Slashdot Mirror

Nothing fixes everything, but the USA does not need to fall
to last place in telecommunications globally.

LOOK READ THINK ... 1GG2G2.5G3G... is dead-end marketing hype.
We need to be able to go anyplace in the USA and receive the
same GDMF QoS that can be obtained at home with an option of
multiple providers for all (or as selected) media and
communications products and services. All without swapping a GDMF
box at home/office or personal phone/PCS.

For all the BS and DisInfo US Citizens are feed, from the experts
and leaders of the USA Congress, FCC, Telcos ... businesses, we
should kick their balls so GDMF hard that they will taste their
own sperm in their mouths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_local_loop
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/wll/

Nothing fixes everything, but the USA does not need to fall
to last place in telecommunications globally.

LOOK READ THINK ... 1GG2G2.5G3G... is dead-end marketing hype.
We need to be able to go anyplace in the USA and receive the
same GDMF QoS that can be obtained at home with an option of
multiple providers for all (or as selected) media and
communications products and services. All without swapping a GDMF
box at home/office or personal phone/PCS.

For all the BS and DisInfo US Citizens are feed, from the experts
and leaders of the USA Congress, FCC, Telcos ... businesses, we
should kick their balls so GDMF hard that they will taste their
own sperm in their mouths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_local_loop
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/wll/

Nate at Ars Technica is being either an ignoramus or an arse, let's be blunt. He doesn't know jack about DPI. I can tell, because I do know... What Nate did is talk to two vendors who sell sort-of-deep packet inspection. Basically, they sell traffic shaping. While that's a function that DPI can be used for, it's only the easy tip of the DPI iceberg. Traffic shaping can be done with much less "deep" inspection than many boxes can perform, and really is adequate with lower-level shaping. I don't mind selling different qualities of service, for an open fee; I object to reading the payload of packets and doing something with my private data, be it assigning bandwidth, blocking it, or saving it for their commercial or other use.

Nate did not, for instance, watch Rod Randall's 2005 IEC presentation, which featured the tag line http://www.iec.org/online/iforums/iec_3/choose.asp . Randall's portfolio includes Bytemobile, which acquired Proquent's DPI box. It does a lot more than Nate talked about. It can go deep inside the payload of the layer 7 protocol and figure out what's going on. In 2002, when I got the Pitch from them (my NDA is up), it ran at 600 Mbps. The key market was mobile players -- they were already allowed to sell "walled garden" data services, and this was a very big wall.

For instance, one application is to monitor for email traffic (POP and SMTP). It can then log and create charging records for every email message that passes on the wire. Not that uses the ISP's server, but that goes on the wire. The pitch -- Randall makes this in his show -- is that wireless providers sell SMS for about a dime a message, and email by kilobyte is tons cheaper, so they should charge a dime for each email. VoIP competes with their phone calls, so it should be blocked or at least billed by the call.

But it gets worse. AT&T has made noise about charging for the value of ecommerce transactions. So if you make an online purchase, they'd get a fee for using their wire. Hell, Visa already does, for using their card, so AT&T wants to get their cut too, just for using their wire.

And it gets worse. They can decide what web sites are okay and which ones aren't. Others have already mentioned the Great Firewall of China. DPI lets its user tilt performance, so, for instance, Fox News gets better results than CNN, or Hollywood Fred's web site gets better performance than Barack's, John's, or Hillary's. This is all legal today for ISPs to do.

And it gets worse. Since DPI detects applications, it can block any new application -- leaving innovation in the hands of the phone companies who control the wire. After all, if it doesn't recognize the application, it must go to the lowest category, either blocked or relegated to what Randall calls "hobo class". Think modem speed, on a noisy line.

I do suggest reading Data Foundry's comments; author Scott McCollough is one of the best communications lawyers out there. He notes that the Ts and Cs of many "broadband" services give the wire owner the ownership rights on packets passing over their wire. No privacy -- so if you're a lawyer, you technically have waived your lawyer-client privilege by using their network! DPI makes this practical -- they can monitor emails for certain keywords, addresses, etc., even if it's not using their servers.

DPI is the tool for replacing Internet access with a "broadband" data service that is more like 1982's Compuserve, which charged by the hour and surcharged by the minute based on what application you ran (CB Simulator, email, etc.). It will happen if current (as of 2006) US rules, which kick independent ISPs off of ILEC DSL networks, are retained. It cannot happen if open competition for ISP services is restored, because the public wouldn't buy such a service if there were a choice. That's why the Bells got their buddies at the FCC to remove common carrier status from the telephone company networks.

Please use full name when referring to this acronym. Except for Linux-fans, many business people know this acronym as Operation Support System providing inventory, management, support, planning and other processes within a company.
There's already enough confusion out there.

