Telecom-Request@Mit-Mc.ARPA (04/09/84)
TELECOM Digest Sunday, 8 Apr 1984 Volume 4 : Issue 43
Today's Topics:
Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #41
RFI and Lightening Protection
Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #41
Rose Bowl Story
MCCS and collect calls.
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Date: Thu 5 Apr 84 16:28:29-PST
From: Chris <Pace@USC-ECLC.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #41
Regarding message about bills:
I am in the PACIFIC BELL province and they have had no trouble
at all in sending the bill. Of course, that seems to be their
priority ...sending the bill and *then* providing telephone service.
I havent really checked this, but it seems like they are usually the
ones who ask for rate increases to the PUC in California and the
others follow suit (although GTE asked for the last one first I
think).
Chris.
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From: vortex!dave at RAND-UNIX
Date: Thu, 5-Apr-84 23:04:07 PST
Sender: David H. Siegel <vortex!dave@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
Subject: RFI and Lightening Protection
There has been a discussion lately in this digest about RFI
and Lightening protection for some poor fella's modem. It seems that
one guy would like to add a few capacitors to the line connection and
some other guy is sure that Sergeant Friday is going to charge Mr.
Capacitor with the dreaded Part 68 violation. (The penalty for this
one is death but some prefer to pay the fine.) Wellllllllllllll
Relax.
One of those wonderful computer accesory companies is selling
a protection device that plugs into your RJ-11 modular jack. Your
phone or modem's modular plug connects to the protection box. This
little wonder when properly grounded now provides a fairly reasonable
amount of lightening and surge protection. (By the way a surge is
usually experienced when the fellow from the power company accidently
drops his 660 volt wires across your service drop.) As an added bonus
the protection box also comes with a powerline surge protector too.
This is helpful. Make sure you have the device well grounded. If you
do not you have wasted your money.
RFI suseptability is another problem. A few years ago, when
the phone company used to make housecalls, this guy that I knew was
receiving the SSB broadcasts of his Amateur operator neighbor on his
kitchen phone. Well the Pacific Telephone craftperson whipped out his
how-to book and inserted the proper .15 uf 200V foil job right across
Tip and Ring! Holy part 68 Batman! Guess what? It worked. Granted,
you might not find this to be so easy if your modem has a cheap line
coupling trans- former in it. The cheap ones have a significant
amount of capacitance between Primary and Secondary that passes the RF
better than audio. If a capacitor is strategically placed across the
secondary of the coupling transformer, say .1 uf @ 50 volts this
coupled RF energy should be sufficiently absorbed. What you do on
"your" side of the transformer is your business as long as the signal
levels are not increased.
As always Mr. Phelps if any of your RFI capacitors are caught
or kill by a warranty agreement the secretary will disavow any
knowledge of this message. Good Luck. Life is tough enough without
these problems.
David H. Siegel
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From: pyuxbb!hoxna!klc@Eagle.UUCP
Date: 5 Apr 84 13:29:25 EST (Thu)
From: decvax!pyuxbb!hoxna!klc@BRL-BMD.ARPA
This is regarding the comments someone on this list made earlier about
toll phone fraud (I'm not sure if the person was serious or not, but
I'll assume so.) The implication was that toll fraud is somehow
directly costing the ratepayers money and that AT&T had been
"negligent" by not doing something about it earlier - that the "costs"
of fraudulent calls were being passed directly on to the ratepayers.
There is not really any "cost" associated with making a single phone
call. A single phone call does not consume any nonrenewable resource.
When you are charged for a long distance (or local, for that matter)
call, you are paying for the facilities needed to handle not that
particular call, but the aggregate load of all calls. If the total
*average* (phone facilities aren't engineered on averages, of course,
but pretend they are) offered load increases, additional facilities
will be required. That's why you are billed on a usage basis, and why
it costs more to call at the busy times of day. The bigger the share
of the average aggregate load you generate, the more you pay. The
"cost" of fraudulent calls is the cost of additional facilities that
are required JUST because of non-billable calls. The amount passed on
to you would be proportional to the amount of the total load YOU are
responsible for. Very small indeed.
Now think anthing that can be done about fraudulent calls. This DOES
cost money, and pretty much directly. It would cost money to track
down EACH fraudulent call. It also costs more per call to have more
reliable (difficult to defraud) verification methods. SOMEONE would
have to pay those costs. Obviously it's easier and cheaper to accept
a certain level of fraud than to try to prevent all of it. But when
non-billable calls increase to the point of being a "significant"
fraction of all traffic, it becomes cost effective to try to do
something about it - which was obviously the situation when AT&T asked
for, and received, permission to deny credit card calls to some
countries.
Ken Calvert
AT&T Bell Laborties
Holmdel, New Jersey
hoxna!klc
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Date: Fri, 6 Apr 84 10:04:08 EST
From: Ron Natalie <ron@Brl-Tgr.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #41
Actually, I think the problem is worse than people eavesdropping on
you making calling card calls in airports. In several of the cases I
read either the person who was burned by the card abuses didn't have a
calling card or didn't ever use it (and it was home in a relatively
secure drawer under last year's tax forms). I actually met one of
those people with a 3000 page long distance bill. She came from the
Boston area. She never used her card, so it is doubtful that she ever
let the number out. There has been considerable suspicion that
someone in the Boston billing offices has been distributing the
numbers.
