Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA14397; Wed, 29 Jan 1997 09:02:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 09:02:09 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199701291402.JAA14397@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #24 TELECOM Digest Wed, 29 Jan 97 09:02:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 24 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson GTE Hassles With AT&T POP in Dekalb, IL (Mr. E. Writer) Re: Telstar 401 Goes "Poof" (Tom Betz) Re: Dixon, CA, Moving From 916 to 707 - Also Changing LATAs? (L. Twombly) Re: Ameritech's Procrastination ... Indiana Down to the Wire (J. Bellaire) Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line (dplatt@iq.navio.com) Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line (Brian Yohn) Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line (Jonathan I. Kamens) Re: Prepaid Phone Card Collecting (Mark Jeffrey) Re: TWX 1961 Automation Plans (Martin McCormick) 911 Calls From Behind PBX (Tad Cook) Re: New Area Codes (Diamond Dave) Re: Great European Renumbering Proposal (Franck Brunel) Wanted: GPS Over Cell Phone (Robert Orr) 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: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * 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: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 00:11:41 EST From: A Friend Subject: GTE Hassle With AT&T POP in Dekalb, IL Hello. I have come into possesion of a bit of information that many people interested in telecommunications networks would like to know, even though the information is semi trivial. GTE has been having problems with AT&T's POP in Dekalb, IL. There was a ~3:24 hour outage there tonight (1/27/97) from 18:10 to 21:34 local (CST) time. AT&T started charging for blocked calls because they couldn't complete anything to the GTE lines. A GTE rep was dispatched, and the person had barely started testing before the situation stabilized. The situation is this as of now: (11:00 CST) - 32,143 total calls were blocked, ~23,000 in Dekalb alone. - AT&T is attempting to charge GTE for 10,444 of the calls, even though all of GTE's testing showed that the fault was AT&T's. This situation will be resolved in the next few days, most likely. - There were some problems with this AT&T POP in particular last Friday. I will attempt to get furthur information on this. - These problems may result in a misunderstanding of the physical link type between AT&T and GTE; this is unconfirmed. The real reason behind these outages has not been fully discovered. I will attempt to gather more information on this incident and similar incidents to come, since my source is somewhat reliable. I would appreciate it if my email address was not printed, otherwise my information sources may be in danger. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Okay, this once, an anonymous message however I really don't like printing them. Still, your information seems interesting enough that I wanted to pass it along. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tbetz@panix.com (Tom Betz) Subject: Re: Telstar 401 Goes "Poof" Date: 28 Jan 1997 17:34:19 -0500 Organization: Society for the Elimination of Unsolicited Commercial Email Reply-To: tbetz@pobox.com Quoth Lauren Weinstein in : > From: elvis_p@bellsouth.net >> Wasn't there a solar flare about the same time? I hear that the solar >> flare flamed T-401 and now they are going to replace it temporarily with >> T-302 till a higher power replacement is launched this summer. > There is (as far as I know) no definitive understanding of why T-401 > failed. A solar event was in progress, and had been for sometime. > Note however, that modern comm satellites are designed with knowledge > of solar flares in mind, and most of the critical electronics > equipment is duplicated so as to avoid total failure of all functions > if overloads or similar events occur. This was an unusually strong event, with additional circumstances outside the designers' control. The science story I heard on this one (NPR's Science Friday or ATC, I forget which) was that this solar flare was of such intensity that the solar wind it generated flattened the Earth's magnetic field somewhat; enough to push much of the magnetosphere that usually protect T-401 and allow it (for a time -- as it was on the Noon side of its geosync orbit) to be exposed to a higher level of radiation than it was designed to handle. Don't forget, we've only been putting this electrical stuff up there for the last thirty-some years ... we have to expect previously unobserved phenomena to exceed our design expectations from time to time. Tom Betz (914) 375-1510 Want to send me email? First, read this page: ------------------------------ From: Laura Twombly Subject: Re: Dixon, CA, Moving From 916 to 707 - Also Changing LATAs? Date: 29 Jan 1997 00:35:47 GMT Organization: ESAC Linc Madison wrote in article ... [Snip] > It would seem to me that Dixon will also move LATAs at the same time > it changes area codes, although this point has not been highlighted at > all in the press coverage. Dixon is _not_ changing LATAs. Representatives of Dixon requested the NPA change from 916 to 707. This decision can be (and was) made by the Calif PUC. The decision to change LATA boundaries must be made by the FCC. Initially, there was no request to petition the FCC for such a change. Recent information indicates that Dixon may request this change in the future, but it will not be soon enough to coincide with the NPA change. This information is directly from one of Pacific Bell's Code Planners, and I'm confident of its accuracy. Laura Twombly Pacific Bell Technical Mgr ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 18:59:48 -0500 From: James E. Bellaire Organization: Twin Kings Subject: Re: Ameritech's Procrastination ... Indiana Down to the Wire John Cropper wrote: > It seems, with just a few days before permissive dialing is set to > begin (February 1st), there is NO official prefix list for NXXs moving > from 317 to 765. (My list, compiled in late November, and posted to > Pierre Thompson's and my websites, was based on ACTIVE NXXs and LATA > information at the time. I updated that list in mid-January on my > website). Ameritech does have Indiana 765 NPA information up, it was put on-line last week. They do have the pages in a strange place ... Ameritech Areacode Home ... http://www.ameritech.com/news/service/areacode/ (All other references in this post are in that directory.) "Code Finders" Page /news/service/areacode/finders.html This includes links to search engines to locate what codes are moving where in the Ameritech region, as well as links to lists and maps. Indiana 317 / 765 Map /news/service/areacode/indiana_locatormap.html Indiana 317 / 765 Prefixes /news/service/areacode/indiana_prefix.html Prefixes also available by FTP (ftp://www.ameritech.com) /pub/bsk/indiana_prefix.zip for Win/Dos /pub/bsk/indiana_prefix.sit.hqx for Mac James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Same web site, fancy new address! http://www.iquest.net/~bellaire BTW: I don't work for Ameritech. ------------------------------ From: dplatt@iq.navio.com Date: 28 Jan 1997 22:47:49 -0000 Subject: Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line Organization: Navio Communications, Inc. > It sounds like you have run into the traditional analog nightmare > headfirst. My guess is that Bell Atlantic treats POTS service like we > do at Ameritech. If a customer reports line noise etc. a technician is > sent to the customer premise with a butt set. If the tech doesn't hear > noise or static through the butt set there is no problem. I've heard that one can sometimes get better results by telling the phone company that: [1] A fax machine connected to this line does not work reliably, but does work reliably on other lines. Faxes, like modems, can often be more sensitive to line noise than the human ear is. Perhaps because faxes are seen as "business equipment" (where modems have traditionally been viewed as "hobbyist"), complaints about fax problems sometimes seem to get more serious consideration than complaint about modem problems. [2] You aren't satisfied with a "butt test" check by ear on the line, and won't consider the complaint successfully dealt with until the company can show you that the line's noise level, distortion, and frequency response meets the standards laid down in the applicable tariff. Bringing up the standards in the tariff adds a bit of weight to your complaint. I've read that in most areas, the tariffs under which telcos provide residential phone service do include (or incorporate from other documents) some specifications about the quality of the phone line... amount of noise permitted, required frequency response, etc. I've been told that it's not uncommon for lines to be clean enough to pass an "ear test", but still fail to meet the tariff specifications. Of course, if the line is clean and per-spec all the way up to your building demarc, and the noise is coming from bad wiring inside the house, then you're on your own (unless you're paying your telco a per-month "inside wiring" fee to take care of such problems for you). ------------------------------ From: Brian Yohn Subject: Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:07:34 -0500 Organization: Delmarva Telecommunications Inc Reply-To: byohn@delmarva.com Marlon Brando wrote: > I ordered a second phone line from Bell Atlantic Monday, they said it > should be installed on Friday. I did the wiring myself I ran a modular > wire directly from the telco.'s termination box into my modem. > Needless to say, "it's a dedicated line." > The second line that I ordered will, hopefully, be a solution to an > ongoing problem that I've been having with my connect preformance. > I use a Courier 336 v. everything. But, although it connects at > 19.2-24.0, it is constantly renegotiating it's connection. This > constant start-and-stop is very frustrating. I ran the gambit with my > phone co., they're useless. The ISP blames the phone co. I think that > I believe them. They are still in business after all. > With regards to my question, I just need to know if I'm asking the > phone co. for the correct line (without going ISDN$$$.) Chances are you may be on a long unconditioned loop that may be giving you problems, or you may be on digital loop carrier (SLC or whatever), where an older vintage of codec is being used and affecting your throughput. If the latter is the problem, the phone company can replace the line card. Brian J. Yohn Transmission & Network Engineering Delmarva Telecommunications Inc, a subsidiary of Delmarva Power PO Box 6066 Newark, DE 19714 / 302-452-6410 / fax 302-452-6399 ------------------------------ From: jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens) Subject: Re: Ordering a "Dedicated" Modem Line Date: 28 Jan 1997 16:12:06 GMT Organization: OpenVision Technologies, Inc. I was going to respond to the original article in this thread, but then I decided that there are probably other readers of comp.dcom.telecom who are more qualified than I am, and Rick Cox went ahead and proved me right :-). Nevertheless, I'd like to make a few comments about what Rick wrote. I had a modem line installed by NYNEX several months ago. I ordered it through their residential service department, and they were unfortunately pretty clueless about