Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA29260; Tue, 27 Apr 1999 14:39:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 14:39:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199904271839.OAA29260@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #61 TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Apr 99 14:39:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 61 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: "Internet Pioneers" (Nigel Roberts) Re: "Internet Pioneers" (Colin Sutton) Re: "Internet Pioneers" (Craig Partridge) Re: "Internet Pioneers" (James Wyatt) Re: "Internet Pioneers" (Fred Atkinson) Re: "Internet Pioneers" (Bill Newkirk) Re: The NANP Has 8+ Years to Go Says NANPA (Walter Dnes) Re: The NANP Has 8+ Years to Go Says NANPA (Bob Goudreau) Re: Rate Rationalization, was Re: NANP Has 8+ Years to Go (John R. Levine) Re: European-Wide Country Code of +388 (Linc Madison) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Nigel Roberts Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 17:15:04 +0100 Organization: Island Networks I too would be interested in such an organisation, having had 'tourist' accounts on MIT-AI and MIT-DM (70 and 134 IIRC) when I was at university in SE England in the late 70s. In fact there was only one ARPAnet node in the whole of the UK at the time (UCL), but since a few dozen other Universities and research establishments were connected together by the Post Offices Experimental Packet Switching Service (which later became standardised as X.25) we could reach UCL from Essex using EPSS, and then connect to the USA from UCL. MIT-DM was the home of 'Zork' of course. And that's where we spent a lot of time. And following a late night coffee session in my flat in late 1978 after being ejected from the University's computer centre when in closed at 10 o'clock between myself, Roy Trubshaw, Richard Bartle and Keith Rautenbach, someone came up with the idea 'what if you could use the DEC-10's shareable # high-segment to run a Zork type world with more than one player in the dungeon at the same time ...' Regards, Nigel Roberts nigel@nic.gg http://www.nic.gg TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > The Telephone Pioneers began around 1900 when a couple dozen of the > people who had been with AT&T since Day One decided they should have a > club for themselves. In later years as all the old people died, the > rule was changed to say that members had to have at least twenty years > of employment with Bell. I wonder if the time has come for an 'Internet > Pioneers' organization? If enough people send me some sort of valid > evidence that they were active on the net at least 15-20 years ago and > express an interest in an association among themselves and a web page > or mailing list, perhaps I will start such a thing. It might be purely > social, or perhaps a mix of social and service to the net and the > newcomers who are arriving -- not quite at the rate people are fleeing > from Kosovo -- but pretty darn fast, to the net community daily. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Colin Sutton From: Colin Sutton Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Organization: Siemens Building Technologies Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 23:51:00 +1000 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, so far, you are the only person > who responded to that item. I guess no one is interested. Not that we're not interested, just too busy, or still looking to the future, not the past. One of these days I'll look through those 132 column teletype printouts of jokes I downloaded via my decus account that my wife keeps telling me to chuck out - there was no disk space for them on my PDP-11 :-( Not to mention the decus backup tapes, the Sinclair spectrum audio cassette backups from 1980, the Game and Watches from 1981,... > Of course one problem may be that I did not really play by all the > rules around here in the old days (I still usually don't), and a lot > of the old, old, old clique is still annoyed with me because of it. Surely you've been forgiven the errors of youth :-) Colin Sutton - AARNET "pioneer" - well, one of the first commercial users of the Australian Academic Research Network, anyway. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You could drop out the word 'been' from your last sentence and that would be true also. I hope that does not sound too arrogant. Some of the things which seemed so important at the time have long since taken a backseat to more pressing issues. Do you remember the numerous battles over the years regarding newsgroup creation, whether or not some newsgroup should be moderated or open, what the exact topic should be, etc? I do not persnally remember when there were only six or eight newsgroups in total, but I remember when there were only a couple hundred, instead of the fourteen thousand plus listed now, although admittedly many recieve little or no traffic. I remember when there were only groups beginning with the name 'comp' and it was extremely hard to get a new group started. There had to be a proposal submitted, thirty days of discussion, and a vote taken. If the vote passed, then one of only two or three people were authorized (in the sense that anarchists respected the right of anyone to author- ize anything) to do a 'newgroup' control message. The common agreement was that all sites honored a newgroup request. Then 'alt' came along, as in 'alternate' and anyone could create their own newsgroup without going through the formalities (and