TELECOM Digest Thu, 27 Jan 94 10:45:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 46 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State (Matt Fisher) Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State (Greg Trotter) Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State (Hiro Sugawara) Cutover Dates For New Area Codes (David Esan) Re: Internet ISDN Connection (Tarl Neustaedter) Re: Internet ISDN Connection (Patrick Installe) Re: Internet ISDN Connection (Patrick Wong) Re: SW-56 and ISDN Questions (Chris Labatt-Simon) Re: SW-56 and ISDN Questions (Al Varney) Re: How Does Inmarsat Work? (Pat O'Neil) Re: How Does Inmarsat Work? (Thomas Chen) Re: Truckstop Calling Cards (Matthew B. Landry) Re: Truckstop Calling Cards (Ray Normandeau) Re: Looks Like a Hacker (T. D'Amico) Re: Earthquake and 818 AC (Robert McMillin) 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: mfisher@u.washington.edu (Matt Fisher) Subject: Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State Date: 26 Jan 1994 20:00:25 GMT Organization: University of Washington Reply-To: mfisher@u.washington.edu 0003991080@mcimail.com writes: > So far I have seen nothing about this in the local media, so maybe you > heard it here first. They was a short blurb about it on the from page of the {Seattle Times} on Jan 15. It was not much more informative than your message. These are the boundaries it gave: {Seattle Times}, Associated Press "206 Code to be split" "...Under the new plan, the 206 area will extend from Everett to Fort Lewis. Marysville will be in the 360 code area as will Lacey, Yelm and Olympia. To the west, the 206 boundary will be the Pierce County line up Case Inlet and a small part of southeast Kitsap County. All the rest of Kitsap County will be in 360 except for Bainbridge Island. On the east, Sumner in Pierce County will be 206, but Buckley will be in 360. The eastern King County boundary is still under discussion, but Issaquah and Duvall will remain in 206. Most of Snohomish County will be in 360." Matt Fisher -=- (206)545-2900 374 McCarty Hall, GR-10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. ------------------------------ From: greg@gallifrey.ucs.uoknor.edu (Greg Trotter) Subject: Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State Date: 26 Jan 1994 20:34:40 GMT Organization: Home of the TimeLords... In article 0003991080@mcimail.com writes: > I got a notice from Bellcore confirming the rumored split of area code > 206 in Washington State. The new NPA is 360, and will cover all of > the area that is currently within 206, but outside of the Seattle/Tacoma > area. > The split happens on 1/15/95, with permissive dialing until 7/9/95. This is interesting. I live in an NPA (405) that uses 1 + 7D for calls within the NPA. I've not heard any announcement on changing this here. I suppose they'll announce something, if I'm ever to hear from my non-local intra-LATA friends again, as my NNX is 360. Greg Trotter Norman, Oklahoma ------------------------------ From: hiro@lynx.com (Hiro Sugawara) Subject: Re: New Area Code 360 in Washington State Organization: Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc., Los Gatos, CA Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 00:36:39 GMT In article 0003991080@mcimail.com writes: > I got a notice from Bellcore confirming the rumored split of area code > 206 in Washington State. The new NPA is 360, and will cover all of > the area that is currently within 206, but outside of the Seattle/Tacoma > area. (truncated) Just curious. I heard that all area codes have either 0 or 1 as the second digit and so do all special numbers such as 911 and 411. Is "360" possible? hiro@lynx.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the past, what you said was correct. The supply of combinations in the form you suggest is now exhausted and area codes now being issued look like almost any other three digit number. Telcos did a lot of things in the past they no longer can afford the luxury of doing such as never assigning the same prefix in two adjacent area codes. They cut that out about fifteen years ago. Until about thirty years ago, the three digit prefixes were letters of the alphabet rather than numbers and those letters were the first three letters of words. As the usable supply of those became in short supply exchange names were ditched in lieu of using all numbers. Time marches on. Who knows what our phone numbers will look like a decade from now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: de@moscom.com (David