Hi little guy, this is Cmdr.Taco... We're going to link to your site in an article. What? You say you can't handle the traffic? For the low low cost of $699 we can grant you a license to mirror your site on our finely tuned slashdot-proof servers.
I second that.
I decided to go with the AMD 64 architecture based on a THG article citing price/performance ratios.
I don't think I would have come to that same conclusion if I'd been reading tripe from some intel fanboy site.
I just got news last week that I passed the Fundamentals of Enginering exam at University, so I'm on my way to being a licensed Professional Engineer.
My sister's boyfriend found out, and spent from then to now trying to find something special for that occassion. Not only was he thoughful, but as the story goes...
William had mentioned this to his grandmother trying to locate his dad's old slide rules in the attic. They weren't there, but she also happens to be a secretary at one of the engineering departments at University of Missouri at Rolla (very prestigious enginering school). She mentioned this for whatever reason to one of the professors. Half a second later he pulls out a pocket-sized slide rule that looks like it's been around longer than I have and says, "Well, then he'll need to have this."
I can't think of a more symbolic gesture than one engineer giving a tool of the trade to another just developing engineer coming into the profession.
Now I don't know whether to keep it and use it or have it put in a display case for the office.
DSL isn't in the voice band and isn't sampled or transmitted in the voice band. DSL is transmitted over the same wire but at a much higher frequency, independently of the voice comm on the same wire. There's a word for that. Multiplexing.
64k is still the limit in the voice band. It's the limit of the technology due to sampling rate. As someone already stated, the voice band is sampled at a rate of 8khz. At 8bits per sample, that's 64kbps. Welcome to the very real limit of data transmission over a voice network.
It is truly astounding how much bull shit is heard in this place. Please don't cloud the landscape with any further utterings of your ignorance.
"
I am sure we all remember when we were told that phone lines could not physically hold more than 2,400 bps. Well, we are at 56k now, and the only reason we stopped there is because cable modems have been invented and there is not as much money in it anymore."
First of all, no one ever said that a phone line couldn't handle more than 2400bps that knew what the hell they were talking about. There was a limit in hardware at the time, but the bandwidth of the line was never in doubt.
64k is the very real limit for information transmission within the voice-band over standard copper pair used for POTS (plain old telephone service). 56k is the practical limit with 8k being used as overhead. 64k total is possible on ISDN because it uses out-of-band signalling (i.e. nB+D systems where n is the number of data channels, and D is the signalling/control channel) and thus doesn't violate the 64k limit. Any further realization of higher bit rates is either due to compression or transmitted in a different frequency range (i.e. xDSL)
I should have been more clear and said: If you have a land-line coming into your house (or where ever) that you are not paying for, then any service including 911 on that line is not guaranteed and should not be expected.
What it all boils down to is how each device makes the network connection.
Cell phones are a radio and establish a new connection each time a call is made. A "disconnected" cell phone is still a radio and still has the ability to talk to any transceiver that can hear it, regardless of the service paid for on the phone. Since the tranceivers can hear anything in their available frequency spectrum regardless of service level they are required to pass on emergency traffic (911 calls) in most, if not all, areas of the US. I'm not sure if this is a local utility board issue or an FCC mandate.
This contrasts how local land-lines connect to the network because the land-lines literally require a physical connection all the way back to the CO. When your line is disconnected they mark it as spare and can re-provision any or all of it to any other customer on the network. While it is possible that a low level of service (911, operator, business office) is available on a disconnected # over a working cable pair, your physical connection back to the CO that provides that low service level is in jeopardy and can be cut or reassigned at any time to repair a working (paying) customer and you won't be able to get it repaired without re-initiating service with the telco.
However, if you have wire running into your house, you can still pick up and dial 911--even without service!
So we have our emergency land-line phone--for free.
You're full of crap. If you don't have a traditional phone line that you PAY for then you cannot expect to receive any level of service, including 911.