possible defeat), but the catch was many or most sites did not carry the alt groups. It was up to the person(s) who started an alt group to convince individual sysadmins to install it on their news spool, unlike 'comp' where you had to go to a lot more effort (and have a clearly defined group of supporters) to gain 'legitimate' status but once you did, it automatically went on sites all over the world, no questions asked. Remember how when we got to the point there were a couple hundred newsgroups in total, AT&T and several other large corporations said they did not have room for that many, so they were going to drop all the 'alt' groups and not carry them any longer? There was another consideration of course: some of the 'alt' newsgroups tended to be a bit rowdy at times, not always maintaining the kind of decorum and image that many companies wanted their employees to see, at least on company time. PAT] ------------------------------ From: craigp@world.std.com (Craig Partridge) Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 14:17:15 GMT Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die > You were the only one to respond David. That tells me where the inter- > est is in that idea of mine. PAT] I was intrigued by the idea but wasn't sure what the organization would achieve, short of stuffing feathers in the caps of the folks who had email back then Craig Partridge {ihnp4,kremvax,seismo}!harvard!partridge [c. 1982] craig@bbn.arpa [1983] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As I think about it now, one achievement might be to permanently capture the memories people have of those days so that they will be preserved. I am reminded of a great little book called 'Reminisences of the Day of the Chicago Fire' published in 1901 by the Chicago Historical Society. Someone got an idea back then which basically went like this: 'you know, it has now been thirty years since the terrible fire (in 1871), and before long all the people who actually were around that day are going to be dead and there will not be anyone left who actually witnessed it. All we will have are third- party accounts from historians, etc. What we need to do is round up as many of those people as we can, and have them tell in their own words what they remember from that day, what they did to save their homes and families, etc and what they remember of the street scenes during the fire.' And they did just that, putting together a book of a couple dozen short -- between two and a dozen pages -- accounts given by people. One of the best was a fellow who was only eighteen years old at the time who talked about sitting with a group of people about 5:00 AM that Monday morning on the west bank of the Chicago River as the sun came up watching the blazing inferno on the other side of the river. I see that as a role for such a group as I propose. We have plenty of third-party accounts of the Internet, and some are rather good. For instance Michael and Ronda Hauben (Ronda is a regular here) have published their 'Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet'. All good material, and there are other books like it. But we need to have the 'peoples history' written down as well. If I may paraphrase, 'it has been about twenty years since this thing got started. Before too many or all of the old people die or get scattered out of contact we need to make them write a few paragraphs about how things were on the net in the seventies and early eighties.' I propose a web site which would include such capsules from the 'old people' as well as provide pointers to the works of 'professional historians', the people who have written extensively about the history of the net. But the 'peoples history' would be the key part of it. There are plenty of web sites around devoted to teaching people how to make web sites. There are plenty that serve as search engines or starting points for other web sites. Why not one which would serve to let others know where we came from, and how the net got to where it is today? I think I have changed my mind. I do not think 'Internet Pioneers' is the best choice. Maybe 'Internet Historical Society' is a better choice. Or maybe both. PAT] ------------------------------ From: James Wyatt Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 09:25:29 -0500 Organization: Fastlane Communications (using Airnews.net!) > old days. Now-days, you sign up with an ISP and ask him for a shell > account and you get the strangest look from him, almost a sort of > 'what are you trying to pull, anyway' attitude. Most will flatly FastLane Communications in DFW, Texas doesn't usually mention it, but they offer free shell accounts. You can do CGI and 'bots if you don't get too obnoxious(sp?) and it is *well* connected. Just ask when you sign up ... You can visit online at www.fastlane.net if you wish. > Perhaps you also recall the old 'bang address' style where we said > something like 'ucbvax!username@mit' ... with those you read the > address from the @ sign to the left. On the telecom mailing list, I I still have UUCP-connected customers, but they have their own domains and we use MX records now. I have *no* idea how OutLook handles bang addresses, but many SMTP-to-proprietary-mail gateways get confused. We used to get our internet mail from texsun.sun.com until Morris' folly caused Sun to drop *all* guest accounts. When texsun died, the University of Texas at Arlington (thanks David!) then helped us until some jerk at Tandy complained that tandy.com's mail should go direct. We used to feed numerous UUCP sites for free in