TELECOM Digest Mon, 24 Jan 94 19:29:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 42 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 'Superhighway' Onramp Intact (Knight-Ridder via Van Hefner) GDC Announces FastPro (tm): A New High Speed Modem For $675 (vfast@gdc.com) Telecom in Eastern Europe (Van Lany Gunther) Sprint and the Earthquake (Les Reeves) Sprint ATM Announcement (Les Reeves) Modems to Merlins (Cliff Sharp) Administrivia: Problems Here With New Computer (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 GEnie. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of Skokie, Illinois USA. We provide telecom consultation services and long distance resale services including calling cards and 800 numbers. To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email: ptownson@townson.com. ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at 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. TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. It has no connection with the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.tech whose mailing list "Telecom-Tech Digest" shares archives resources at lcs.mit.edu for the convenience of users. Please *DO NOT* cross post articles between the groups. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: vantek@aol.com Reply-To: vantek@aol.com Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 04:43:22 EST Subject: 'Superhighway' Onramp Intact Electronic Highway Replaces Long-Distance Calls During L.A. Earthquake By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, The Dallas Morning News Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News DALLAS--Jan. 18 Roads of mere concrete went down in rubble, but Southern California's section of the information superhighway mostly survived Monday's earthquake. People whose telephones were useless for long-distance voice calls were able to get the word out using Internet, Prodigy, America Online and other computer-linked systems. "This is the only link I have to civilization right now," messaged an America Online subscriber, identified on the network as SoCal27822, Monday afternoon. The long-range computer link-ups survived because they work differently than standard phone systems, said Carol Wallace, a spokeswoman for Prodigy. Most local phone service in the Los Angeles area was unaffected or quickly restored after the quake. But long-distance connections were blocked by a flood of calls and Pacific Bell's decision to hold lines open for emergency use only. The Prodigy switching stations in Los Angeles and the rest of the country are connected by different lines, Ms. Wallace said. Other subscription services circumvented the long-distance logjam the same way, like an express lane on the information highway. But not every electronic on- and off-ramp was open Monday, said Rusty Williams, general manager for Delphi, another on- line subscriber service. "There are places of the information highway that fall apart in an earthquake as well," he said. "There are schools out there that are down, that aren't on the network." But those failures didn't close down the rest of the network. People across the country exchanged news, rumors, offers of help and expressions of sympathy as the horrific pictures flashed on TV screens. Some of the messages were complaints. "The telephone company needs to get on the information highway and create an on-line emergency line for local callers to get out," said Craig D8478, participating in a live "newsroom" discussion that the 500,000 subscribers to the America Online service could join. The Prodigy service, a one million-subscriber joint venture of International Business Machines Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co., established a special bulletin board for people who wanted to talk about the quake. More than 4,000 messages hit the board in the first six hours. A special board for Tonight Show host Jay Leno attracted 4,000 calls last year, but that took two weeks, Ms. Wallace said. Monday's bulletin board served as a clearinghouse for questions about damage in Petaluma or possible connections to recent quakes in Pennsylvania. A Dallas subscriber identified as Marva Lanier, for instance, offered to make phone calls to Dallas and Fort Worth residents, if any California callers affected by the quake could get through to her box number by electronic mail. Such relay services sprung up in almost all parts of the country, ranging from Olympia, Wash., to Mobile, Ala. The relays even took to the air, with some subscribers to the land-line services taking messages to their ham radios and broadcasting information for worried relatives. With television showing pictures of flames and destruction, some California locals used the Prodigy bulletin board as a means of calming general fears. "I can assure you that even though it seems on TV that we have been flattened, there is relatively little damage to homes," messaged a Prodigy subscriber identified as James Morrissey of Anaheim. He was participating in an on-line discussion about damage in the Northridge area, at the quake's epicenter. "Our homes are designed to withstand an earthquake many times this severe," he wrote. "This evening you will be able to phone." The informal reporting of events had its hazards. Accounts of outages of electricity, gas