Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id AAA11341; Sun, 23 May 1999 00:38:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 00:38:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905230438.AAA11341@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #94 TELECOM Digest Sun, 23 May 99 00:38:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 94 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 6M Lawsuit Against Spammer - Has Merit! (Babu Mengelepouti) Re: Judge Freezes Funds In Internet Scam (Eli Mantel) Sex Sites Getting Screwed (Monty Solomon) Telecom Update From IDG.net (Monty Solomon) Re: Which Cellular Provider Allows US/European Connectivity? (Chris Herot) Have Idea re Filtering Telemarketing Calls (Bug Hunter) Re: Internet Pioneers (Ed Hew) Re: DNA Dragnet (Mike Riddle) 612/952/xxx Split (Dave Garland) Re: Strange Problem (Brian Vita) 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. URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 15:51:13 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: 6M Lawsuit Against Spammer - Has Merit! From the {Seattle Post-Intelligencer} http://www.seattle-pi.com/local/spam20.shtml Thought you might enjoy this! :) Firm faces $6 million junk e-mail lawsuit Fortune 500 business charged by state law Thursday, May 20, 1999 By JANE HADLEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER CONSUMER AFFAIRS REPORTER Another lawsuit has been filed under the state's anti-spam law, but this time it's not against a small-time operator. The target of the $6 million lawsuit is a Fortune 500 company. CTX Mortgage, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Centex, flooded a Mount Vernon Internet service provider with misleading junk e-mail, the lawsuit filed in Skagit County Superior Court alleges. The first few lawsuits filed under the state's new law banning fraudulent junk e-mail were filed against much smaller, sometimes elusive, operators. The extent of the alleged damage in this case also is significantly worse than in earlier cases, said Brady Johnson, Seattle attorney for Connect Northwest, a Mount Vernon-based Internet service provider. Johnson said CTX overwhelmed Connect Northwest's network by sending 5,800 unsolicited e-mail messages April 8 and 9 advertising home mortgages. Under the state's anti-spam law, it is illegal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail with misleading subject lines and with phony return addresses and false headers hiding the origin of the mail. The law provides a $1,000 penalty for each illegal e-mail sent through an Internet service provider's server. That adds up to $5.8 million if Connect Northwest can prove it received 5,800 illegal spams. The CTX spam was illegal in all respects, Johnson said. The subject line for the messages touting home mortgages said "a gift for you." CTX apparently used a computer program that generates likely e-mail addresses, Johnson said. Though some of the addresses are valid, many are not. For each bad address, Connect Northwest generated an automatic "message undeliverable" response back to the sender. But since the return address on the mortgage e-mail was phony, that message was also bounced, Johnson said. The rapidly escalating number of messages were eventually cut off by filters, but not before bringing down Connect Northwest's primary and backup mail servers and shutting down service to customers for a short time. If owner and system administrator Alex Free had not been present, the service disruption would have been much worse, Johnson said. CTX issued a statement yesterday saying it was investigating the incident. "What we have learned is that the e-mails in question represent an isolated incident involving an outside vendor," the company said. Johnson said CTX is trying to "distance itself" from its vendor, which sent the e-mail, but legally should not be let off the hook for the vendor's alleged misdeeds. Free called CTX Mortgage April 8 to notify them that their junk e-mail was causing problems for his system. "They didn't seem too concerned," Free said, in a prepared statement. CTX put him in touch with a company lawyer who said he didn't see any problem with their e-mail campaign, the statement said. But yesterday CTX, which refused to be interviewed, released its own response asserting: "CTX takes the anti-spamming laws seriously and immediately stopped the activity pending investigation of this matter. It is contrary to CTX's policy to make any type of inappropriate solicitation." Jim Kendall, president of Telebyte Northwest, a Silverdale-based Internet service provider, was excited at news of the suit. "Hallelujah," he said. "A lawsuit this major, this is a precedent setter," he said. Kendall said spam is a serious headache for Internet service providers, and the state's law is essential. "If we don't get control of (spam), we're in real danger of losing the Internet," Kendall said. "It's becoming an avalanche of garbage that's filling up our e-mail boxes and the e-mail pipe. Technical solutions will not cure the problem. It will only mitigate and slow it." Kendall estimated that even after Telebyte puts in place filters and technical fixes, about 10 percent to 20 percent of the e-mail that comes through Telebyte servers is spam. Assistant Attorney General Paula Selis, who has brought two lawsuits under the law and is close to bringing a third, said, "The law is doing what it's meant to do if it can be effectively used by private individuals or, in this case, by an Internet service provider to protect its own private network." Johnson