Esan) Subject: Cutover Dates For New Area Codes Date: 26 Jan 94 13:14:32 GMT Organization: Moscom Corporation, Pittsford NY I am aware that there are at present three new area codes scheduled for 1995: 334 in Alabama, 260 in Arizona, and 360 in Washington. I have the cutover dates for 334 (1/8/95) and for 206 (1/15/95), and the end of permissive calling for 360 (7/9/95). However, I am missing the end of permissive calling for 334 and 260, as well as the initial use date of 260. I also somehow missed the article that describe the Arizona split and where it is going to take place. Any help would be appreciated. David Esan de@moscom.com ------------------------------ From: tarl@coyoacan.dmc.com Subject: Re: Internet ISDN Connection Date: 26 Jan 1994 02:15:02 GMT Organization: Consultsrios Telefsnicos, S.A. de C.V. In article , OSSANDON@delphi.com writes: > Does anyone know how an ISDN user (56K/64K) can access Internet? PSI offers a service they call LAN-ISDN at $350/month. Send email to lan-isdn-info@psi.com for full details. Tarl Neustaedter tarl@bostech.com [work] Ashland, MA, USA tarl@coyoacan.dmc.com [home] Disclaimer: My employer is not responsible for my opinions ------------------------------ From: pinstall@rc1.vub.ac.be (Installe P.) Subject: Re: Internet ISDN Connection Date: 26 Jan 1994 14:12:23 GMT Organization: Brussels Free Universities (VUB/ULB), Belgium OSSANDON@delphi.com wrote: > Does anyone know how an ISDN user (56K/64K) can access Internet? Since > 9.6 rates are still considered fast for single user is it too soon to > consider ISDN connections? I try now to test such a solution. At the first level you have to know what the single user has as for computer. Trivial but crucial. The least common denominator is that both parties have a terminal adapter (TA) that acts as a modem. Quick, fast and simple, but expensive. If you need IP (for ftp, X, ...) it is more complicated. Like for modems, the TA supports the passage of slip or ppp protocols, but both computers should support that protocol. And that is the start of the problems. Unix boxes are generally able to support these protocols. PC, Mac, Atari, Amiga, ... don't directly, but some of the networks of them support IP. So the level of interaction is much like a router between networks. Another level is the fact that there are "cheap" PC cards on the market which appear now (in Europe, at least...). There are fossil, packet driver, ndis, odi drivers for some of them, I investigate those now but it is still quite tricky for me. I am also interested to hear other opinions/solutions. Patrick Installe ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 00:07:56 GMT From: Patrick Wong Subject: Re: Internet ISDN Connection > Does anyone know how an ISDN user (56K/64K) can access Internet? Since > 9.6 rates are still considered fast for single user is it too soon to > consider ISDN connections? Hello I am Patrick Wong the Product Manager at Combinet. Combinet offers and Single-User ISDN BRI-to-Ethernet bridge for list $990, a Workgroup ISDN BRI-to-Ethernet bridge for list $2190 and a Switched 56-to-Ethernet bridge for list $2490. The single-user bridge is intented for work-at-home applications where there is a single computer connected to the bridge on the Ethernet. The workgroup bridge is used for connecting remote LANs. Combinet products are MAC-layer bridges that work with all protocols including TCP/IP. Contact your phone company to see if ISDN is available in your area. Switched 56 is another service that is available in more areas than ISDN. Combinet Switched 56 product is compatible with ISDN products. Let me know if you are interested in product literature or if you have any questions. I can mail you literature if you provide me with your mailing address. Patrick Wong 408-522-9180 pwong@combinet.com ------------------------------ From: pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) Subject: Re: SW-56 and ISDN Questions Date: 26 Jan 1994 22:31:32 GMT Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, USA cherkus@fastball.unimaster.com (Dave Cherkus) writes: > You can get this info on-line from the Combinet BBS: > By popular demand, the Combinet "BBS" providing information on ISDN > availability in many areas of the US is now available via the > Internet. The information is supplied by Bell Communications Research > and various Operating Companies and is updated periodically as new > information becomes available. It's interesting. The Combinet BBS has info about Albany, NY, which does not have ISDN capabilities