It's also the official stance of the real engineers:
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/oss/

Similar thing with PSP - is it a gaming device, or a graphical application?

An excellent book is "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christine Hogan. (ISBN: 0201702711) It is theory not necessarily platform specific. It is focused at unix, but can be applied in a windoze environment. I wish I had read that book years ago. It really does a good job of summarizing all the best practices. It's all the things they don't teach in school. http://www.everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html There are links to reviews there. The average customer review on amazon is 4.5/5.

As far as pulling cable and doing the physical grunt work..make sure you do structured wiring otherwise you end up with a rats nest of wire. Over plan everything. Don't forget the simple stuff, have a dedicated circuit or two for the server(s) and network equipment with adequate UPS protection. Make sure the room is adequately ventialated and physically secure. Make sure you have room to grow, so when you need more equipment you have room for it or can easily make room for it.

• http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/scs/
• http://www.swhowto.com/ (Geared more a home, but for small office would be comparable)
• http://www.hometech.com/acrobat/structured.pdf
• http://electrical.bobvila.com/Article/540.html

'''Michael Everson''' is an non-notable UNICODE developer and is one of the most vain and pretentious persons in the world. He created a wikipedia page about himself and is its sole contributor. If one is to judge by the WP entry he is the most beautiful and smart guy, but if you saw him in real life like I did you would soon notice that he's just a little, insecure [[homo|homosexual]] who desperately craves for e-fame.

Having talked to his one of his previous employers (he has had many) I was told that Michael was fired for sexual harrassment and that beyond knowing the UTF-16 code for nearly all the world's written characters he is really dumb, having absolutely no critical thinking skills and is unable to add two-digit numbers in his head. Michael's dream is to finally comprehend binary and hexdecimal so he can tell you the character codes in them.

It is said that Everson has the personality of a 12 year old boy. He gets excited by the smallest of things and has absolutely no ability to understand complex social conventions, such as washing his hands after going to the toilet. Everson was once seen playing with his own excrement at an [http://www.iec.org/ IEC] conference. He just grabbed a piece of poo that came out of his AIDS-ridden hole and smeared it all over the table, making the other participants leave in disgust. This is said to have set-back the development of UNICODE for several decades, as some people swore to never implement support in theirs operating systems until Everson has put in a mental institution.

Basically, the concept is that you use an array of antennas and cross-cancel signals for areas you do not want to recieve (or send to). See http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/smart_ant/ among other sources.
Transmit a broadband signal to all recievers. Have the receiver narrow it's coverage to your area and send an authentication request. Then you are "in" if you pass, and if not the receiver decreases signal reception and transmission to your geographic area, and could even pass that information to other sender/receivers so that you are locked out of the network.
There are all sorts of fun ways to add on to this concept. And much of it has been mentioned in passing in Smart-Radio forums, like the Smart-Radio OMG meetings.

Never mind - my goof...

While W3C has not made HTML a standard, the ISO and IEC apparently have standardised "a refinement of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Recommendation for HTML 4.0 ... Documents which conform to this International Standard also conform to the strict DTD provided by the W3C Recommendation for HTML 4.01."

So let's see my alternative: we could track people much easier using RF-wave detection.

In Europe, many people carry GSM's. You could analyze the number of different RF-waves going around, and based upon the sensed channels and TDMA(GSM)-timeslots (max 8 in 1 GSM channel of 200khz) calculate what the 'cell-density' would be. If it's high, it means many people are calling, having their phones on standby, GPRS'ing or UMTS'ing. The potential is huge.
Based on specific data on the sort of transmission, you could theoretically even sense which type of transmission they are using, and base your screen-based advertisments on that. This way, you can grasp the potential customer even more and increase your net income. The potential is huge.
Imagine people that like to UMTS a lot - you could flash 'Go to http://www..com' in front of their eyes! Heck if - mind that I am not encouraging anything here - we could decode GSM-data we could even listen in and analyze their behaviour upon their conversations. Or grasp their phonenumbers/email-adresses/visited websites in detail. Imagine interactive spamming - the potential is huge.

This was another episode of "preaching to the converted".

"FTTP" used to mean Fiber To The Pedestal - the local distribution point for a community or apartment building. That was an architectural offshoot from things like SLC huts and buried distribution vaults. The "pedestal" architecture ties in to the Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) cost optimization. They run the expensive fiber to a distribution pedestal, then coax or twisted pair for the customer connection.

Granted, "premesis" makes it sound like it's coming right up to your doorstep. I'll bet there's a greasy marketing weasel behind the terminology selection.

