going on.
I don't think that Internet phone service is going to displace real
long distance use ... nobody has a terminal hooked up 24 hours a day
waiting for a call. It's a novelty. For a long time, most long distance
calls will be carried on regular old telephone sets.

If the long distance companies are in such danger, and if the true
cost of transmitting the spoken voice is really so low, then they should
face the competition. Adapt or die. When we read that the FCC must "address
the real potential economic impact" on the Bells, we're talking 
corporate welfare. Which, loosely translated, means that the government
takes _your_ money without your consent and gives it to a _profitable_
corporation to allow that corporation to continue to exist where
it otherwise might have to adapt to the new reality. Without harming
that corporation's precious stock prices.

Of course, if all the ISPs go out of business due to this tax, nobody 
cares. Except, perhaps, the local telco who wants to sell you the same
service, priced by the byte. Oh yeah, and the price will be orders of
magnitude more than the real costs.

Not to mention that the application of this tax is discriminatory.
ISPs and their users pay all the appropriate fees under the tariffs.
An additional tax burdens the _other_ users of the Internet as much or more
than it burdens the IPhone users. Corbitt is so worried about nonmodem
phone users, but what about non-IPhone Internet users?

And if my ISP leases a T1 from the telco and I make a call with a modem,
who _cares_ what kind of information goes across it? All the applicable
fees are paid. 

I'm hoping that the Netizens will rise up as they usually do and let their
representatives and the FCC know that they oppose this kind of haphazard,
discriminatory, and counterproductive regulation. 

Kevin A. Mitchell, developer of GIFConverter for the Macintosh
Personal: [email-masked] http://www.mcs.net/~kam/home.html 
GIFConverter: [email-masked] or [email-masked]
              http://www.kamit.com/gifconverter.html

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 09 Jan 96 03:39:15 EST
From: Tony Harminc <[email-masked]>
Subject: Forbidden Cellular NXXs

Some months ago, in reply to a slightly different topic, I mentioned
that there are certain CO prefixes that cannot reliably be used as
AMPS cellular NXXs.  I just came across the list, and since several
people had asked me to post it, here it is.  The problem in brief is
that the FOrward Control Channel (FOCC) data stream begins with an 11
bit "word sync" sequence 11100010010.  This sequence is followed by 40
bit words, which encode all sorts of control and addressing
information from the central station to the mobiles.  It is possible
for certain data, when encoded into the 40 bit words, to cause the
word sync pattern to appear in the data, and thus possibly confuse a
mobile attempting to synchronize on the data stream.  Normally this is
not a serious problem, since the mobile will quickly realize that it
isn't sync'd, and will try again.  But if many repeats of the false
word sync sequence occur in the data, mobiles will have trouble
reliably synching.

One way that many repeats could occur is if a certain NXX code used
for many mobiles in the area, when encoded in 40 bit format, and combined
with other possible control information in the words, contains the
word sync sequence.  Since many phones with that NXX are likely to
be paged if this is their home area, the sequence could be sent out
very frequently.

I have listed only the NXX and where relevent the thousands digit that
cause problems, and not the detailed bit patterns that result.  Many
of these NXXs are invalid in the North American phone system, but are
included for completeness.

NXX    Thousands digit            NXX    Thousands digit

175    0 to 9                     595    8, 9, 0
176    0 to 9                     851    8, 9, 0
177    0 to 9                     007    8, 9, 0
178    0 to 9                     150    2
179    0 to 9                     224    2
170    0 to 9                     288    2
181    0 to 9                     352    2
182    0 to 9                     416    2
663    0 to 9                     470    2
664    0 to 9                     544    2
665    0 to 9                     508    2
666    0 to 9                     672    2
899    0 to 9                     736    2
800    0 to 9                     790    2
909    0 to 9                     864    2
568    1 to 7                     928    2
070    1 to 7                     992    2
339    8, 9, 0                    056    2

In summary: usable prefixes 663, 664, 665, 666, 899, 800, and 909 are
dangerous with any nnnn suffix, while certain others are OK with some
suffixes and dangerous with others.  I imagine cellular operators will
simply avoid all of them.  Note that the devil will never have an AMPS
cellphone ...

This information is from document RSS 118 (Annex A) "Cellular System
Mobile Station - Land Station Compatibility Standard", dated Oct. 22, 1983,
published by the DOC in Ottawa.  Although it's an old document, I'd be
very surprised if this restriction has changed, since the data formats
are so fundamental to cellular operation.

Tony Harminc

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Palent9999)
Subject: Computer Telephony Expo 96
Date: 8 Jan 1996 15:28:36 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Palent9999)

Come to the BIGGEST Computer Telephony Show in the world!

---- 98 hours of seminars
---- 36 hours of Killer App Theaters
---- 263 speakers
---- 341+ exhibitors

plus wonder demos from Harry Newton's secret vault ...

OVER 70,000 DOLLARS WORTH OF DOOR PRIZES, INCLUDING A BRAND NEW
NISSAN 200SX!!!

Why another show?

Computer telephony is hot, brimming with opportunities for users,
resellers, system integrators and entrepreneurs.  CT Expo 96 is the
fastest-growing computer show in North America.  In 1991, we had 67
exhibitors.  In 1996, we have over 360. In 1996, we have twice 1995's
booth area -- the equivalent of 1070 10' X 10' booths.

CT Expo 96 is the only computer show you'll find booths from telecom
vendors -- Ameritech, AT&T, Comdial, Fujitsu, Harris Digital, NEC,
Northern Telecom, Mitel, Pacific Bell, Rockwell, Toshiba, and
Siemens/Rolm.

CT Expo 96 is the only telecom show you'll find booths from computer
companies -- Apple, Artisoft, Cirrus Logic, Delrina, Force, HP, IBM,
Intel, Lotus, Microsoft, Novell, QNX, SCO, Sun, Unisys, and Xircom.

CT Expo 96 is the only show you'll find computer telephony companies
 -- Active Voice, Amtelco, Apex, Bicom, Brooktrout, Dialogic, Diamond,
Excel, Mitel, Natural MicroSystems, Parity, Octel, Rhetorex, Stylus,
Talx, TRT, and Wildfire.

CT Expo 96 is your only chance in 1996 to see this exploding new
industry, to hear and to meet with all the industry's experts -- all
under one roof. This is a rare opportunity. I urge you to come Visit
our web site to fill out a free exhibit hall registration form.

For more information, check out         www.ctexpo.com
 				                or
                                        1-800-999-0345

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #9
****************************