Re: Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

[Todd Vierling]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Joseph S D Yao wrote:

> If you want console access whether up or down, and are willing to settle
> for serial console access, Cyclades has stackable boxes with 48 ports
> each, and there exist cards ("PC Weasel", )
> that allow you to work with PC systems whether they are up or down, as
> if on the video console.

I'd second the notion on the PC Weasel.  I know the guy who designed them
(hpeyerl), and they were designed from the start to be indistinguishable to
the OS from textmode VGA cards and PS2 keyboards.  The redraw algorithm is
smart, along the lines of "screen" -- some serial BIOS support I've seen is
far too full-screen-redraw happy (Dell).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Jeffrey I. Schiller]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the
call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you
are in the right county you are probably OK.
 


This is actually more important then it sounds. Not long ago I was
driving around in Northern New Hampshire on I93 and saw a situation I
believed should be reported to the police. I used my cell phone to dial
"*SP" (which I saw on many signs in Massachusetts claiming it was how
you called the State Police).

Well, someone answers "State Police" and I begin to describe where I am.
Much confusion results until I realize that I am talking to the
MASSACHUSETTS State Police even when in Northern New Hampshire!

-Jeff

---
=
Jeffrey I. Schiller
MIT Network Manager
Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue  Room W92-190
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
617.253.0161 - Voice
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: You're all over thinking this (was: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service)

[Brad Knowles]

At 4:19 PM -0700 2005-07-20, Steve Gibbard wrote:


 At some point it makes sense to solve the problems you can solve, rather
 than inventing new ones.


	True enough.  However, the tough problems are always the ones you 
never thought of before you started building the system.  Therefore, 
it helps to try to come up with as many scenarios as you can, and try 
to find the various weaknesses in the system.  You might decide to 
not try to do anything to fix them, but you should at least be aware 
of them.


	For example, one example came to me tonight -- get a CDMA mobile 
phone with EV-DO and a flat-rate subscription, then run a SIP/VOIP 
softphone over that.  Yes, the cost of the EV-DO flat rate is high, 
but a few short duration long distance calls per month could very 
easily exceed the monthly rate you'd pay.  And in times of trouble, 
people frequently grab the device they're most familiar with, and not 
necessarily the right one for the job at hand.



	In the case of regular cell phones, if you are roaming on a 
network in a foreign country, or you have rented a local phone, I 
understand that the carriers have gotten together and made sure that 
the various 911/112/999 emergency services numbers work world-wide, 
so that if you're an American in Europe, you can still call 911 and 
have that work as expected.


	But in the case of the EV-DO softphone, things get nastier.  And 
I can see companies deciding to go with a dedicated EV-DO softphone, 
to save on overall expenses.


--
Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  SAGE member since 1995.  See  for more info.

compromized host list available

[Rick Wesson]

Folks,

I've developed a tool to pull together a bunch of information from 
DNSRBLs and mix it with a BGP feed, the result is that upon request I 
can generate a report of all the compromised hosts on your network as 
seen by various DNSRBLs.


reports are available daily in pdf, text, csv, and excel. they are all a 
bit chunky but should be helpful.


contact me off list, if you would like to get a daily report for your 
ASN. You will be required to prove you are associated with and 
responsible for the ASN you want a report for.


The report are free so this isn't a commercial =) honestly I hope the 
stuff helps.


-rick

You're all over thinking this (was: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service)

[Steve Gibbard]

I don't know all that much about commercial VOIP service or GPS, but it 
seems to me I've just read lots and lots of messages citing weird cases 
where locating a VOIP phone won't work well as evidence that the whole 
idea is a failure, while none of those cases appear to have much to do 
with the problem that people have been trying to solve.  The end result of 
this is that a bunch of people who have loudly written the problem off as 
impossible then start loudly complaining that those working on the problem 
didn't ask them how to do it.


The basic problem, if I understand correctly, is this:  For the last 
several years, anybody picking up phone installed in a reasonably standard 
way and calling 911 could expect that if weren't able to explain where 
they were, the police would show up anyway.  It was hard to see this as 
espionage or as a civil liberties violation -- the wire goes where the 
wire goes.


Now we've got competition among providers of wire line residential phone 
service, and the competitors are mostly VOIP companies who provide their 
service over the users' cable modems.  Since this service is being 
marketed as equivalent to regular home phone service, and used that way by 
lots of its customers, it seems reasonable to expect that calling 911 from 
it would work the same way.  There's a minor problem -- the VOIP carrier 
often doesn't provide the wire, and thus doesn't know where the wire goes 
-- but that seems easy enough to get around.  The simplest way to do it 
would be to ask two questions when the service gets installed:  Is it 
going to be used in a fixed location, and if so, where?  Asking the same 
questions again whenever the billing address changes should keep this 
reasonably up to date.


There are, of course, other ways to do this, which might also work. 
Whether GPS in the ATA box will work has already been discussed to death 
here.  Requiring the cable or DSL providers to map IP addresses to 
installed locations would presumably also work, although with many more 
layers of complexity to go through to have useful information accompany a 
phone call.  Anyhow, I'm sure if we leave those questions to those who 
have to implement it, they'll figure out something that doesn't require 
too much completely extraneous work on their parts.