I can confirm the Tivo issue. The Cisco ATA186 that Vonage ships, is not setup to support T.37 or T.38. for FAX machines or V.Moip using G.711 and therefore my Tivo cannot phone home. I have now gone 300 days without my Hughes Tivo/Rcvr combo phoning home. Since the program guide is pulled from the air, there seems to be no downside to it but tech support gets upset when they hear this. I tell them I only own a cell phone, I don't mention Vonage. They tell me if I have broadband, to get the ethernet enabled version of my Tivo/Rcvr but unless they are going to ship it to me for free, I'm not paying for it.

I heard Vonage converted to a Motorola gateway for the home, but I still don't think it uses any form of Modem-pass through over G711, I doubt even you turn all the compression settings off you get a modem to handshake with anything. And the Hughes Tivo doesn't allow you access to the modem settings inside the unit anyhow.

This pretty much leaves me out on an island until I get a Hughes unit that has the ethernet and IP built in. I like the unit, it is far superior to the Sony unit I used to have, as Sony's used crappy Quantum Fireball hard drives that quickly fragmented and got bad sectors, causing the Tivo unit to stutter and even the pause function would get porked. This unit supports dual-LMB dish and you can watch one show and Tivo the other, other than the fact it can't call home over Vonage, it's ok.

As to the E911 issue, Vonage has you fill out a form and send it in. I am moving and taking my Vonage with me, I need to fill out a new one. It routes 911 to the local PSAP and works just fine. Once Vonage send me confirmation I picked up the phone and dialed 911 and calmly told the operator that I was testing to see if PSAP routing was working over my IP phone. She confirmed my address and all was fine. So, don't let them FUD you on that.

"In all, it's not much of a bargin. Prediction: watch the churn grow while DSL and other rate-shaped services steal the service (with a lower tiered price)."

Agreed. And don't forget all the other up and coming technologies like wireless modems (there's a version without the Line of sight requirement), Power-line internet, and Very high-speed DSL (someone already provided a link in a reply).

The whole point of GPRS is that you pay for the traffic you use (rather than connect time)...

Here's a little background for people in GSM-only land. Outside the U.S. In the U.S., providers refused to standardize their technology, claiming that GSM wasted too much bandwidth. If I remember correctly, CDMA is the leading technology, with TDMA second, and various forms of GSM (not all of them compatibile with international GSM systems) a distant third.

Welcome to India. 40 paisa per minute (1.20 per 3 mins) is what will convince me to look at cell phones as a viable alternative to my fixed phone. You forget that an average middle class indian earns around 300 USD per month. The food, labor, electricity and stuff in dollar terms are CHEAP. So apart from an initial investment in infrastructure, Reliance operating cost with be a pittance in US terms.

Cell phones made their real entry into india about 3 years back and look at the rates now (airtel is one of the biggest cell phone operators now) remember that about 50 rupees = 1 USD. It is bound to go down further.

Reliance has it right (reliance is a HUGE company by indian terms and is equivalent of GE, Shell, MS put together). More over they offer WLL (wireless in local loop) for cell phone access within cities and more for roaming. So this cost is perfectly reasonable.

Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.

This is a "Good Thing" for several reasons. For one thing, it's quicker, as IP addresses are variable length, whereas MPLS labels are fixed. It also allows a lot more granular traffic control and shaping. Also, you can encapsulate just about anything inside MPLS, not just IP. And you can do QoS, CoS, VPN and lots of other stuff.

This is a VERY simplified version of what MPLS is and does. For more information try the following:

• The MPLS FAQ (http://www.mplsrc.com/mplsfaq.shtml)
• The MPLS Tutorial (http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/mpls/)
• The Cisco MPLS home page (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/Tech/mpls/).
• Finally, there's a big huge thread on the NANOG mailing list about MPLS VPNs. It's a higher level discussion, so read the FAQs and stuff above first. :) The thread starts here (http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg06053 .html).

The real answer is this:

Correct.

Most likely what is going on, is your being serviced by a "sub-station". Thats not the real name, but I don't know the real one.

It tends to be called names like "remote subscriber terminal" (and possibly other things with "remote" and "subscriber" in them). Here's a tutorial on Digital Loop Carrier systems, that being the name of the technology. In effect, a digital loop (T1, or more, possibly fibre) is run to the "sub-station" (remote terminal), and subscriber phone lines are run to the "sub-station" as well. The "sub-station" performs some of the functions that would be performed at the central office for subscribers whose phone line goes directly to the CO, e.g. analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion.

This multiplexes N phone circuits over the digital loop, so you only have to run that one loop to the neighborhood, not one loop per subscriber. (This is called "pair gain" because you can serve more subscribers with one or two pairs to the neighborhood.)

Unfortunately, this means that everything above about 4 KhZ or so on the subscriber's phone line gets lost - the remote terminal filters it out and spits out the standard 8000-samples-per-second digitized signal. As ADSL uses stuff well above 4 KhZ, you can't do ADSL with this.