or phone service frequently were secondhand. Most often, the accounts traced back to a similarly "unconfirmed" news account. In one exchange, a "concerned Ohioan" said he heard that 24 people had died. At the time, a headline in the regular news section of the Prodigy service said five people were confirmed dead. Yet the story itself said 10 were dead and noted that the Red Cross was denying a report that it had told NBC News that the toll was 25. But the lack of professionalism was a relief to some who had spent the day glued to TV screens or enduring the repeated aftershocks. A Burbank man known on America Online as Noisehead was among those who took to the network for comfort and perspective. "It is nice at this point," Martin Brumbach messaged, "to get some info not delivered by anchor people." Van Hefner Vantek Communications ------------------------------ From: vfast@gdc.com (V.Fast Information) Subject: GDC Announces FastPro (tm): A New High Speed Modem For $675 Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 11:07:48 -0500 What follows is a bulletin from General DataComm about our new FastPro (tm) modem. This is an optimized version of our flexible VF 28.8 product family that is targeted for the remote PC based user. For the name of your nearest distributor, please call 1-800-523-1737 or fax to FastPro (tm) Marketing, (203) 758-9129. For TECHNICAL or PRODUCT questions, you may either fax your queries to (203) 758-9129, or send e-mail to vfast@gdc.com. Please include a daytime phone number. Please mention that you heard about it in TELECOM Digest. General DataComm, Inc. 1579 Straits Tpke. , Middlebury, CT 06762-1299 INTERNET BULLETIN Contact: FastPro (tm) Marketing FAX: (203) 758-9129 GDC ANNOUNCES FASTPRO (tm): A NEW HIGH SPEED MODEM FOR $675 Middlebury, CT, January 19 -- General DataComm today announced their new FastPro (tm) high speed modems. Created for the demanding professional datacomm user, this stand-alone modem provides the user with very high speeds at a competitive price. "Performance is key to this market," says Dick Drake, GDC's Director of Analog Transmission Products, "and we have tested this one against much higher priced products and found we can, in some cases, double the throughput of our competitors." GDC will upgrade the modem, without charge, to the new ITU-T V.34 when that standard is ratified later this year. This upgrade will be done, in conjunction with GDC's Bulletin Board, with a call over the phone lines. This new line of modems was created to sell through reseller channels, where price is a major consideration. The suggested list price is $675.00. GDC will act as a stocking distributor for dealers and VARs to assure rapid delivery of orders. For those registering their FastPro (tm) modems with 30 days of purchase, the warranty will be extended to a two-year term. For those interested in more information on FastPro (tm), or the name of their nearest GDC distributor, please call 1-800-523-1737. General DataComm, Inc. is a leading provider of multimedia networks and telecommunications equipment worldwide. They are currently expanding their reseller channels. Based in Connecticut, GDC serves corporate customers and telephone operating companies throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia/New Zealand. ------------------------------ From: hw42344@vub.ac.be (VAN LANY GUNTHER) Subject: Telecom in Eastern Europe Date: 24 Jan 1994 15:38:08 GMT Organization: Brussels Free Universities (VUB/ULB), Belgium Hi, I am a student in communication research at the Brussels Free University (VUB). At the moment I am preparing a paper on the export activities of Western telecommunication firms towards Eastern Europe. If any of you has more information on this topic, would you please be so kind and mail it to me. Thanks in advance and regards from Brussels hw42344@is1.vub.ac.be (VAN LANY GUNTHER) Student Communicatiewetenschappen Vrije Universiteit Brussel ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 11:10:26 PST From: Les Reeves Subject: Sprint and the Earthquake SPRINT NETWORK FUNCTIONING NORMALLY AFTER L.A. QUAKE Sprint's all-digital, fiber-optic network withstood the early morning earthquake yesterday in the Los Angeles area with no serious damage. Generator power was required at about a dozen regenerator and point-of-presence sites along the Sprint network, but this did not affect service to customers. Sprint's four switches in the L.A. area were not affected. Working closely with local exchange carriers (LECs), employees in Sprint's Network Operations Control Center (NOCC) have so far blocked about three-quarters of a million calls going into the L.A. area. Sprint will adjust the call volumes going into the area during the next few days to accommodate the requests of the LECs, which are assessing the damage to their facilities. "Blocking the calls that go into a disaster area does two things," said Jerry Usry, director, Network Management. "First, it takes the pressure off the LEC's network so that more people in the area can call out to relatives and other loved ones. Secondly, it keeps the phone networks from malfunctioning due to call volume overload." AT&T operators are giving out Sprint's access number, 10333, to callers who are not able to get through on the AT&T network, according to Usry. "In some