brought the state's first suit under the law on behalf of four individuals last year. But the alleged spammer, a Los Angeles man, dropped out of sight, and Johnson never could serve him with the suit. Johnson said yesterday a private detective found the man and he will soon be served. None of the suits filed in state courts under the law has yet gone to trial. Johnson said he's been eager to resolve some of the questions about the law in court, and because CTX is a large company that will defend itself, some of those questions may start to be cleared up. One aspect of the law alleged spammers are expected to question is how difficult it is for them to determine whether recipients of their e-mail messages are Washington residents. But Johnson said in this case, that shouldn't be an issue, because Connect Northwest states on its home page that all its subscribers are Washington residents. P-I reporter Jane Hadley can be reached at 206-448-8362 or janehadley@seattle-pi.com ========================== [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is good news! Large companies in particular need to have their feet held to the fire. Notice how when this mortgage company and its attorney were first contacted what a we-could-care-less attitude they had. Hopefully the litigation will give them something to care about. I have a thing here I have been meaning to send out and hopefully will get to it in a day or two. It is a peice of spam I got from a guy selling his spamming services. He quotes {USA Today} and a couple other major newspapers telling about what a great deal unsolicited email is, because it is 'free' to the sender. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: Judge Freezes Funds In Internet Scam Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 21:44:10 GMT > The e-mail helpfully suggested calling a representative in > area code 767, which serves Dominica... The creation of multiple area codes for the Caribbean has made it difficult to distinguish them from U.S. and Canadian area codes, yet the pricing is vastly different. Rather than have the FTC pursue individual perpetrators taking advantage of this confusion, it seems like it would be highly preferable for the FCC to dictate the use of the international dialing prefix and country code for calls to the Caribbean. Although the use of "01" and "011" as international dialing prefixes in the U.S. makes this somewhat problematic, it would solve the problem for good rather than requiring that everybody be paranoid whenever they dial into an area code they don't immediately recognize. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 15:44:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sex Sites Getting Screwed http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/19777.html by Craig Bicknell 3:00 a.m. 20.May.99.PDT Since they first set up shop online, porn sites have had a problem with something they call the "gak factor." Husbands run up a credit-card bill at Soozee's Smut Shop, then go "gak" when their wives see the monthly statement. Most, of course, deny any knowledge of the nefarious charges. The wife then calls the bank that issued the card, reports the charge as bogus, and the bank cancels it. The adult-entertainment site is out the price of the subscription. Beyond that, it has to pay the bank a penalty fee for the so-called charge-back. "That's always been a big problem," said Seth Warshavsky, CEO of the Internet Entertainment Group, which operates adult-oriented Web sites. More and more merchants say that the problem of charge-backs from legitimate customers has spread beyond the realm of adult sites. "If the customer is savvy, all he has to do is say, 'fraudulent fee,' and the charge disappears," said the owner of an online job-classifieds site who asked not to be identified. "Towards the end of 1997, we started seeing these charge-backs. It started getting worse in 1998. In 1999, it's gotten horrific." Calls for comments from Visa and Mastercard were not returned on Wednesday. Some experts say credit-card companies are so anxious to make consumers feel safe about shopping online that they've made it too easy to dispute charges. In many cases, if a customer disputes an online charge, the issuing bank will remove it with no questions asked. It's illegal to willfully dispute a legitimate charge, but some card holders do it with impunity. "It's a very significant issue for the card association, and a very significant issue for the Net," said Tom Arnold, chief technical officer for CyberSource, a company that makes fraud-detection software for online merchants. Arnold said that he hasn't noticed the increase in bogus disputes that some merchants claim. But many adult-site operators think that the rate is increasing and some blame themselves. Adult sites frequently offer a free week's membership that reverts to a paid membership if the surfer doesn't cancel after seven days. As a result, legions of surfers who didn't read the fine print have called to dispute the charges. In the process, they've found how easy it is to have a charge removed. "They're finding out, 'Hey, we've got a huge loophole here,'" said one adult-Web-site operator, who did not want to be identified. Over time, a sizeable population of savvy Web surfers have figured out how to go on a spending spree on the Web scot-free. "It's getting us a little nervous -- you can see the wave coming," said the owner of the job listings site. Phony disputes are a bigger problem for sites that sell digital goods -- like subscriptions or downloadable software -- than they