Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id TAA10171; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 19:55:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 19:55:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199710270055.TAA10171@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #291 TELECOM Digest Sun, 26 Oct 97 19:55:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 291 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Need Help Asynchronous and BISYNC (Felix Leung) Is Southwestern Bell Allowed to do This? (Ravi Prakash) Bell Canada Set to Announce New Area Codes (Jeff Smith) Any Problem Running Voice and Data Over Frame Relay? (Thomason Fan) New OK Area Code (Tad Cook) InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification (Bill Levant) New York Times on Net Day (Ronda Hauben) Tower Site Leases (Allison Hift) Report: Net Telephony Potential Drain For Telcoms (Eric Florack) Cellular Dialing in MA Due to New Area Codes (David E. Sheafer) Phone Problems in Nebraska? (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Enterprise, Ringdowns, Rate & Route (John David Galt) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Felix Leung Subject: Need Help Asynchronous and BISYNC Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 16:04:23 -0500 Organization: University of Winnipeg Does anyone can give me a hints about my answer for the question below? Any suggestion would be appreciated. A sender has two messages of 25 characters and 100 characters to send. He understands that asynchronous protocol involves a start bit, a parity bit, and a stop bit for each character that is sent. For BISYNC protocol, the whole message can be sent in a block and it involves an overhead as follows: Line bid of 3 characters: SYN SYN ENQ Line acknowledgement of 4 characters: SYN SYN ACK0 Framing of 6 characters: SYN SYN STX ETX plus 2 for BCC Data acknowledgement of 4 characters: SYN SYN ACK1 Assume seven-bit characters for each case. 1) Determine for each message: i) The number of bits which are transmitted using Asynchronous protocol ii) The number of bits which are transmitted using BISYNC protocol 2) Given that: Efficiency of a protocol = data bits/(data + overhead bits) Determine the efficiencies of the two protocols for each of the messages. Draw your conclusion as to what protocol to use for each message. Answer: 1.) i.) 3 control bits per char. * 25 characters = 75 controls bits 25 characters * 7 bits/char = 175 bits Total = 75 bits + 175 bits = 250 bits are transmitted using Asynchronous. 3 control bits per char. * 100 characters = 300 controls bits 100 characters * 7 bits/char = 700 bits Total = 300 bits + 700 bits = 1000 bits are transmitted using Asynchronous. ii.) SYN SYN ENQ + SYN SYN ACK0 + SYN SYN STX message ETX BCC + SYN SYN ACK1 + SYN SYN STX EOT BCC + SYN SYN ACK0 = (3*7) + (4*7) + (3*7 + 25*7 + 3*7) + (4*7) + (6*7) + (4*7) = 21 + 28 + 21 + 175 + 21 + 28 + 42 + 28 = 364 bits are transmitted using BISYNC. SYN SYN ENQ + SYN SYN ACK0 + SYN SYN STX message ETX BCC + SYN SYN ACK1 + SYN SYN STX EOT BCC + SYN SYN ACK0 = (3*7) + (4*7) + (3*7 + 100*7 + 3*7) + (4*7) + (6*7) + (4*7) = 21 + 28 + 21 + 700 + 21 + 28 + 42 + 28 = 889 bits are transmitted using BISYNC. 2.) 175 data bits / 250 total bits = 70% efficient 700 data bits / 1000 total bits = 70% efficient 175 data bits / 364 total bits = 48% efficient 700 data bits / 889 total bits = 79% efficient Using asynchronous to send a small message will be much more efficient than the technique that used by BISYNC, because the size of overhead bits is increased proportional with the size of the message. However, when using BISYNC technique for sending message, it is good for sending a very large size message, because the overhead bits is constant regarding the message size. As we can see from the previous efficiency figure, 79% was obtained by using BISYNC method when sending a large message, which is more efficient than the method which used by Asynchronous. The conclusion of sending each message will be as follow: 25 characters --> Asynchronous 100 characters --> BISYNC Felix Leung University of Winnipeg Business of Computing http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~cleung1 ------------------------------ From: ravip@utdallas.edu (Ravi Prakash) Subject: Is Southwestern Bell Allowed to do This? Date: 25 Oct 1997 02:58:35 GMT Organization: Univ. of Texas at Dallas A friend of mine has joined University of Texas at Arlington's graduate school this fall and is sharing an apartment with some other international students in Arlington, TX. The local service provider in that area is Southwestern Bell. When my friend initially called to get a telephone connection, Southwestern Bell asked for some kind of identification. When he explained that he was a new international student they asked him for his passport number, citizenship, etc. and gave him a telephone connection. Recently, he received the following letter from Southwestern Bell (I have deleted my friend's name as well as the name of the Southwestern Bell person who signed the letter): ======== Dear Customer: XXXXXXX, We are unable toverify the information you provided to us at the time you applied for our new service. Therefore we request to provide the following information to our office: a) Picture ID (driver's license or Texas I.D) b) Social Security card c) Lease for your present address or the tax records if you own the property. Please send photocopies of the above 3 items to the following address: SWB TEL Co, PO Box xxxx, Four Bell Plaza, 10th floor, Dallas, TX 75393-0170. To avoid interruption of your telephone service, the information must reach our office no later than 10/24/97. If service is interrupted, a reconnection charge of $14.85 per line will apply. Sincerely, XXXX YYYY Rev. Management