The telco's, cable co's, power co's, and pretty much all other utilities lag behind in completing disconnect orders because they provide no revenue and can be backlogged while completing NEW revenue items on time or early. Any service you are or were receiving is not guaranteed and should not be expected. When (not if) there is a line fault on your line, the automated testing will ignore it and you won't be able to open a trouble ticket because you don't have a billing (account) number.
If you want to move to an entire VOIP solution, all phone companies are required to provide a minimum level of service, called Lifeline in our area, that will allow you to connect to operators, 911 operators, etc for a much smaller monthly fee (~$12 here).
Doesn't the phone company have to tell law enforcement who a phone number belongs too if asked? Don't they have to provide a list of numbers that that phone number has called if asked?
Yes and yes. The first though, who a # belongs to, is actually publicly available information now via reverse-lookup tools. The phone companies won't tell you directly, but there are phone books (and internet sites) out there that list numbers then show the listed name.
Since I work at a tel-co (dinosaur that it is), here are the differences between your scenario and the one at hand:
We are precluded, either by law or company policy, from relaying any personally identifying information to any private party requesting it, business or otherwise.
When we have information that someone has requested for various reasons (harassment, etc) the only way it gets released is via subpoena to the law enforcement agency that the customer files the report with. The individual (or company) needing/wanting the info can then get it from the official police report.
The difference here is that the RIAA, or whomever, can request private information from a tel-co without any subpoena to support it.
That problems with that are:
The telecom giants (aka RBOCs) literally pride themselves on the privacy they afford their customers. After all, who would confess their sins to their friends over a network that they didn't trust. If we lose our customers' trust, we lose our customers.
The subpoena/police report route grants the company certain protections from lawsuits brought by the party revealed to the inquiring person/group.
By complying with law enforcement agencies and NOT handing information directly to requesting parties, we are able to maintain customers' privacy and cannot be charged (i.e. sued) for revealing personal information.
The no-subpoena provision in the DMCA is a huge threat to one of the biggest, albeit assumed and seldom credited, selling points of the PSTN (public switched telephone network). T R U S T. If the network isn't trustworthy, people simply will cease to use it.
You're a piece of crap, anon. You don't even have the balls to log in to post that?
I'm not even sure what the hell your question really has to do with anything related to cost of servives. Regardless, I for one am a happy telephone company employee. As are most of the people I work with in the NOC. As are my parents, both retired engineers from a telco.
I'm the first one to agree that some of the processes are outdated and need to be changed, and we're working on that. However, I really hate people like you that know nothing about the industry and post garbage like this. Something you obviously don't understand (using anon posting) is that the job requires integrity on all fronts. We have customers dependent on our network, and our careers and pride rest on the integrity of that network and on the integrity of our company.
If you want to make statements like "The cost is minimal...Much like phone service the infrastructure was paid for long ago," then please post w/o being a coward and bring some facts and figures.
I can guarantee you that the cost is not minimal since we HAVE to have enough circuits on stand-by so you crappy non-forecasting ISPs can order them with a 3-day turn-around. We've got a lot of capital tied up in inventory waiting on orders from customers that don't manage their businesses well. Additionally, the infrastructure was not paid for long ago. The new telco backbones are neither complete nor paid for. The telco backbones have been in the process of being converted to fiber with SONET and ATM for over a decade and are still in progress. The telco network is constantly evolving.
First thing missed:
It seems to me that this question is in regards to the charges a client incurs from a web host ISP. What I haven't noticed anyone reflect on is that a lot of web hosts have network resources that are either dynamically allocated or provisionable on the fly. There is a fixed cost for the equipment for the capability and an incremental cost for additional circuits, bandwidth, etc. These costs+margin are passed on to the customer that drives that increase in bandwidth.