The one thing that's really amazing is that the telephone company
never realizes that there is anything out of the ordinary when a
residential phone suddenly accumulates over ten thousand long distance
calls in one month. Most of the calls were to Haiti, it's a good
thing that ATT stopped honoring CC charges for those places.
-Ron
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Date: 6 Apr 84 13:43:44 PST (Friday)
From: Halbert.PA@Xerox.ARPA
Subject: Rose Bowl Story
Two messages about the Cal Tech hack:
------- From: tew181@cit-vax.ARPA (Ted Williams) Subject: Re: Rose
Bowl Story
Throughout the last few months, we have been dismayed at the number of
factual errors in newspaper stories related to this year's Rose Bowl
stunt. ... we, the Caltech students responsible, would like to clear
up some points which have been misrepresented.
We installed a device to take over control of the Rose Bowl scoreboard
weeks before the actual game without the knowledge of any Caltech
staff or faculty. Our only modification to their equipment was a
splice in the cable to the scoreboard where we attached our
microprocessor. During the game, we placed several messages such as
"Go Caltech!" on the scoreboard. The frustrated stadium officials
responded by turning off the power to the scoreboard before the game
was over. There was no malfunction of either the stadium computer or
our device.
In the days following the game, we contacted the Rose Bowl officials
and offered to remove our device and to explain how we had gained
control. This offer was ignored by the Rose Bowl officials and the
city of Pasadena. Unfortunately, the Rose Bowl officials did not
understand that our project had made no modifications to their
computer, as we would have told them. They needlessly spent $1200 in
shipping costs to have it checked out. There was, of course, no damage
and hence no repairs necessary to either their computer or scoreboard.
All that really had to be done was to unplug a connector we had
installed. The figure of $4000 printed by newspapers was an
exaggerated estimate from the start.
Weeks later the City Prosecutor of Pasadena, against the
recommendation of the Mayor and the City Council, charged us with four
misdemeanors. We read this news on the front page of the Los Angeles
Times five days before we received actual notification by mail from
the city clerk. When articles questioning the city's sense of humor
appeared in local papers, he tried to defend his actions by writing to
local newspapers. Apparently the city did not consider this
appropriate; his office, previously independent, has since been placed
under the authority of the City Attorney.
In cooperation with the city of Pasadena, Caltech agreed to share half
the amount needlessly spent by the Rose Bowl on their computer. This
amount of $660 was paid by Caltech to the Rose Bowl. It was mentioned
in court, and the newspapers erroneously reported it as a fine to us
as individuals. The City Prosecutor dropped every charge against us,
except for the insignificant "loitering in a public place after
midnight." We pleaded no contest to this charge, and there was no
sentence. It was agreed that this also will shortly be dropped from
our record.
We have been surprised by the amount of attention which several
newspapers and television stations have given to these events
regarding the Rose Bowl. We have been disappointed that there have
been several misconceptions and misquotes conveyed to the public. We
hope that with more serious matters, journalists will take more care
to report stories accurately and to avoid sensationalism.
Conclusion: Don't believe everything you read in newspapers.
Sincerely,
Ted Williams and Dan Kegel
Seniors at the California Institute of
Technology
------
The following comes from the current issue (?April) of Byte Magazine:
--- Rose Bowl Scoreboard Snafu Done With
Portable Computer
During January's Rose Bowl, a scoreboard prank by two CalTech students
was made possible by two computers and radio modems. The students,
who are now being prosecuted for trespassing, used an Epson HX-20
notebook-size portable computer with an RF modem to tap into an 8086
breadboard they'd attached between the scoreboard and its operators.
The students put several messages on the scoreboard's scratch-pad area
and finally changed the names of the teams to show CalTech trouncing
rival MIT, instead of UCLA beating Illinois. The students later held
a seminar called "Packet RF Control of Remote Digital Displays."
------------------------------
Date: Fri 6 Apr 84 23:49:59-PST
From: C.CRONIN%LOTS-A@SU-SCORE.ARPA
Subject: MCCS and collect calls.
Your suspicion about the MCCS database having bits for refusing
collect calls and third number billing is correct. (Apart from
private service this is useful for preventing collect calls to coin
phones. NJB used to lose lots of money to inmates at the state prison
accepting collect calls, or so they told me.) What gets looked up in
the database is the number that is being billed, whether it your card
number, the called number for a collect call or the third number (if
they still let you bill to a third number).
The operating companies got MCCS from Bell Labs via Western Electric
(which supplied the hardware it runs on), so any wizards are probably
in the Central Services Organization or whatever its now called.
Usually, I think, the traffic intercept database is kept on the same
machine. The systems are run by Operator Services and they see them
from an operational point of view, rather than a technical one and in
any case they probably wouldn't talk to you if they did have technical
answers.
If the business offices don't have a USOC (uniform service order code)
for this that would explain why they don't publicize the service. The
service orders that affect MCCS are sent to a system that extracts the
appropriate data from the service order and generates updates for MCCS
automatically. If the service doesn't have a USOC etc. then the
service order has to be printed out for operators to manually enter
the change in the database. They may not want to generate the volume
until it can be automatically handled. As to why they don't have a
USOC that may be because divestiture slowed down the process of
standardizing USOCs across operating companies and NJB is waiting for
the dust to settle. (This is all speculation.)
Jonathan Cronin
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End of TELECOM Digest
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