yet (after calling them, and talking to four different people, they said BRI will be available in '95). It does not, however, have information on Troy, NY (10 minutes from Albany), which does have both BRI and PRI service available. Chris Labatt-Simon Internet: pribik@rpi.edu Design & Disaster Recovery Consulting CIS: 73542,2601 Albany, New York PHONE: (518) 495-5474 FAX: (518) 786-6539 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 94 22:14:32 CST From: varney@ihlpe.att.com Subject: Re: SW-56 and ISDN Questions Organization: AT&T In article Susan Sirmai <0003188677@ mcimail.com> writes: A very nice summary of SW-56 and ISDN data service from/to the USA. I'll try to add a little more "data".... >> 1. Which countries/provinces have SW-56 service and are ISDN capable? > Today over 20 countries around the world currently have some level of > ISDN service. > MCI International 64 Service currently provides switched digital > connectivity to Canada and most of the European and Pacific Carriers > capable of providing the service today. Current MCI Tariffed Countries > include: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, > Ireland, Italy, Japan (IDC, ITJ, KDD), New Zealand, Netherlands, > Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom. > Additional countries are planned for 1994. AT&T Switched Digital International (SDI) (1-800-841-4135, I believe) has had SW-56/ISDN-56K data available to most of the above, as well as Jamaica, Bermuda, Spain, Germany and Hong Kong since 1992. ISDN-64K data service is or will be available to these countries in 1993-1994, as well as to the Philippines, Malaysia, Luxembourg and Rep. of Korea. [This is year-old information -- the SDI folks have more up-to-date information.] >> 2. Here in the US what cities have been converted to ISDN, and who are >> still operating at SW-56? > Availability depends on the local exchange carrier. Also, whether the CO has SS7 connectivity can influence whether or not 64K data rates can be handled. So you need to contact your IXC/INC (international carrier) for that information. I believe AT&T ACCUNET support on 1-800-222-SW56 has such information. >> 3. If you know, who are their carriers? > Service is provided locally by the US Local Exchange Carriers and > interexchange and internationally by the interexchange carriers > offering the service. The carriers in-country overseas are the PTTs > or ITOs who provide local and/or international service. Thanks again for the well-written summary. I think the point here is that lots of countries, several IXCs and many LECs offer ISDN or at least SW-56 connectivity. Your PTT, IXC or LEC should at least be able to get you some initial information on how to contact the other parts needed for the connection. ISDN isn't just for islands anymore. :) Al Varney AT&T, but not Marketing -- and just my opinion ------------------------------ From: oneil@sdesys1.hns.com (Pat O'Neil) Subject: Re: How Does Inmarsat Work? Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 19:15:48 GMT Organization: Hughes Network Systems Inc. In article , koos@kzdoos.hacktic.nl (Koos van den Hout) writes: > While making some remarks about Inmarsat, I suddenly realized myself > one thing: > So, is there anybody out there who can tell me? I'd like to know if > it's digital or analog, how base stations are verified, how the > satelite 'rings' the base station and stuff like that. I know a remember a bit about it, having worked on it about 12 years ago. The Standard A service has analog scpc voice and 50b/s telex, which is carried tdm shore-to-ship and tdma ship-to-shore. Each ocean region has an NCS which coordinates use of the satellite channels. There are one or more shore stations in each ocean region. The shore station ties the network into the public phone and telex systems of the country it resides in. Voice call setups, as far as I can recall, are done out of band. There are one or more special signalling channels that are used to initiate calls from ships. I seem to recall that access to these channels is aloha. If I'm not mistaken, the satellite receives C-band from the shore stations, and relays to ships on L-band. It receives on L-band from ships and relays to shore stations on C-band. The ship terminal has a parabolic dish antenna about two feet in diameter. There is a servo to keep it aimed at the satellite. Price of a ship terminal was around $50K ten years ago. Don't know what it is now There is another service offered by Inmarsat -- Standard C. It is data only at 600b/s. Don't know