are for sites that ship products by mail. "For shipped goods, if you've got proof of delivery, that's a way [for the merchant] to resolve a disputed charge," said CyberSource's Arnold. Still, if the product is relatively cheap, many companies decide that it's not worth the hassle to battle the disputes, he said. While some merchants have been clamoring for a change in the way the banks resolve online disputes, they claim that the card companies have refused to act. "They are focused on the consumer," said Barry Bahrami, the owner of Commercial Illusions, which makes anti-fraud software. "They have no real incentive to help the merchant. They'd rather get the money from the charge-backs." Other merchants agree. "The credit-card companies aren't addressing a blatant situation," said the owner of the jobs listing site. "And it's a blatant situation that could affect all e-commerce." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you another hassle that merchants on the net have that they are not very anxious to talk about and that is the 'abandoned shopping cart' situation. For whatever reason, people will go to a commercial site on the web, start pushing around their 'shopping cart' picking out nice items, then just walk out, and go to a different web site leaving their cart full of goodies sitting there. Then you have cases like Bank One, which recently merged with First Chicago Bank, and in the process also merged their web pages, making a TOTAL disaster out of it in the process. http://www.bankone.com has been inaccessible for several days now, at least to First Chicago customers as a result of the way the designers of the new site (for both banks) got things screwed up. What's not a bit funny is the total lack of security they now have. They seem to think they can keep customer's money and accounts hidden away on real deep pages at the site, so they use these URLs that have about two hundred characters in them. I guess no one explained to them how 'cut and paste' works, and how if you study the arrangement of the URL (as to where the social security number is placed in it, etc) that you can get into any account you want. For several days now at Bank One's web site http://www.bankone.com no one seems to be able to get access at at, and the bank's 'On Line Access Services' people are NOT taking any phone calls at 800-482-3675. First Chicago is telling their customers 'nothing we can do, we cannot login either, nor can we reach them on the phone to get any status reports ...' PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 16:04:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Telecom Update From IDG.net WORLD'S FIRST VIDEO CELL PHONE DEBUTS (Source: Computerworld) The world got its first glimpse at what could be the future of mobile telephony this week when Japanese component vendor Kyocera unveiled the first cellular phone able to transmit a caller's picture and voice simultaneously. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125365 LOW EURO INTERNET USAGE: IT'S THE PHONE BILL, STUPID (Source: IDG.net) If the Internet is going to be a mass medium in Europe, carriers and ISPs are going to have to move away from charging users according to the minutes they spend online. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125366 FCC FAVORS LAST-MILE COMPETITION, NOT NEW REGULATIONS (Source: InfoWorld Electric) ISPs that have raised questions about the disparity in the way U.S. telecommunication and cable companies are regulated were handed a set back when William Kennard, chairman of the FCC, spoke out against any further regulation. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125367 AOL, YAHOO TOPS IN APRIL POPULARITY (Source: Computerworld) America Online remained the most-popular online destination, with its combined Internet and proprietary network sites reaching an estimated 46 million surfers last month, according to Media Metrix Inc. in New York. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125368 CELL-PHONE SAFETY AT ISSUE IN ITALY (Source: IDG.net) A major Italian company is supplying its employees with cellular telephones that can be fitted with separate headsets -- and Italians are wondering what hidden truths the CEO knows about cell-phone safety. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125369 NORTEL SPINS OUT ETHERLOOP, YESWARE UNIT (Source: InfoWorld Electric) Nortel Networks today announced the formation of Elastic Networks as a separate company to handle the continued development and marketing of EtherLoop and YesWare products. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125370 GATES: MICROSOFT PUSHES TELECOM FOR SOFTWARE OPPORTUNITIES (Source: InfoWorld Electric) Microsoft is investing billions in the telecommunications industry in order to facilitate further software sales, Chairman and CEO Bill Gates said Wednesday. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125371 ASCEND PROMOTES FLEXIBLE DSL FOR ASIA (Source: IDG.net) DSL technology will outpace cable modems as the preferred high-bandwidth access method to the Internet. However, vendors need to offer a range of DSL options to suit business and consumer needs, according to Matthew Young, international development manager for the DSL business unit at Ascend Communications. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=125372 Copyright (c) 1999 International Data Group. All rights reserved. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Which Cellular Provider Allows US/European Connectivity? Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 01:41:59 GMT From: Christopher Herot I have an Omnipoint account in Boston that I use when traveling in Europe. One advantage of GSM is that it supports data calls. The connection is only 9600 bps, but it sure is convenient in a part of the world where public analog phone jacks are rare. It even works at 160 kph on the freeways. You do have to call Omnipoint (once) to turn on data and international roaming. Both times I did this I had to call back because having the rep enter your request into the billing system doesn't guarantee your account gets provisioned on the switch. The worst of it was waiting 30 minutes on hold (from Europe no less) before I got a person who immediately passed me on to the tech support people. Once I got past the first level of people (who tried to tell me "I don't think we have service in Europe") the real tech support people were very knowledgeable and helpful. ------------------------------ From: The Bug Hunter Subject: Have Idea re Filtering Telemarketing Calls, Implementation Needed Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:57:57 -0400 For a long time, I've had what I considered a neat product idea for controlling intrusive telemarketing calls. I didn't pursue it although I was sure that somebody someday would come up with a *low cost* implementation for the consumer market. Well, maybe I didn't look hard enough, I haven't seen the product show up in the consumer market. Here's the idea: have a *low cost* device that would present the caller the impression of a private phone switch with *many* potential extensions. If the caller doesn't know the extension (which in effect is an access code), he would only get an answering machine. If he has a valid "extension", depending what it is and the time of day, his call may get through or he may still get an answering machine. Different "extensions" are given to different groups of people the machine owner associates with. For example, I may have a code for my extended family, another for co-workers, another for neighbors, another for professional society A, yet another for professional society B ... If anybody makes a mistake and somehow an "extension" leaks to the telemarkets, the "extension" will be "retired" and replaced with another. I've seen low cost products that offers a subset of these capabilities but not all the flexibility. I've seen products targeting small businesses that provides PBX-like functions, but they are too expensive for home use. Anyone knows how to implement the above system with low cost off-the-shelf (or slightly modified) hardware/software? Thanks in advance. --The Bug Hunter P.S. Please respond by posting. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, your product was developed and sold on the market about fifteen years ago under the name 'Privecode'. It functioned almost identically to your description. It sat on the line and answered instantly when a call was put on your line. Your own phone never even rang. It would tell the caller, 'Enter your privecode number please', and this would be a three digit number you had programmed in. If the person entered the correct number, the privecodebox would warble at you; you would pick up any phone and speak. If the person did not enter the correct number, they went straight to the answering machine. You could also assign a three digit code which always went to the answering machine as well. It was manufactured about 1975-80 by a company called 'International Mobile Machines' in Bala Cynwyd, PA. It sold for about $200. PAT] ------------------------------ From: edhew@xenitec.xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew) Subject: Re: "Internet Pioneers" Organization: Canadian UUCP Map Coordinator Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 18:51:50 GMT In article , Marc Schaeffer wrote: > Robert Eden wrote: >> UUCP - (anyone update the maps lately?) > Well, no, I don't think I updated them since 1991. However, UUCP > is still alive, mainly as a leaf-node cheap transfer protocol (especially > in countries where Internet access is not that cheap and where > people still have some UNIX knowledge). Over the last few years, I've gone from twice/month updates to monthly, and now to quarterly. They're just not used in the critical routing way they once were. In fact, as I mention below, they no longer can be used reliably. If we look at the Canadian UUCP maps, the vast majority of the bulk is in the ones automatically generated from the CA domain registrations. The ones humans actually submit continue to dwindle. These days I tend to refer to them as the "pathalias maps", since almost all of the sites mapped in Canada actually move most of their traffic via smtp. They're still in the "UUCP maps" to enable the very few senders who don't have access to DNS to determine email routing. That stated, the fact that the onslaught of SPAM has forced most well-managed sites to disable all but specifically authorized relaying has effectively broken most of the published link data. Therefore I'm of the opinion that the UUCP mapping project should in fact be wound down; I don't see the point of publishing what is unfortunately in most cases now years-outdated and broken map data. In article , Ron Bean wrote: > James Wyatt writes: >> The term 'internet' was (or I thought) only applied to machines that were >> directly IP connected to 'The Net'. >> In short, you weren't really on The Internet unless you could >> directly telnet to other machines on 'The Net'. > At the time someone said: > "If you can type 'ping nic.ddn.mil' and get a response, then you're on > the internet". That