Second thing missed:
Keep in mind that we still live in a circuit-switched world. Everything can be broken down into voice-grade equivalent (VGE) circuits, aka DS-0's. These have a bandwidth of 64kbps. Every additional 64k in throughput that someone needs is going to require an extra VGE circuit. A T1 (DS1) has 24 DS0's, a T3(DS3) has 28 T1s, and an OC-n has n DS3's in it. Even though things have progressed to the point that circuits can dynamically provisioned, it still requires an additional VGE for every 64kbps. At some point you reach the maximum virtual-limit inside a very real fixed-size pipe. Usually these are sized so that bandwidth peaks don't get chopped. In the case of bandwidth peaking out and impacting service, that is when the costs get really high because it degrades service to other customers which is a possibly a lot more expensive than any extra circuits with the QA agreements in place.
Lastly,
A clarification:
Someone posted that they had a T1 that got flooded and didn't have to pay any more bandwidth charges... Well, that's because when you have a T1 local-loop, you've paid for the full 1.536 (24channels*64kbps/channel). Your interconnection agreement covers the cost of this bandwidth. This T1 has a fixed limit, thus you can't exceed it and can't be charged more on usage. In fact, if you're not maxing it out, you're under-utilizing your fixed cost.
Umm, just one note. MS can afford to buy just about any thing on the planet with it's 5 billion in CASH. Last I read in the Wall Street Journal, MS had the largest cash position of any company in the world. The can easily outbid for something if they wanted to.
Also, along the lines of one of the replies inferring that MS and Sony would settle amicably... I think that is the least likely thing to happen. Sony is gearing up to be Microsoft's only beheamoth counterpart and is preparing for an extremely ugly fight. Getting 144 nukes (as they were referred to in the article) aimed at the heart of MS products is some incredibly strong leverage. It's not the use of them that is important so much as it is the threat of using them that eludes war and lets both sides live on their own terms. That's not even considering the validity of the patents (once litigated and proven) would bring in a huge revenue stream. I think Sony's acquisition is more positioning against Microsoft than for revenue though.
Slashdot Mirror
I know. I was only half way kidding. Slashdot has a very large potential in the "let us host your site or you'll go down in flames" niche market.
If there wasn't such a potential for misuse, I think it would be a good idea.
...a new revenue stream.
Hi little guy, this is Cmdr.Taco... We're going to link to your site in an article. What? You say you can't handle the traffic? For the low low cost of $699 we can grant you a license to mirror your site on our finely tuned slashdot-proof servers.
I second that. I decided to go with the AMD 64 architecture based on a THG article citing price/performance ratios. I don't think I would have come to that same conclusion if I'd been reading tripe from some intel fanboy site.
"Kettle, this is pot. You're black."
I just got news last week that I passed the Fundamentals of Enginering exam at University, so I'm on my way to being a licensed Professional Engineer. My sister's boyfriend found out, and spent from then to now trying to find something special for that occassion. Not only was he thoughful, but as the story goes... William had mentioned this to his grandmother trying to locate his dad's old slide rules in the attic. They weren't there, but she also happens to be a secretary at one of the engineering departments at University of Missouri at Rolla (very prestigious enginering school). She mentioned this for whatever reason to one of the professors. Half a second later he pulls out a pocket-sized slide rule that looks like it's been around longer than I have and says, "Well, then he'll need to have this." I can't think of a more symbolic gesture than one engineer giving a tool of the trade to another just developing engineer coming into the profession. Now I don't know whether to keep it and use it or have it put in a display case for the office.
oops. That should be ternary logic I believe.
Hey genius, read the full post.
DSL isn't in the voice band and isn't sampled or transmitted in the voice band. DSL is transmitted over the same wire but at a much higher frequency, independently of the voice comm on the same wire. There's a word for that. Multiplexing.
64k is still the limit in the voice band. It's the limit of the technology due to sampling rate. As someone already stated, the voice band is sampled at a rate of 8khz. At 8bits per sample, that's 64kbps. Welcome to the very real limit of data transmission over a voice network.