However, one might then ask "well, as the stuff going back to the central office is digital anyway, why not convert the ADSL signal to a bit stream at the remote terminal and send that back to the central office?"

That's what SBC's Project Pronto, and probably some other projects of other phone companies, is all about; here's a discussion of "Digital Loop Carrier meets ADSL". The link to the neighborhood is fibre, not copper, and it runs, among other things, ATM back to the central office; ADSL carries ATM cells, and those cells get shipped back to the CO, and, ultimately, to your ISP.

If the original poster can't get ADSL "because they have fibre running to their neighborhood", it's probably because Verizon don't have one of those shiny new ADSL-capable remote terminals in their neighborhood.

The real answer is this:

Correct.

Most likely what is going on, is your being serviced by a "sub-station". Thats not the real name, but I don't know the real one.

It tends to be called names like "remote subscriber terminal" (and possibly other things with "remote" and "subscriber" in them). Here's a tutorial on Digital Loop Carrier systems, that being the name of the technology. In effect, a digital loop (T1, or more, possibly fibre) is run to the "sub-station" (remote terminal), and subscriber phone lines are run to the "sub-station" as well. The "sub-station" performs some of the functions that would be performed at the central office for subscribers whose phone line goes directly to the CO, e.g. analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion.

This multiplexes N phone circuits over the digital loop, so you only have to run that one loop to the neighborhood, not one loop per subscriber. (This is called "pair gain" because you can serve more subscribers with one or two pairs to the neighborhood.)

Unfortunately, this means that everything above about 4 KhZ or so on the subscriber's phone line gets lost - the remote terminal filters it out and spits out the standard 8000-samples-per-second digitized signal. As ADSL uses stuff well above 4 KhZ, you can't do ADSL with this.

However, one might then ask "well, as the stuff going back to the central office is digital anyway, why not convert the ADSL signal to a bit stream at the remote terminal and send that back to the central office?"

That's what SBC's Project Pronto, and probably some other projects of other phone companies, is all about; here's a discussion of "Digital Loop Carrier meets ADSL". The link to the neighborhood is fibre, not copper, and it runs, among other things, ATM back to the central office; ADSL carries ATM cells, and those cells get shipped back to the CO, and, ultimately, to your ISP.

If the original poster can't get ADSL "because they have fibre running to their neighborhood", it's probably because Verizon don't have one of those shiny new ADSL-capable remote terminals in their neighborhood.

HEre is anotehr url that will help: http://www.iec.org/tutorials/adsl_dlc/

What it comes downto is older equipment cant handle dsl but newer stuff may be able to. Odds are they just say no to avoid any potential hassles since it is easier that way right now.

SS7 -- Signaling System 7

It's an out-of-band signaling system (hence the "SS") for routing switching messages -- all the bits of call setup and teardown.

See also: http://www.iec.org/tutorials/ss7/index.html

Actually, an ADSL line is asymmetric for technology reasons. While it's true that the LEC's don't like the idea of you running high-volume servers, the lower upstream rate is actually a pleasant side effect for them rather than a piece of the design.

You see, when you have big bundles of copper coming back into the CO, there are issues with crosstalk that have to be dealt with due to the density of the bundle, combined with the fact that the upstream signals at that point are fairly weak (since they've already made the trip from your house to the CO). Such crosstalk is easier to avoid at lower line speeds (say, 90 kbps) than it is at higher line speeds (such as 640 kbps). When sending data downstream, crosstalk isn't an issue, because by the time the downstream signals have degraded, they're already at the subscribers' homes and businesses, on individual cables.

ECI Telecom has an excellent presentation on the issues facing ADSL distribution which I highly recommend reading.
--

Thats just it though- I did not mean to use TCP over ATM, I was meaning to use ATM's reliable transport features so TCP would be redundant.

It also sucks for carrying interactave voice traffic (i.e. phones)

Actually thats what it was originally designed to do, and it is very good at it. IP is what sucks at carrying real time streams.

ATM and Frame Relay don't give anywhere close to light speed switching. Lambda switching will/should do that, but it will be more closely related to MPLS then the other schemes!!!

I know that current ATM converts to electric signals to switch, what I meant was an optically switched ATMlike protocol would propagate at the speed of light. Signalling will still be far slower, but an established connection will be full speed.

MPLS is really a stright forward attempt to get the advantages of IP over Frame Relay without all that complex Frame Relay stuff. And it is simpler then Frame Relay, and ATM, at least if you compair them fairly. reading about MPLS from here and here It looks basically like a way to do IP over X, where X is Frame relay or ATM. It cannot be simpler than them if it requires them to work. Its just an extra layer. What I was talking about was getting rid of IP altogether, and using a switched protocol more directly. thats all. If that were the case MPLS would be unnecessary.