what I was asking for when I told them that I wanted a conditioned line (perhaps if I'd known the term "conditioned" then, that would have helped, but unfortunately, I didn't find out that's the term they use until later in the process, so I told them I wanted a "data-grade line"). I subsequently learned that conditioned lines are not offered as part of NYNEX's residential service. However, supposedly, NYNEX *does* have a conditioned line listed on their tariff charts for business service. It costs more, of course, but you get what you pay for, and what you're asking the phone company for is a high-speed modem line, not a voice line. I suspect that other phone companies treat conditioned lines like NYNEX does, so if you want to do things completely on the up-and-up and make sure you get a conditioned line, try calling the business service office instead of the residential service office and asking them for a conditioned line. In my case, when I ordered the second line, NYNEX was out of free pairs in my neighborhood, so rather than pulling a new pair from the central office, they installed a "miniplexor" on my existing pair and an identical unit at the central office, to carry two phone lines over my existing pair. Of course, a 33.6kbps modem does not appreciate sharing line bandwidth with someone talking on the same wires, so the performance was not exactly acceptable. I bitched and moaned to NYNEX and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities about how I paid for a real line and I expected to receive a real line, and in the end NYNEX pulled a fresh pair directly from the central office to my apartment, and that pair has worked just fine ever since. It helped that I finally got to talk to the outside foreman for the local office, i.e., to someone who actually understood what I was asking for and how to fix it. If your neighborhood is short on free pairs and your phone company doesn't get new-line requests for your neighborhood very often, you might be able to play the following game ... Call their business office and order a conditioned business line. After they install it, make sure it works properly with your modem. Once you're convinced that it does, cancel the business line and order a second residential line on the same day. Unless they need to steal the conditioned pair for someone else between when you cancel the business line and when they come to install the second residential line, they'll simply use the existing pair for the residential line, and you'll be getting conditioned quality for the cost of a residential line. Of course, if they do steal the pair for someone else in that window, you're screwed, and you might have to try the whole thing again. On the other hand, depending on how much higher the monthly charges are on a conditioned line, it might be worthwhile to incur the installation charges a couple of times to avoid having to pay them. There are variations on this game. For example, you can start out by ordering a residential line, and tell them that you're going to use it for a modem. If they tell you at that point that you have to use a conditioned line for that at a higher rate, then you've been caught and you should proceed as described above. If not, however, you can try the new residential line and see if it works with your modem. If it does, you're all set. If it doesn't, you might be able to bitch and moan like I did and get them to fix it. At the very least, you can probably convince them to upgrade you to a conditioned line and credit your installation charges for the residential line to the conditioned line installation, since they didn't tell you that you needed a conditioned line to use a modem, and then you can either stay with the conditioned line or proceed as described above. Even if your local phone company doesn't offer conditioned lines by name, you might be able to play this game anyway. This is because ISN runs over the same copper pairs as regular phone lines -- an ISDN line is really just a conditioned line that the switch knows speaks ISDN. Therefore, you can order ISDN, make sure it's working properly with your modem, and then cancel the service and order a residential line as described above. However, the installation charges for ISDN are usually pretty high, so investigate the costs before you decide to do this. Whatever you do, don't let them install a miniplexor on your existing line and convince you that the resulting two lines will work just as well as if they were carried on separate copper pairs :-). If, in the process of trying to get the phone company to install a conditioned line (or conditioned-quality line), you hear people start to talk about "taps" and how lines without them are better, here's what they're talking about: When a brand new pair is installed for service to a particular location, that pair of wires runs intact from the central office to the service location. Now, let's say that that location cancels its service, and another location nearby orders new service. Rather than running a new pair all the way from the central office to the second location, the phone company might backtrack from the second location to the phone company until it finds where that path intersects the path of the original pair, and then install a new pair from that point to the second location, "tapping" the original pair at the intersection point but leaving the rest of the original pair in place. Like this (view in a fixed-width font in a News reader that doesn't compress spaces): +------------+ "tap" original pair +----+ | |-------+----------------------------------| | | Location 1 |-----+/-----------------------------------| CO | | | // | | +------------+ // +----+ // +------------+ // new pair | |// | Location 2 |/ | | +------------+ The problem is that the "tap" from the intersection point to the original location will cause interference on the line even though it is no longer in service. Therefore, a line which will be used for high-speed modems should be without any taps. If you manage to find someone who seems to know what he's talking about and tells you that your line won't have any taps on it, write down his name and his phone number and keep it in a safe place; it's very useful to have the name and number of someone at the phone company who knows what he's talking about :-). Another thing to keep in mind is that if you use existing inside wiring for the new line (i.e., if your current jack was wired for two lines from the demarc box outside your house/apartment, so they can wire a new jack for the second line without running new wire from the demarc inside the house), it's very important to make the installer check the quality of the inside wiring when he installs the second line. Many static problems with modem lines are caused by old or improperly installed inside wiring. As an alternative, if you don't want to pay the hourly rate to have the installer check and possibly fix the inside wiring, you can run new inside wiring yourself. Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@cam.ov.com ------------------------------ From: Mark Jeffrey Subject: Re: Prepaid Phone Card Collecting Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 13:39:49 -0800 Yes, this really is a huge industry, especially across Europe and Asia. The best collectors prices are obtained for unused cards. My previous employer used to manufacture a lot of payphones for around the world, and the factory had huge displays of thousands of the things. They've been around for at least ten years now, and were introduced to remove the need to empty coins from payphones. The American market is far from ideal for prepaid cards. In many countries, the cards cost little if any more than regular payphone rates. Also, most countries require payment for local calls, so you have more reasons to use the cards. One other major score is that when you are visiting another country, you can buy the cards in stores, perhaps using travelers checks, credit cards or local currency. You don't need to bill the call back through your home operator as you would with a calling card. I remember the pain of trying to make international calls home to the UK from a US payphone a few years back. You can't possibly carry enough change to cover the cost of payphone international charges, and at that time few if any US payphones would accept my (British - BT) calling card. By contrast, a Belgian friend of mine visiting the UK in 1986 just bought herself a BT prepaid card (cost about $6 I think), and used it up on a single call home to Belgium. Prepaid cards are one solution to cashless calling, and can be very flexible. They work best where the call is being put through and billed by the payphone operator, not a separate long-distance operator. I think the vast majority of them get used up, except the odd collector's item. Yes, it really is a billion dollar industry. The US is in this respect outside the mainstream of world telecommunications, where prepaid cards are part of everyday life. Mark Jeffrey Network Architect - Microsoft Public Network Partners Team ------------------------------ From: Martin McCormick Subject: Re: TWX 1961 Automation Plans Date: 28 Jan 1997 22:10:44 GMT Organization: Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK First of all, thanks for a very interesting historical article. This is this group at its finest. I am curious about how the speed and code converters worked. Were they electromechanical, solid-state, or did they use vacuum tubes? When one thinks about the technology of 1960, the problems presented by the thought of a duel world of four-row and three-row teleprinters seem quite daunting. In the first place, the four-row machines used ASCII which is pretty much as we know it today. The three-row machines used Baudot whose 5-bit characters bear not even a passing resemblance to their 8-bit ASCII counterparts. Baudot machines speak in upper case, but the big problem is that there is a special character that shifts the printer in to "Figures" mode so that qwertyuip now reads 1234567890 and all the other keys on the keyboard send various punctuation marks or do such things as ring the bell, (shifted S). When one was through ringing the bell or sending numbers, the "Letters" symbol was sent to return the printer to normal operation. The code/speed converters had to have enough intelligence to do this as well as translate the ASCII letters in to Baudot characters and remember to send the "Figures" or "Letters" symbols when required. Of course, the converter also had to understand the Baudot system so that it could send the right ASCII characters. When four-row machines were talking to three-row'ers, there also had to be a buffer to temporarily store the information since the receiving machines were running at 60 WPM and the transmitters were chattering along at 100 WPM. I thought that it was interesting that the plan to switch to the newer four-row machines mentioned the cost of the code/speed converters. Nowadays, something like that could probably be done with a hand full of integrated circuits costing less than $100.00 and you could probably have changed the whole network over to the faster speed and put one of the converters on each of the old machines so that they would look like the new ones to the rest of the net. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK 36.7N97.4W OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications Group ------------------------------ Subject: 911 Calls From Behind PBX Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:28:54 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Greg Stahl gsta@music.stlawu.edu writes: > I am looking for information on E911 adjuncts for the university's NEC > NEAX 2400 PBX. I have been looking for information regarding E911 on > the WWW, but hav'nt had much luck. We are exploring the possiblility > of adding an adjunct to our PBX, does anyone know of any vendors that > sell a product like this and is anyone familiar with the laws > regarding E911 or can point me in the right direction. Do we, by law, > have to send the ANI/ALI info down to the county emergency center? Any > help with this, or letting me know of any sources for this kind of > info would be greatly appreciated. Proctor & Associates makes the PBX ANI product. This solves the problem which Greg is referring to, which is when 911 calls are made from a PBX extension, how can the 911 answering point get location information for the extenstion that made the call? When you call 911 from your home phone, your seven digit phone number is sent forward as ANI in the form of MF tones by a dedicated 911 trunk at the CO that serves your phone. At the other end the ANI is received and the phone number is cross referenced in a database to your address. But when you call from a PBX, the ANI is for the particular trunk that your call goes out on, so the 911 center gets the same location for all the calls from the PBX. This can be a big problem with a large PBX, especially if you have off premise extensions. The only way around this is to send unique ANI for each extension with each 911 call. Since the system is set up to be secure, there isn't any way to change your ANI. But with the PBX ANI product you establish your own 911 trunks that go from the PBX to the 911 center, which means you can send forward any ANI that you want. In the case of non-DID lines, you get non-dialable number assignments from the telco just for the unique ANI for 911 calls. Contact Proctor about the PBX ANI product at: Proctor & Associates 15050 NE 36 St Redmond, WA 98052 phone: 206-881-7000 Regarding the law on ANI from PBXs, it varies from state to state. Some states have new laws requiring PBXs in certain applications, such as schools, to send ANI for extensions from PBXs on 911 calls. Your state PUC should have more information. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com Seattle, WA ------------------------------ From: bbscorner@juno.com (Diamond Dave) Subject: Re: New Area Codes Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 20:01:44 GMT Organization: BBS Corner John Cropper wrote: >> Well, what about assigning overlay codes in such a way that the last >> digits are different within any one area? Aside from the problem of areas >> with codes ending in 0, you could implement 8-digit dialing by just >> telling everybody that starting tomorrow, they have to dial the last >> digit of the area code if it's local, otherwise proceed with 11d as >> normal. Then you get 8 area codes per area, and when they fill up, start >> dialing the last 2 digits and tell everyone they have 9-digit phone >> numbers. > It doesn't work in areas with hardwired equipment (from the 50s and 60s) > that specifically times out at seven digits. While newer equipment in > the metro areas might not have a problem with it, Mom & Pop America in > Wazoo, South Dakota wouldn't be able to call junior at USC. Out of curiosity -- does anyone know how much of the US is served by old crossbar equipment? I thought by now that most all the US had converted to ESS or DMS100 (or similar) equipment. P.S. If you know of an area served by this old equipment, send me an E-mail. (Area code and prefix if you know it) Thanks, Dave ------------------------------ From: fbrunel@pasteur.fr (Franck Brunel) Subject: Re: Great European Renumbering Proposal Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 22:05:49 +0100 Organization: Jungle Fever Linc Madison wrote: > 1. Area code 03 in northeastern France (just created Oct. 18, 1996) > is changed to an unused code (07, perhaps?). Actually "area code" (we don't have really area codes since we must dial all of our numbers) in France are just 1 digit. The leading 0 is the default prefix for routing outgoing calls through France Telecom network. Next year, I will be able to choose another telco and start dialing with a 2 to route my call through Bristish Telecom. Anyhow there are 5 "geographic zones" (01,02,03,04,05). 06 is the prefix for mobile phones, 08 is to access Transpac network. Minitel starts with the digit "3". > 2. France moves from +33 to +333. Damned, I wish we could have 666 as country code ;-) Ung Awa ------------------------------ From: Robert Orr Subject: Wanted: GPS Over Cell Phone Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 00:01:59 -0500 Organization: College of Computing, Georgia Tech Reply-To: rjo@cc.gatech.edu We're looking for a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit that can interface to a cellular phone and transmit its location data using touchtone (i.e., DTMF) tones. Does anyone know if such a thing exists? If so, where can I find it? A GPS unit that interfaces to an external DTMF converter would work, as well. Essentially, we're looking for any system that can send GPS data over a cell phone. Pointers to anything of this type would be greatly appreciated. Please mirror all responses to rjo@cc.gatech.edu as well as to the newsgroup. Thanks much. Robert Orr Ph.D. Student Future Computing Environments Group College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #24 *****************************