previous disasters, AT&T operators didn't provide callers with the codes of alternate carriers to try to get their calls through," Usry said. "As a result, AT&T received some negative criticism. During the aftermath of yesterday's earthquake, they are providing alternate access codes to callers who can't get through." Other situations that affected or posed a threat to ancillary portions of Sprint's network included: o Two central data offices of the SprintNet network were without power until generators were brought to the area. Few customers were affected by the outage because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and instructions for L.A. residents to stay at home. o A switch for LD/USA, Sprint's long distance carrier in the Hawaiian Islands that also manages the company's initiatives in the hospitality marketplace, lost power until a generator could arrive. o A train derailment between Van Nuys and Camarillo spilled a toxic substance, sulfuric acid, on the ground above a Sprint fiber cable. A Sprint fiber technician is on-site during clean-up, and it appears the cable, which is encased in conduit and concrete, will be safe. "Sprint's network survived exceptionally well because of the safeguards throughout the network," Usry said. "Also, the teamwork among the Regional Control Centers, the Network field personnel and the NOCC was superb." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 11:12:14 PST From: Les Reeves Subject: Sprint ATM Announcement Contacts: Evette Fulton, (O) 202-828-7411; (H) 301-230-0978 Norman Black, (O) 404-859-6096; (H) 404-578-0679 SPRINT ENHANCES ATM SERVICE WITH LOW-SPEED ACCESS AND INTERNETWORKING OPTIONS -- Provides Smooth Transition to Broadband Networking -- WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 1994 -- Sprint today announced a comprehensive package of enhancements to its Asynchronous Transfer Mode service aimed at simplifying and expanding customer access and furthering its position as the leading data networking solutions provider. ATM, a leading-edge broadband technology, is one of the key building blocks of the information highway. Sprint was the first long distance carrier to announce ATM service, in the third quarter 1993, and began offering service to its first customer in the fourth quarter. "With this announcement, Sprint is committing to provide more access options to our ATM network than any of our competitors," said Dom DeAngelo, vice president of Data Product Management. "This means customers can choose the access method that makes the most sense on a location-by-location basis." The enhancements include cost-effective lower-speed access to Sprint's ATM service and options to interwork with Sprint's frame relay service and its SprintLink(R) service, which provides access to the Internet. The enhancements also allow easy customer migration to ATM via lower-cost frame relay and T-1 (1.5 megabit per second) services at lower-volume traffic sites. The SprintLink to ATM Service Gateway will be available in the third quarter. The following enhancements will be available in the fourth quarter 1994: o T-1 ATM -- Provides cost-efficient ATM access for relatively low-volume (1.5 Mbps) users. It enables businesses to build Local Area- and Wide Area Networks on a common ATM networking platform, and allows efficient integration of data, video and voice on one transmission facility. o T-1 Circuit Emulation -- Allows customers with T-1 networking equipment to access Sprint's ATM service without any additional equipment purchases or upgrades. Using a traditional T-1 circuit, locations with existing T-1 private line equipment can internetwork with other locations that have converted to T-3 (45 Mbps) ATM access. This option, unique to Sprint, greatly benefits customers who want to protect their investment in private line applications and equipment. Customers requiring ATM's advanced capabilities for new applications can continue to operate their existing T-1 private line networks on ATM, migrating their existing applications to end-to-end ATM as slowly or as quickly as they want. o SprintLink to Sprint ATM Service Gateway -- Provides interworking between ATM and SprintLink services as an option of Sprint's commercial ATM service offering. This gateway, unique to Sprint, allows users of Sprint's ATM service to access Internet -- a group of 12,000 interconnected data networks in more than 80 countries serving government, academic and research organizations -- and will be available in the third quarter. o Multiple T-1 (NxT-1) Access -- Allows access to Sprint's ATM service via one to eight T-1 connections, providing a cost- effective alternative for customers with bandwidth requirements between T-1 and T-3 (between 1.5 and 45 Mbps). o Sprint Frame Relay to ATM Service Gateway -- Provides interworking between ATM and frame relay services on the same customized virtual network. Customers can invest in frame relay now and can easily migrate later to ATM as needed on a site-by-site basis, while maintaining full connectivity throughout their network. "Sprint's clear broadband strategy, which we announced a year and a half ago at the Telecommunications Association trade show and which includes cost-effective and easy migration paths from existing to future networks, is continuing to be critical to our