goldstein@DONJON.DEC (Fred R. Goldstein) (09/30/85)
A few replies to subject in recent issues:
PC Pursuit does not "save" GTE money vs. people who run data on Sprint.
If you run a 300 bps modem on Sprint, you pay the full "voice" rate,
even though you're using up a 64 kbps channel on digitized sections of
the backbone (which is probably analog anyway, in most areas). It's
more "efficient" of bits to use Telenet, but GTE charges you for the
voice call on Sprint and they don't care if YOU are being wasteful,
since they're going to make their money anyway. PC Pursuit is more
efficient of the transmission, but it requires more switching hardware
(packet switches).
Telenet is not very efficient for "host echo" applications, though many
or most people use it that way. It eats a full packet for every echo,
so if the timer is set below 200 ms., then every character typed will
create a full packet header. The charges are computed in packets, so
you're usage rate will skyrocket, versus using a slower response time.
Tymnet charges by the character, since it uses "shared" packets (their
internal protocol is less like ARPA's). That's probably why your Telenet
PADs won't go below a setting of 200 ms. -- it flunks the manufacturer's
"sanity test", and probably overloads its processing capacity.
Re: Rolm; It's amazing how many people complain about the Rolm to this
day. Rolm's response is to have fancy featurephones with extra buttons
for features, and guess what -- they cost you! Rolm's features are
designed to give the station user the maximum in flexibility, which they
trade off for a minimum of friendliness. Sorta like comparing Un*x to
a Macintosh -- a Un*x guru can do more with it, but "the rest of us"
do more with the Mac.
Rolm's call forwarding consists of two features. Call Forward All Calls
("Station forwarding") is set from the phone; Call Forward Busy/Don't
Answer ("System forwarding") is set from the system administrator's
terminal and has one destination extension. The destination must be
internal. (This restriction does not apply on the high-end 9000/VLCBX.)
It does, however, have four "flags": Busy Internal, Busy External, No
Answer Internal, No Answer External. You pick a combination.
Re: Mexico; What I've heard is that the building housing the
international gateway switch for Mexico City collapsed. It took out the
switches, frames, etc. Restoration of service will presumably be done
by splicing in mobile switching units. It'll take years to rebuild
the building; this makes the 1972 New York fire look trivial.