if it's 5 or 7 bit. I believe the ship-side interface here is also L-band. The antenna is an omnidirectional plate about 6 inches in diameter. I don't think it's a spread spectrum system, but there is lots of DSP because the power is low and the antenna has very little gain. > I'm also curious about the security of the whole system (both the > 'listening in to calls' security and the 'making calls at the expense > of another user' part). No security. No encryption. Everything in the open. The ship ID is burned in a ROM in the terminal. You might be able to fake it out. But if you use a true ship ID (which you'd have to) and that ship is in your ocean, the call setup might get tangled up. Pat O'Neil Hughes Network Systems Germantown, Md ------------------------------ From: tchen@sdesys1.hns.com (Thomas Chen) Subject: Re: How Does Inmarsat Work? Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 22:56:59 GMT Organization: Hughes Network Systems Inc. In article , koos@kzdoos.hacktic.nl (Koos van den Hout) writes: > While making some remarks about Inmarsat, I suddenly realized myself > one thing: > I don't know how Inmarsat works. > So, is there anybody out there who can tell me? I'd like to know if > it's digital or analog, how base stations are verified, how the > satelite 'rings' the base station and stuff like that. > I'm also curious about the security of the whole system (both the > 'listening in to calls' security and the 'making calls at the expense > of another user' part). There are different types of Inmarsat service called A, C, and M. The cost structures are different and it really depends on what type of data you need to send and where you are. Tom ------------------------------ From: mbl@ml7694a.leonard.american.edu (Matthew B. Landry) Subject: Re: Truckstop Calling Cards Date: 27 Jan 1994 03:37:10 GMT Organization: Project SAVE International In article johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) writes: > target market is: people with no home phone (particularly students)? Bingo! I don't know what their other targets are, but they are CONSTANTLY hawking them on campus here and everywhere else I know. > people who are too clueless to get a calling card? The anonymous call It's not necessarily a matter of being "clueless". AT&T runs credit checks on people requesting calling cards, and they are considerably less tolerant of newcomers than, say, Citibank. If you have established perfect credit already, then you may be able to just call AT&T and ask. Otherwise, forget it. (Sprint, however, seems to be better about this sort of thing.) > The anonymous call crowd? Well, if you share a phone line with someone else, it is often nice to be able to make telephone calls without giving the other person the ability to track them. So, these cards also seem to be popular among people under 18. Matthew B. Landry President of Project SAVE mbl@ml7694a.leonard.american.edu ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Truckstop Calling Cards From: ray.normandeau@factory.com (Ray Normandeau) Date: 26 Jan 94 18:50:00 GMT Organization: Invention Factory's BBS - New York City, NY - 212-274-8298v.32bis Reply-To: ray.normandeau@factory.com (Ray Normandeau) >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Those are called 'Talk Tickets' and > they are a bit expensive at 50 cents per minute of domestic use. > Considering that they are paid for up front, talk tickets should cost > no more than ten to fifteen cents per minute. Think about it. No > billing, no uncollectables, no customer service, no credit for wrong > numbers, no nothing. > The cost of talk tickets should in no way exceed standard direct > dialed rates. Anything more is a rip-off. How about the allowance for the commission to the truck stop selling them? At One Times Square you can buy tickets at 25 cents a minute. ------------------------------ From: C1940@UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU Subject: Re: Looks Like a Hacker Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 00:20:48 CST Organization: UM-St. Louis In article dold@rahul.net (Clarence Dold) writes: > An "800" customer of mine called to complain that a lot of calls were > on her bill from the same caller, but she tried calling the number > back, and it was disconnected. > I checked the SMS database, and there was no record found. I checked > against a small run of telephone logs, and found a lot of calls from > the same ANI, mostly into our 800-voicemail. Smells like a hacker ... > Then I saw some not-so-malicious patterns. I