Representative. ========== My friend has applied for his social security number. But, the card hasn't arrived yet. Moreover, since getting the telephone connection, he has been regularly paying all the telephone bills. My question is: Is Southwestern Bell within its rights to disconnect the telephone? After all, he provided them will all the identification information they requested. Isn't it their responsibility to verify the information? Moreover, he has never defaulted on any bill payments. I would greatly appreciate your input on this matter. Thanks, Ravi Prakash (ravip@utdallas.edu) www.utdallas.edu/~ravip Computer Science Program Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science The University of Texas at Dallas ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 09:30:59 -0400 From: Jeff Smith Subject: Bell Canada Set to Announce New Area Codes Bell Canada is set to annouce 4 new area codes for the GTA. (New Metro Toronto). 1. Durham Region - will move to a new area code 2. Peel & Halton - will move to a new area code (these regions will share area code until split is needed) 3. York - will retain the current 905 area code - the rest of 905 not in the GTA will move to a new area code. 4. (new) Toronto - will either get an overlay or a split of the current area code or maybe wireless services to move to a seperate area code. By 2002 the GTA - will be called Metro will compose of Five Cities. Namely: 1. City of Toronto 2. City of Durham 3. City of Peel 4. City of York 5. City of Halton People are saying Bell has applied for more area codes to get the regions ready now! ------------------------------ From: Thomason Fan Subject: Any Problem Running Voice and Data Over Frame Relay? Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 19:06:29 +0800 Organization: Asia On-Line Limited, Hong Kong. We are a multi-national company having multiple locations. Currently, we are using TDM multiplexer to connect our WAN circuits over International least lines for voice and data routing. We are now facing requirement to expend our network to have more locations and some existing location requires upgrade on bandwidth. Since TDM is not as efficient as FRAD on bandwidth utilization, we are considering replacement of our entire TDM multiplexer to FRAD multiplexer. We are not experts on this area, and would like to seek advice from you. Currently, we have short-listed four vendors: ACT, MICOM (Marathon), NETRIX (2210) and NUERA (F120 and F200). Our criterias are voice quality, compression rate, voice delay, bandwidth utilization and stability under heavy voice and data traffic. We network topology is mesh network. So, ability to provide fault tolerance and load balance on multiple paths is a must. Is there any problem about that ? (Most circuits are 64k bandwidth.) Some paths are public and some are least line running frame relay. Would that introduce any trouble? Any comment? Thanks in advance, Thomason ------------------------------ Subject: New OK Area Code Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 17:11:14 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) New Area Code Taking Effect in Oklahoma By Shaun Schafer, Tulsa World, Okla. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Oct. 25--Callers dialing a 405 area code number outside of Oklahoma City after Friday are going to hear a "Hello," but they are getting much closer to hearing, "We're sorry, your call could not be completed as dialed. ..." A new era in state telecommunications begins on Saturday as the first of two new area codes for the state goes into effect. Nov. 1 marks the start of the five-month transitional dialing period for the new 580 area code. Callers have five months to get used to dialing 580 for calls to the Panhandle and northwestern and southern parts of the state. The 405 area code will continue to serve Oklahoma City and central Oklahoma. The area covered by 918 is unchanged. Dialers have until midnight March 31 to adjust to the new number. At that point, those dialing 405 for a call into the new 580 area will receive the "We're sorry ..." message. Other than learning the new numbers, the impact will be limited. The new code doesn't affect emergency 911 services, long-distance charges or local service rates. If a call was a long-distance call, it continues to be a long-distance call. If it was a local call before the change, it still will be a local call. During the transitional dialing period, Oklahoma telecommunications service providers will be conducting an educational campaign to inform customers about the new area code. The campaign includes a variety of customer mailings, bill inserts, news announcements and other communications. "All of the telephone companies are required to notify their subscribers," said Pat Petree, Oklahoma Corporation Commission spokesman. "Beyond that, they really don't have to do anything." During the transition, customers dialing from the 918 area code in northeastern Oklahoma can use either the 405 or 580 code and their calls will be completed. Telecommunications companies said they also hope the transition period will allow businesses time to adjust to the change. They encouraged all business customers in the state to contact their private branch exchange vendor to make sure their systems are programmed to send and receive calls using the new generation of area codes -- like 580 -- that do not have a "1" or a "0" as a middle digit. Additionally, Oklahoma businesses can begin making the necessary changes to company letterhead, advertising, promotional materials and business cards to reflect the new code. Telephone customers also are being asked to reprogram residential and business speed dial and auto dial services on telephones and fax machines. While the telephone companies may at some later rate case request a hike to cover the costs of the