exchange for our MX feed and just about saturated our Telebits with newsfeeds. This meant that Sun/Dallas and UTA only had one or two systems calling, but helped dozens of systems and hundreds of people. It also meant that rwsys.lonestar.org has had the same email address for about a decade. (but we prefer rwsystems.net now!) > And remember the email to FTP gateways? Long before the web, when a > file transfer meant FTP'ing to a site -- if you could get through the > congestion, and if you were allowed to use FTP at your location -- > many people were unable to obtain the files they wanted. This was I used to try them once in a while (usually used shell account at Sun and UUCPd it home). I *really* learned about them when Godron Burditt (an occasional c.d.t poster) used to haul the latest FreeBSD distribution and source trees to GNUware via our UUCP mail link! Good thing he had a TeleBit modem too ... I also had a port on 1200b AX.25 and TCPIP on 145MHz and 440MHz for amateurs to pull mail and use the internet in the early 90s. (Anyone else here remember KA9Q and JNOS?) I have been slowly gathering stiff to put it back up, but at 9600b some day. I kinda went from ham RTTY (teletype) and BBS to UUCP to internet over the years with transient exchursions between the interests. It was interesting to see UseNet posts that mentioned the 'rwsys' UUCP name from various systems around here. It was obvious who you were connected to in those days (esp. ihnp4, ucbvax, decvax, etc) whereas it's hidden in MX records and traceroutes now. Less geeky I suppose, but less 'scenic' in retrospect. Jy@ (jwyatt@rwsystems.net KA5VJL) ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:29:05 -0400 Pat, Regarding the 'Internet Pioneers'. I think it would be a great idea. The ranks of ham radio have long had an organization called the 'Quarter Century Wireless Association', the requirement is that you were first licensed as a ham radio operator twenty five years before you may join. You can check their Web site at: 'http://www.qcwa.org'. I will become eligible for membership next year. However, how long has the Internet been with us? I don't think they could require twenty-five years as I don't think the 'Internet' has been around for that long. For now, they'd have to settle on a lower number of years. Fred [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think 15-20 years would be a good starting point, maybe dropping it to 10 years for people who made some substantial contributions during the late 1980's. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bill Newkirk Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 23:37:50 -0400 Organization: Posted via RemarQ, http://www.remarq.com Maybe it just needs time to percolate around a bit ... However, people don't seem to want to join clubs/organizations today. ------------------------------ From: waltdnes@interlog.com (Walter Dnes) Subject: Re: The NANP Has 8+ Years to Go Says NANPA Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 10:53:21 GMT Organization: Interlog Internet Services On 26 Apr 1999 13:35:31 GMT, craig@rmit.EDU.AU (Craig Macbride) wrote: > Eric@AreaCode-Info.com (Eric B. Morson) writes: >> No FCC mandate for implementing expanding dialing patterns >> from 3+7 to 4+8 with a deadline for launch. How about >> deciding IF 4+8 will be the solution? > How about cutting loose the non-US members (possibly not Canada, Nothing personal against the US, but I think that Canada should also be split off into its own country code. Right now we have approx 20 area codes, and will continue to expand. It would be nice to have all sorts of internal area code number-space. And the US will probably need our codes for its own use in the future anyways. > but at least the Caribbean countries) of the NANP at the same > time, thus giving more numbering space to the US and stopping > all the fraud schemes based on confusing people into calling > numbers they believe are in the US which are in fact in other > countries? Excellent idea. What is the rationale behind separate area codes for a bunch of overgrown sandbars, many of which barely justify a whole exchange, let alone an area code? And how many of their phone numbers will disappear once people have to dial 0+ instead of 1-809+ or 1-664+, and telesleaze won't be able to pull that stunt on the unsuspecting public. Walter Dnes ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:24:58 -0400 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: The NANP Has 8+ Years to Go Says NANPA craig@rmit.EDU.AU (Craig Macbride) wrote: > How about cutting loose the non-US members (possibly not Canada, but > at least the Caribbean countries) of the NANP at the same time, thus > giving more numbering space to the US and stopping all the fraud > schemes based on confusing people into calling numbers they believe > are in the US which are in fact in other countries? Leaving aside the rate confusion issue, the answer to this question is that it simply won't help matters much. According to the "NANP Exhaust Study" (http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/NANP_Exhaust_Study.pdf) there are currently 410 assignable spare NPAs in the NANP. Even if you kicked *all* non-US countries (including Canada) out into separate contry codes, it would only free up 41 NPAs -- an increase of a mere 10 percent for the pool of spares. Not that big a help, especially considering the costs associated with switching those other countries to new country codes. And actually getting the ITU to allocate some of its numbering space for over