It's called tertiary logic and is discussed as a solution here
It is truly astounding how much bull shit is heard in this place. Please don't cloud the landscape with any further utterings of your ignorance.First of all, no one ever said that a phone line couldn't handle more than 2400bps that knew what the hell they were talking about. There was a limit in hardware at the time, but the bandwidth of the line was never in doubt.
64k is the very real limit for information transmission within the voice-band over standard copper pair used for POTS (plain old telephone service). 56k is the practical limit with 8k being used as overhead. 64k total is possible on ISDN because it uses out-of-band signalling (i.e. nB+D systems where n is the number of data channels, and D is the signalling/control channel) and thus doesn't violate the 64k limit. Any further realization of higher bit rates is either due to compression or transmitted in a different frequency range (i.e. xDSL)
I should have been more clear and said:
If you have a land-line coming into your house (or where ever) that you are not paying for, then any service including 911 on that line is not guaranteed and should not be expected.
What it all boils down to is how each device makes the network connection.
Cell phones are a radio and establish a new connection each time a call is made. A "disconnected" cell phone is still a radio and still has the ability to talk to any transceiver that can hear it, regardless of the service paid for on the phone. Since the tranceivers can hear anything in their available frequency spectrum regardless of service level they are required to pass on emergency traffic (911 calls) in most, if not all, areas of the US. I'm not sure if this is a local utility board issue or an FCC mandate.
This contrasts how local land-lines connect to the network because the land-lines literally require a physical connection all the way back to the CO. When your line is disconnected they mark it as spare and can re-provision any or all of it to any other customer on the network. While it is possible that a low level of service (911, operator, business office) is available on a disconnected # over a working cable pair, your physical connection back to the CO that provides that low service level is in jeopardy and can be cut or reassigned at any time to repair a working (paying) customer and you won't be able to get it repaired without re-initiating service with the telco.
However, if you have wire running into your house, you can still pick up and dial 911--even without service!
So we have our emergency land-line phone--for free.
You're full of crap. If you don't have a traditional phone line that you PAY for then you cannot expect to receive any level of service, including 911.
The telco's, cable co's, power co's, and pretty much all other utilities lag behind in completing disconnect orders because they provide no revenue and can be backlogged while completing NEW revenue items on time or early. Any service you are or were receiving is not guaranteed and should not be expected. When (not if) there is a line fault on your line, the automated testing will ignore it and you won't be able to open a trouble ticket because you don't have a billing (account) number.
If you want to move to an entire VOIP solution, all phone companies are required to provide a minimum level of service, called Lifeline in our area, that will allow you to connect to operators, 911 operators, etc for a much smaller monthly fee (~$12 here).
Yes and yes. The first though, who a # belongs to, is actually publicly available information now via reverse-lookup tools. The phone companies won't tell you directly, but there are phone books (and internet sites) out there that list numbers then show the listed name.
Since I work at a tel-co (dinosaur that it is), here are the differences between your scenario and the one at hand:
- We are precluded, either by law or company policy, from relaying any personally identifying information to any private party requesting it, business or otherwise.
- When we have information that someone has requested for various reasons (harassment, etc) the only way it gets released is via subpoena to the law enforcement agency that the customer files the report with. The individual (or company) needing/wanting the info can then get it from the official police report.
The difference here is that the RIAA, or whomever, can request private information from a tel-co without any subpoena to support it.That problems with that are:
- The telecom giants (aka RBOCs) literally pride themselves on the privacy they afford their customers. After all, who would confess their sins to their friends over a network that they didn't trust. If we lose our customers' trust, we lose our customers.
- The subpoena/police report route grants the company certain protections from lawsuits brought by the party revealed to the inquiring person/group.
By complying with law enforcement agencies and NOT handing information directly to requesting parties, we are able to maintain customers' privacy and cannot be charged (i.e. sued) for revealing personal information.The no-subpoena provision in the DMCA is a huge threat to one of the biggest, albeit assumed and seldom credited, selling points of the PSTN (public switched telephone network). T R U S T. If the network isn't trustworthy, people simply will cease to use it.