customers," said DeAngelo. "These offerings are part of this comprehensive broadband strategy, which ties traditional technology to the most advanced networking solutions available." To provide many of these enhancements, Sprint will use the Wide-Area ATM Gateway multiplexer switch from Digital Link Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif. The Gateway provides low-speed access and internetworking options by efficient multiplexing of T-1 cell, frame and isochronous (circuit emulation) traffic as well as T-3 cell traffic onto high capacity T-3 and Sonet Optical Carrier level-3 and OC-12 circuits. It is designed for central office, point-of-presence, and campus environments. Sprint also will continue to provide customers with Digital Link's premises equipment, such as the 3202 ATM DSU and the new Premisway ATM multiplexer. "Pricing is obviously important to our customers so Sprint is incorporating these new access options into its current ATM pricing structure," DeAngelo said. "T-1 ATM and T-1 circuit emulation will be priced slightly higher than Sprint's Frame Relay T-1 service, while the Frame Relay and SprintLink gateway services will have a fixed monthly fee." Sprint also will be evaluating the Alcatel Data Networks 1100(TM) HSS(TM) ATM switch for access and interworking functions. The switch will be tested at Sprint's Burlingame, Calif., Advanced Technology Laboratories. Alcatel Data Networks is a joint venture of Alcatel and Sprint. Sprint's ATM service currently is available nationwide from more than 300 locations and supports both bursty data traffic and continuous steady traffic, such as voice and video. The service offers flexible pricing, with both usage-sensitive and flat-rate billing options. Hughes Aircraft, Minnesota Supercomputer Center, Inc. and the National Information Infrastructure Testbed (NIIT) are currently using Sprint's ATM Service. Sprint is a diversified international telecommunications company with more than $10 billion in annual revenues and the United States' only nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network. Its divisions provide global long distance voice, data and video products and services, local telephone services to more than 6 million subscriber lines in 19 states, and cellular operations that serve 42 metropolitan markets and more than 50 rural service areas. ------------------------------ From: clifto@indep1.uucp (Cliff Sharp) Date: Mon, Jan 24 1994 11:13:44 CST Subject: Modems to Merlins A friend is part owner of a small business using a Merlin Plus system. He wants to add a modem to his coterie of computer equipment (and I've been trying to get him to do it for the longest time!). However, for some reason he feels that a dedicated line is too expensive and wants to hook it into his Merlin system. Now, a little research turned up a general-purpose adapter that AT&T sells for just such use; it plugs into one of the telephones and provides a POTS look-alike that somehow can use any line. Problems with this setup (read "questions for the group"): 1. The primary reason I want the modem there is so that I can call their machine and use some sort of remote-access software to figure out what they're doing to their poor machine when they break it. The Merlin "solution" sounds to me as though I would never be able to get to their modem (or that the modem would answer any call that came in, not just mine). Yes? No? 2. For some incredibly silly reason I can't talk them out of, they demand that the first line(s) of their hunt group remain open at all times possible and unused by outbound calls. (Explaining hunting to them is very like teaching the proverbial pig to sing.) From what I understand, the adapter either seizes the first open line or has to be manually routed. How does it really work? 3. This whole thing sounds as though they're going to have to plug the adapter into a phone and route RJ-11 cable all over the office. Friend likes the idea now, but he's gonna change his mind when he sees it. Is there any other way to do it so we can run 4-pair to the modem location? ANY ideas are welcome, including how to explain to a wall that a dedicated line is his best solution. Cliff Sharp clifto@indep1.chi.il.us WA9PDM ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 16:36:39 CST From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Administrivia: Problems Here With New Computer First off, I apologize for the lapse of several days since we last got together in this electronic space ... a combination of several things went wrong all at the same time. For a couple days last week, some urgent problems here kept me away and unavailable. I sat down Saturday morning to catch up on the backlog of mail only to be reminded that our site (delta.eecs.nwu.edu) was offline all day for replacement with a new machine. That change got accomplished by about 8 PM Saturday, however I had a few scripts here which no longer worked! Sunday and part of today was spent getting my act together once again. Now I am back on line; let's see how things go during the week ahead. The backlog of mail is unbelievable. I'll run what I can however if you please, let's close out all the old threads which were pending and start over again. Thanks. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #42 *****************************