Ok....time to get technical
It's not exactly accurate to say they use "Packet Cable". They use a
variety of technologies from Cable Labs, the proprietors of the PacketCable
project.
Basically the Rogers Home Phone adapter is a normal DOCSIS cable modem with
a NCS VoIP ATA built in. For those of you that don't know, NCS is a bunch
of extensions to MGCP designed for and by the cable industry (kind of like
H.248). So what you basically have is a modem/ATA combo not much different
than the DSL modem/ATA combos that are available (think Zoom x5v, Zhone 6238
or Thomson 780wl)
As far as the "sharing" comment goes, well this is true however it is a very
unfair comment to make. Rogers puts all of their DOCSIS based Home Phone
devices on a specific cable frequency (channel) dedicated for home phone.
So the packets are on a shared channel, but the only other thing on that
channel are other Home Phone units. The potential impact of this on voice
quality is minimal to none.
As far as the "anyone can listen to your call comment", once again possible
but highly unlikely. In order to do this someone would have to meet all of
the following requirements.
1) connect to the coax cable IN YOUR neighborhood, either at their home or
at a tap (not very hard to do)
2) convert a normal cable modem into a bridge and configure it to listen to
the channel (frequency) that Rogers has dedicated for home phone in your
neighborhood (very hard) or buy some *VERY EXPENSIVE* RF test gear
3) run a protocol analyzer like wireshark on the data coming off of the
'cable modem bridge' or RF test gear (easy)
So, it is possible to listen to a neighbor's Rogers Home phone calls, but
very unlikely. And like Phil said, all you need to listen to someones Bell
line is a $3 phone, and a pair of alligator clips. If you live in the same
neighborhood and have a BIX tool and a 5/8" socket you could even divert
their line to you house...permanently.
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <asterisk@uc.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Scary Call from Bell Muscle Men...
On 6 Dec 2007 at 19:29, Michael Richardson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Are you sure?
I know that Rogers' has said this, but it is my understanding that
they haven't actually implemented this.
And, even if it is on the same frequencies as the Internet, you can't
see other people's traffic on cable without non-standard equipment. (And
I
don't mean a Linux CD).
Positive, they use Packet Cable technology
Unless you've got some serious test/monitoring equipment, you
ain't seeing anything on the drop into your house
>> I think the biggest concern I have is the battery life on the
>> phone line is fairly short, in case of an emergency (ala major
>> blackout).
jp> The battery life of the phone is supposedly 8 hours, not sure
jp> about battery life of equipment shelters between you and the
jp> cable head-end
And... Bell lost power to many of their LEC's after about 20 hours
during the ice-storm, and had to get generators out to there.
Anything that is connected directly to a CO shouldn't ever loose
power unless the loop is cut
Although nowadays they have optical quite close to the kerb
JP
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