change, customers immediately will have to bear whatever business costs -- such as new stationery -- the change brings. The corporation commission, which was responsible for overseeing the process of adding a new area code, said it has received a small number of calls from concerned citizens. Many of those callers, however, have asked for reimbursement, Petree said. The 580 code was assigned by Bellcore, the administrator of codes throughout North America, after the corporation commission's June 26 ruling in favor of implementing a new code through a geographic split of the current 405 code. A plan to overlay the area with the new number, allowing 405 and 580 to work simultaneously in one area, was rejected. Without the change, 405 would have run out of new numbers by September 1998. Although not yet under the gun, the 918 area code is facing the same pressures from the rapid growth of cellular phones, faxes, modems, pagers and additional phone lines. Commission staff estimated a number covering the rural area outside Tulsa would have to be assigned before the first quarter of 2001. That new code for northeastern Oklahoma has not been picked. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 21:15:21 EDT Subject: InTRA-LATA Carrier Verification We had some trouble in my office this week with inTRA-LATA toll calls. We just switched from ATX (10008) to Worldcom (10555) and calls to certain nearby toll points were being misrouted by Bell Atlantic (which SWORE that our PIC codes were all correct; they weren't, but THAT's another story ...) preventing us from completing those calls, except by using an IXC, at ungenerous rates). At one point, Worldcom told us to dial 700-4141 (we're in area code 610) to verify our inTRA-LATA toll PIC assignment. I did; it works just like (700) 555-4141. I've never seen that mentioned here; does it work anywhere else? BTW, if you're lucky (?) enough to have BA inTRA-LATA toll, dialing 700-4141 gets you the dulcet tones of James Earl Jones thanking you for using CNN, er ... BA. It's ALMOST worth switching to BA just for that ;-). By the way, Worldcom offers UNTIMED calling to the entire metro Philadelphia area at about .07/call; BA charges (at best) .04/minute during the day. How does Worldcom do this and not go broke (I assume that they **don't** re-sell BA). Bill ------------------------------ From: ronda@panix.com (Ronda Hauben) Subject: New York Times on Net Day Date: 26 Oct 1997 15:55:54 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC An article in Saturday's {New York Times} (10/25/97) "Internet's Value in U.S. Schools Still in Question" (page 1) described the 2nd annual netday and showed the prejudice of some of the press against the educational use of the Internet. While the {New York Times} has had many glowing accounts and hype about how the Internet is crucial for business and the commercial world, when it comes to describing or discussing the importance of the Internet for schools, they have trouble finding reasons to support the educational development and spread of the Net. They raise the question "Will the teaching of basic skills be harmed or helped by the cyber-revolution?" giving the impression that kids who can't use computers and the Internet will be able to survive in a world where computers and the Net are becoming an increasingly important part of the lives of those who do have access. One wonders why the {New York Times} reporter doing the story wasn't asked to interview teachers or students in the New York City area who are using and finding the Net valuable. (Though New York City does seem to be very behind other areas in the country and world who are trying to get students access to the Internet as soon as possible.) I have learned of schools around the country where students in intermediate school are getting Internet lessons and being encouraged to be on the Internet. While here in NYC this seems the exception rather than the rule. The story begrudgingly reported that "And many techers report that writing E-mail to students in other communities and other countries, for instance, seems to motivate students to want to write and read." However, the NYT story basically fails to understand that the importance of the Internet is "communication". That people are able to communicate with each other and all gain in the process. Instead the story seems to think of the Internet as only a one way media with people being swamped by information they don't know how to deal with. It is disappointing to see such reporting continue by the {New York Times} at a time when there is a great need among the public to have real information about how the Internet is being used in schools around the world (and the U.S. is quite backward in this regard) as well as in the U.S. Instead it seems their pro commercial line that the Internet should be reserved for business and making money has interferred with their raising the necessary public questions as to the appropriate public policy for the future development of the Internet. Ronda ronda@panix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook also in print edition ISBN 0-8196-7706-6 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 15:23:54 EDT From: Allison Hift Subject: Tower Site Leases Does anyone have information on the average term (initial and renewal) of PCS tower site lease agreements that have been entered into in the past year? What are the average rental values (of course, this is very fact-specific) in residential areas, urban areas -- for placing a tower on government property? Private property? Allison K. Hift, Pending Bar Admission Leibowitz & Associates, P.A. 1 Southeast First Avenue, Suite 1450 Miami, Florida 33131-1715 http://www.library.law.miami.edu/~hift hift@cobra.law.miami.edu (305) 530-1322 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 06:06:47 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: Report: Net Telephony Potential Drain For Telcoms From INTERNET DAILY: The Internet could cost telephone companies as much as $8 billion over the next four years as consumers turn to the Net for voice and fax services, Bloomberg news reported. A Falls Church, Va.