You're a piece of crap, anon. You don't even have the balls to log in to post that?
I'm not even sure what the hell your question really has to do with anything related to cost of servives. Regardless, I for one am a happy telephone company employee. As are most of the people I work with in the NOC. As are my parents, both retired engineers from a telco.
I'm the first one to agree that some of the processes are outdated and need to be changed, and we're working on that. However, I really hate people like you that know nothing about the industry and post garbage like this. Something you obviously don't understand (using anon posting) is that the job requires integrity on all fronts. We have customers dependent on our network, and our careers and pride rest on the integrity of that network and on the integrity of our company.
If you want to make statements like "The cost is minimal...Much like phone service the infrastructure was paid for long ago," then please post w/o being a coward and bring some facts and figures.
I can guarantee you that the cost is not minimal since we HAVE to have enough circuits on stand-by so you crappy non-forecasting ISPs can order them with a 3-day turn-around. We've got a lot of capital tied up in inventory waiting on orders from customers that don't manage their businesses well. Additionally, the infrastructure was not paid for long ago. The new telco backbones are neither complete nor paid for. The telco backbones have been in the process of being converted to fiber with SONET and ATM for over a decade and are still in progress. The telco network is constantly evolving.
First thing missed:
It seems to me that this question is in regards to the charges a client incurs from a web host ISP. What I haven't noticed anyone reflect on is that a lot of web hosts have network resources that are either dynamically allocated or provisionable on the fly. There is a fixed cost for the equipment for the capability and an incremental cost for additional circuits, bandwidth, etc. These costs+margin are passed on to the customer that drives that increase in bandwidth.
Second thing missed:
Keep in mind that we still live in a circuit-switched world. Everything can be broken down into voice-grade equivalent (VGE) circuits, aka DS-0's. These have a bandwidth of 64kbps. Every additional 64k in throughput that someone needs is going to require an extra VGE circuit. A T1 (DS1) has 24 DS0's, a T3(DS3) has 28 T1s, and an OC-n has n DS3's in it. Even though things have progressed to the point that circuits can dynamically provisioned, it still requires an additional VGE for every 64kbps. At some point you reach the maximum virtual-limit inside a very real fixed-size pipe. Usually these are sized so that bandwidth peaks don't get chopped. In the case of bandwidth peaking out and impacting service, that is when the costs get really high because it degrades service to other customers which is a possibly a lot more expensive than any extra circuits with the QA agreements in place.
Lastly,
A clarification:
Someone posted that they had a T1 that got flooded and didn't have to pay any more bandwidth charges... Well, that's because when you have a T1 local-loop, you've paid for the full 1.536 (24channels*64kbps/channel). Your interconnection agreement covers the cost of this bandwidth. This T1 has a fixed limit, thus you can't exceed it and can't be charged more on usage. In fact, if you're not maxing it out, you're under-utilizing your fixed cost.
Umm, just one note. MS can afford to buy just about any thing on the planet with it's 5 billion in CASH. Last I read in the Wall Street Journal, MS had the largest cash position of any company in the world. The can easily outbid for something if they wanted to.
Also, along the lines of one of the replies inferring that MS and Sony would settle amicably... I think that is the least likely thing to happen. Sony is gearing up to be Microsoft's only beheamoth counterpart and is preparing for an extremely ugly fight. Getting 144 nukes (as they were referred to in the article) aimed at the heart of MS products is some incredibly strong leverage. It's not the use of them that is important so much as it is the threat of using them that eludes war and lets both sides live on their own terms. That's not even considering the validity of the patents (once litigated and proven) would bring in a huge revenue stream. I think Sony's acquisition is more positioning against Microsoft than for revenue though.
ADMINS - NIX THIS AS A HOAX IMMEDIATELY IF YOU CAN'T VERIFY THE STORY.
/.
Google News and now The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6816) have now sourced the article on
It's spreading.