was the difference between being on the "directly connected Internet", vrs just hopping your files and email through cooperative sites using UUCP, back when the 'net was a friendly cooperative place vrs what it has now become (largely the opposite). > Even just getting access to Usenet was a Big Deal before programs like > "UUPC" (UUCP for PC's) and Fidonet gateways came along. Before then > you had to have an account on a unix box, and unix machines were > expensive. That all changed when the '386 came along and several > companies licensed the unix source from AT&T. Actually, the advent of the '286 gave us just enough horsepower to run UNIX ... well, actually, it was SCO Xenix based on AT&T UNIX SysV R2. Worked like a charm for me back in '86 - way cool, and cheap; it cost me less than CDN$5K, including hdw, o/s and devsys back then. Ed Hew http://www.xenitec.on.ca XeniTec Consulting Services | Standard International Training Centers rlogin Corporation | SCO newsgroup godfather | USENET biz authority moderator: comp.unix.sco.announce, can.uucp.maps | biz FAQ maintainer CA Domain Registry | Canadian UUCP Map Coordinator | (yes,+other hats) ------------------------------ From: Mike Riddle Subject: Re: DNA Dragnet Date: 22 May 1999 08:27:05 -0500 Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Reply-To: mriddle@oasis.novia.net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Police have long had the right to take > fingerprints from persons who are arrested, and we do not hear too > many complaints from civil liberties advocates about that. I would > assume by extension that police have the right to gather whatever > identifying information they can from arrested people, but the catch > is that fingerprints -- once years ago the latest technology in > people identification -- are rather feeble when compared with DNA > type-casting. DNA records are just a bit too-perfect for comfort > it would seem compared to fingerprints, handwriting analysis and > all those older techniques, although the most banks have started > using thumbprints on checks they cash now; had you noticed that? > Ah, DNA and cookies; what a combination as we enter Century 21. PAT] This gets a bit off the Telecom path, but the problem with DNA is that (except in paternity cases) its best ability is to rule someone out, not in. For example, even with the most pro-prosecution "spin" possible, the DNA samples used in the O.J. trial still could have matched several thousand black males in the L.A. area. DNA matching appears to have almost a scientific "certainty," but as applied there are almost always dualling experts over what the probabilities are and whether the probabilities were drawn from an appropriate sample; e.g., if the suspect is an African-American with Native American and French ancestry as well, a comparison sample drawn from Warsaw wouldn't be suitable for probability determination. Yet, at least in the early days of DNA and even now in many cases, errors only somewhat less egregious routinely occur. The policy question is whether to allow such "scientific" evidence when it has a tendency to sway juries beyond its statistical basis. Perhaps someone with a longer (and better) memory than I have can recount whether fingerprints went through a similar "growing phase." And to bring it back to telecom, what makes it all possible these days is high-speed communications and digital imagery techniques to query the database. Without such, comparison would take so long as to be almost completely ineffective. ------------------------------ From: dave.garland@wizinfo.com (Dave Garland) Date: 22 May 99 11:24:12 -0600 Subject: 612/952/xxx split Organization: Wizard Information Speaking of Minnesota, the PUC announced today that 612 (Minneapolis and north/south/west suburbs) will be split Feb. 15, with Minneapolis (and suburbs Richfield and Ft. Snelling) retaining 612, and the burbs receiving new area codes, one north of I394 and one south of it. The new codes will be 952 and another as yet undesignated. As before, the split will be along municipal boundaries. -Dave ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 18:48:53 -0400 From: Brian Vita Subject: Re: A Strange Problem At 03:02 PM 5/20/99 -0400, TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > Also, next time it happens try to *immediatly* get repair service on > the line, and ask them to 'go in on' that pair and test it right then > and there. If *they* can hear it, and assess the trouble, they will > have a better idea what to do. They have tools which are sophisticated > enough that they can identify within a matter of a couple yards where > an underground cable has gone bad; even sitting in their office at a > computer terminal a two miles away. I hope this helps. PAT] When was there someone actually sitting at a terminal in the CO a couple of miles away. More likely it's a couple of hundred miles away. The CLEC that provides my computer's DSL line is sitting in San Francisco and I'm in Peabody, MA! She'll run a Harris test on the line and tell me that my demarc is 3248' from the CO. I found that impressive. Brian Vita, President Cinema Service & Supply, Inc. 75 Walnut St. Peabody, MA 01960-5626 USA Sales & Service ->(800)231-8849 US & Canada Sales & Service Fax ->(800)329-2775 Business Office -> (978)538-7575 Business Fax -> (978)538-7550 ***Visit Our Web Site at www.cssinc.com*** Check out our new online webstore for cinema supplies! CSS, Inc. is a proud member of ITEA & NSCA ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #94 *****************************