-based consulting firm. Action Information Services, issued a report saying the lower costs of the Net will also prompt phone companies to lower their prices. The report said international long distance companies will be hit the most, perhaps amounting to as much as 4.5 percent of the total revenues from telephone business between countries by the year 2001, the Bloomberg report said. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 09:52:09 -0400 From: David E. Sheafer Subject: Cellular Dialing in MA Due to New Area Codes With the recent change of area codes in Massachussets, Bell Atlantic Mobile required some customers to change their entire cellular number and are now using exchanges that are just for exclusively cellular, prior to the area code change, some exchanges were mixture of landline and cellular. Eg. my number was 508 989 XXXX which was both landline and cellular, my new number is 508 523 xxxx. The difference is cellular exchanges, at least in Massachusetts are a local call from anywhere in within the area code boundaries, currently 508 523 xxxx is a local call from anywhere within 978 and 508. The question is will it remain local in the 978 area code and how will it be dialed. They way to dial local calls out of area code because is NPA-NNX-xxxx, but no 1, within area code, it is just NNX-xxxx. But currently the only way the call works from either area code is 523-xxxx, calling either 508 523-xxxx or 1 508 523-xxxx from the 978 area code results in a recording saying the call was not dialed correctly and to "call repair service or check your owners manual". When I called Bell Atlantic Mobile to ask them the proper dialing they said to call the LEC, which is Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic couldn't tell me either. As 508 523 xxxx is local to the 508/978 boundaries and I presume will remain that way, as all local call should remain the same, just dialing practices will change. My question is what should be the proper dialing procedure for calling 508 523 xxxx from 978, does anyone have any thoughts. Thanks for your input, David dsheafer@necc.mass.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 16:22:35 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Phone Problems in Nebraska? I needed to call someone in the Omaha, Nebraska area (actually west of Omaha about forty miles) on Sunday and after several attempts to get through and getting only busy signals, fast busies or nothing at all I found out that phone service was at a crawl in that area due to a very massive storm Saturday. Apparently two or three feet of snow, some extremely high winds and other conditions knocked out a lot of circuits. Does anyone have an update? I guess this condition was all over that area with Colorado also affected quite heavily. I can tell you that from the looks of things outside here today, fall has definitly arrived, or maybe it is winter :( ... rain and very high winds all day and not a bit of sunshine. It is one of those days where the cold and dampness seem to get into everything; everyone has either a stiffness in the neck (like me), is crabby or otherwise indisposed to do much other than sit in a semi-darkened room close to the radiator with a cup of soup and think back to better days and times. I am listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony being performed on Family Radio this afternoon. Earlier they did a bunch of the Handel Coronation Anthems, the works written for the coronation of Queen Caroline. For whatever reason, Handel always cheers me up. :) PAT ------------------------------ From: jdg@but-i-dont-like-spam.boxmail.com (John David Galt) Subject: Re: Enterprise, Ringdowns, Rate & Route Date: 26 Oct 1997 18:00:55 GMT Organization: Sacratomato Cynics Quoth Mark J. Cuccia : > Similarly, there are still numerous remote/rural areas (hunting/fishing > lodges, ranches, isolated villages, ranger stations, etc) all over the > NANP area (US, Canada, much of the Caribbean) which can only be > reached by operators of the telcos/carriers mentioned in the first > paragraph. If you are trying to reach such a 'ring-down' point in your > LATA (or when calling from within Canada), you call your 'traditional' > LEC local/toll opearator with a single '0'. If the 'ringdown' location > is outside of your LATA when calling from the US, you can only use the > AT&T operator, (10[10]288)-0('#'/0); or use 800-CALL-ATT / > 800-3210-ATT and then cut-thru to the operator. Such calls to > 'ringdown' points are billed at AT&T/LEC Operator _HANDLED_ rates! Here's something I've wondered about for awhile: why not allow customers to dial these points themselves (using the 88x pseudo-NPAs)? (This would ring the same manual operator point it does now, but would bypass the earlier operator step used now. Billing would work as if it's an automatic exchange.) Is there some technical reason this can't be done, or is it the way it is because the union wants to preserve needless jobs? John David Galt [TELECOM Editor's Note: You may be correct about the union. One case I remember from several years ago involved a little town in northern Minnesota. The name Grand Portage comes to mind. It was listed as an operator handled call, with the operator to dial 218 plus 446(?) plus four-D. In other words, the operator could dial the number but the public presumably could not. As an experiment I tried dialing direct 218-446-number and got through just fine. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #291 ******************************