a dozen new country codes is another can of worms altogether. (Is it time to rerun that old thread on the mechanics of how to break up the NANP while still allowing graceful permissive dialing periods? :-) Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 1999 19:43:42 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Rate Rationalization, was: Re: NANP Has 8+ Years to Go Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> NANP Exhaust Study..published www.nanpa.com/pdf/NANP_Exhaust_Study.pdf > Which brings up the simpler solution, but one, alas, which the ILECS > won't like, namely a rationalization, and _reduction_, of the rate > structures. I believe this happened in the Denver area to delay the introduction of new area codes. They combined several small rate centers into a smaller number of large ones. Since Denver is surrounded by mountains on one side and cornfields on the other, and the only other nearby city of any size, Boulder, was already a local call, and I believe that local calls were already unmetered, this probably didn't turn many toll calls into local ones, so US West didn't object (much). I agree that the current rate center setup is a complete anachronism, and you need only compare maps of rate centers to maps of where the switches and wires really are to confirm that. For example, my cell phone is in 607-279 which is in the Ithaca NY rate center which is local to me in Trumansburg, but the switch is in Syracuse, an hour and a half away. The cell company used to have a switch in Ithaca, but they got rid of it a few years ago and consolidated all their switching in Syracuse. The Syracuse rate center is a toll call from both Ithaca and Trumansburg, of course. Or, even worse, I'm in T'burg, Ithaca is south of here, and Interlaken is north of here. Calls between T'burg and Ithaca are local. Calls between Interlaken and Ithaca are local. But calls between T'burg and Interlaken are toll, even though Interlaken calls are physically handled in the T'burg switch! The phone company has admitted to me that this is due to historical quirks, is now stupid, but there's not enough traffic between Interlaken and T'burg to be worth the grief of going to Albany and filing for a rate change. But if this NPA started to fill up, it's screamingly obvious that Ithaca, Tburg, and Interlaken should all be combined into a single rate center, along with a couple of other small towns on the other side of Ithaca. Or for that matter, to reflect wire and switch reality, everything from here to Syracuse and 20 miles north of there should be one rate center. This would go a long way to fixing the prefix crunch, since the number of CLEC reserved prefixes could easily drop by a factor of five or ten. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 16:39:14 -0700 From: Telecom@LincMad.com.NOSPAM (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: European-Wide Country Code of +388 Organization: LincMad Consulting In article , Richard@office.mandarin.com wrote: > It may have been that at one time, but the current proposals are quite > different. +388 is now intended to be an overlay, which would provide > users with "European" phone numbers instead of numbers based out of the > country where the user is actually located. Some might think of +388 > as being more a form of "politically-correct" number! Hadn't heard about this proposal. How will the calls be billed?? Will it depend on the originating and/or terminating country? Will they be dialable from outside the non-EU European countries? Outside Europe entirely? [quoting me (Linc Madison) from a previous article:] >> The Ukraine is certainly big enough that it would have deserved a >> two-digit code (unlike +45 Denmark, +64 New Zealand, +65 Singapore, > ITU-T policy is that all new country code assignments will be three-digit. Yes, that would be why I said, directly above the bit you quoted: >> With the possible exception of +3 (which was envisioned to replace all >> +3 and +4 codes), no more one- or two-digit codes will be allocated. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I think your clarification was unnecessary, particularly since it gives the false appearance that I was not aware of the ITU-T policy. >> but the people who created the plan didn't adequately think through the >> transition required to get there. > More that they didn't realise the level of opposition there would be > from the "member states" to being required to change their phone > numbers just to please Brussels. Ironically, most of those "member > states" have gone through (at least) one major renumbering since then > of their own volition. Well, I'd say it's both, really. The plan was poorly conceived from a political standpoint, ignoring the needs and desires of the member states, but it was also poorly conceived from a technical standpoint, ignoring the convoluted transition that would be required. The scheme provided an inadequate transition plan to a goal that the countries involved hadn't agreed to. If by some chance the EU does pursue the idea of making Europe +0 when that range becomes assignable in a couple of years, they will have to work out the political issues as well as the technical. ** Do not send me unsolicited commercial e-mail spam of any kind ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom@LincMad-com URL:< http://www.lincmad.com > * North American Area Codes & Splits >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must delete the "NOSPAM" << ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #61 *****************************