called PacBell security, > to track the ANI down. > 510 893-0781 Cellular One Outbound Trunk > Hmm ... > How many ANI are like this? Does anyone have a table? > V&H data only shows it as Oakland, CA, which is true. I don't know if this is specifically related, but a few years ago, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems in St. Louis was unable, for whatever reason, to bill (900) numbers, collect calls, and third-party billed long distance calls to cellular phones, IF the call went through a long-distance carrier. If the call was Long Distance (that is, collect or third-party) and handled by Southwestern Bell, you'd get a nasty phone call a few days later, demanding that you allow the call to be billed somewhere else. SWBMS has since blocked collect and third-party calls from being billed to cellular phones, and, I think, (900) numbers too. Right after they began doing this, though, it was possible to call the company and tell them that you no longer wanted to block these calls. The customer-service drone, assuming that the block had been ordered by the customer, would generally remove it on the spot. Since SWB would call you when you made a call of this sort that was handled by them, and (900) and LD carrier calls were not billed, my assumption is that ANI just doesn't work on some (all?) cellular systems. Anyone know why, other than to save money? Is this a limitation of the technology, or something that can be configured either way? T. D'Amico c1940@umslvma.umsl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 03:44:00 PST From: rlm@helen.surfcty.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: Earthquake and 818 AC On 18 Jan 1994 17:07:59 GMT, pribik@rpi.edu (Chris Labatt-Simon) said: > Yesterday I learned of the earthquake because of my calling a tech > support department in the 818 area code. I received a message back > saying "We're sorry, your call cannot be completed at this time due to > the earthquake in the area". > This morning around 9:30 (EST) I called again, and got the same > message. I then tried the 800 number and got through. > When I just tried the 818 number again, at about 11:30 EST, I got the > message that all circuits are busy. Guess they're starting to let > calls through again. Phone service to Northridge, the hardest-hit region, and the surrounding neighborhoods is *still* choked by AT&T, et al., as of this writing, according to KFWB Newsradio. Pac*Bell reports in excess of 35 million calls per hour completed at the height of the disaster; this number is slowly receding with time. I can't really speculate successfully on how much help the Internet was in getting calls through to relatives from out of state, but if the traffic on ca.earthquakes is any indication, a number of people used that forum for urgent messages like "My brother is in Chatsworth, can you contact him?" Since the passage of California Assembly Bill AB1645, state business, pending bills, and announcements are available on the Internet (supposedly sen.ca.gov and asm.ca.gov -- mail me for further info). There's also a couple of finger servers (quake@andreas.wr.usgs.gov and quake@geophys.washington.edu) and a special telnet server (telnet oes1.oes.ca.gov 5501) for earthquake info and other announcements. One poster reported calling a local radio station with information he received by ftp'ing it from the state announcement server (above); the person at the other end screeched WE NEED FATALITY STATISTICS DO YOU HAVE THESE NUMBERS???? or something equally obnoxious. Death sells, I guess. > On another note, I just wanted to mention how great technology is. > I've been following the earthquake info on the Internet Relay Chat and > on CompuServe. The compassion that I'm finding in both of these > places is great to see. Many people are e-mailing from both in CA and > out of CA getting in touch with relatives and friends for people over > the phone. This site's not very good for monitoring that sort of thing -- I'm two UUCP hops away from the Internet. Sometimes news takes a day to reach here after it's reached the main California sites, though mail is much faster. However, my UUCP feed stayed up where Netcom crashed. To be fair to the Netcom people, they were up (if unreliably) in pretty short order, all things considered. For those people still wondering about relatives in the San Fernando Valley who haven't gotten through yet, you can e-mail me and I'll try and get through for you. Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #46 *****************************