There are, of course, VOIP installations where this won't work.  I use a 
VOIP soft phone through a gateway in San Francisco to call the US from 
countries where using my US cell phone is expensive, and there are plenty 
of other people who use VOIP phones in much the same way.  Owen maybe 
isn't quite unique in his bizarre scenario of trying to hide his location 
by using his wi-fi phone via repeaters from two counties away from the 
base station.  But these scenarios aren't at all relevant to the problem 
at hand.  If I need urgent help in a hotel room in a foreign country, I'll 
grab the hotel phone and call somebody local rather than trying to patch a 
call through to the US via my computer.  And if Owen were to die because 
he deliberately hid his location when calling 911 and the ambulance 
couldn't find him, it would be hard to argue that it would be anybody's 
fault but Owen's.


At some point it makes sense to solve the problems you can solve, rather 
than inventing new ones.


Yes, this ignores the cell phone issue, which seems rather different 
because they're almost always portable.  It's already had years of work 
put into it, and doesn't need to be reinvented here.


-Steve

Re: OT: RIP, James Doohan...

[Gadi Evron]

Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:


I know this is off-topic, but the "engineer's engineer"
died early today, ironically, on the 36th anniversaty of
the Apollo 11 lunar landing (20 July, 1969).

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/20/obit.doohan.ap/index.html

So long, Mr. Scott. You'll be missed.


http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/12920.html

:(

I only hope we won't see headlines tomorrow the sort of "he was beamed 
up to a better place".


Gadi.

Re: Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 04:53:36PM -0400, Drew Weaver wrote:
>   Buying the hardware boxes sounds pretty attractive, but I
> wondered if any industrious open sourcers have come up with anything
> that any NANOG-ers have come across that would do something similar to
> what the Dell 2161DS box would do. I realize we would need a server with
> some cards in it to terminate the connections and then some cards to go
> in the boxes, we just need a bit more density than 16 ports.

If you just need KVM to a number of Unix systems, you can use remote
X-Windows logins via 'xdm'.  Or just 'ssh'.  This does not serve the
problem of using the remote console when the system is not up and
running the X client programs.

If you want console access whether up or down, and are willing to settle
for serial console access, Cyclades has stackable boxes with 48 ports
each, and there exist cards ("PC Weasel", )
that allow you to work with PC systems whether they are up or down, as
if on the video console.

The Dell 2161DS can stack to up to 16 X 16 ports.  I realize this
doesn't change the density, but it might help.

-- 
Joe Yao
---
   This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.

Re: Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Drew 
Weaver wrote:




Buying the hardware boxes sounds pretty attractive, but I
wondered if any industrious open sourcers have come up with anything
that any NANOG-ers have come across that would do something similar to
what the Dell 2161DS box would do. I realize we would need a server with
some cards in it to terminate the connections and then some cards to go
in the boxes, we just need a bit more density than 16 ports.


I've been mostly successful in eliminating the need for most of our kvm 
ports, formerly with pc weasels, and more recently with servers supporting 
ipmi directly or through an addon card. the pc weasels required terminal 
servers the ipmi cards just require that you put the first network 
interface on the machine someplace you can reach.


weasel

http://www.realweasel.com/

ipmi

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/


Tia

-Drew





--
--
Joel Jaeggli   Unix Consulting [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2

Re: Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

[alex]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Drew Weaver wrote:

>   Buying the hardware boxes sounds pretty attractive, but I wondered
> if any industrious open sourcers have come up with anything that any
> NANOG-ers have come across that would do something similar to what the
> Dell 2161DS box would do. I realize we would need a server with some
> cards in it to terminate the connections and then some cards to go in
> the boxes, we just need a bit more density than 16 ports.
There is an open-sores project to design KVM-over-IP, at 
http://okvm.sourceforge.net/kvmoverip.html

However, all you want is Dell 2161DS PEM (port extender module, equivalent
of avocent ARI). With PEM, you can attach 8 devices to each of the 16
ports of the 2161DS, total 128 ports per 2161DS.

-alex

Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

[Drew Weaver]

Buying the hardware boxes sounds pretty attractive, but I
wondered if any industrious open sourcers have come up with anything
that any NANOG-ers have come across that would do something similar to
what the Dell 2161DS box would do. I realize we would need a server with
some cards in it to terminate the connections and then some cards to go
in the boxes, we just need a bit more density than 16 ports.

Tia

-Drew

RE: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Owen DeLong]

Forget defeat, just look at the normal margin of error...

Forget fixed-line services, location is easy to solve for that.  Let's look
at
things like a guy sitting on a mountain top with a BBQ grill antenna, and
amp,
and a WiFi card.  I could make VOIP calls from Apple's public Wireless
network
from 25 miles away on top of Loma Prietta if I wanted to.  (In fact, I did
once,
just to test it).  If someone put a wireless bridge up there, then, I could
make
the same call from downtown Monterey.  The first IP device would still be in
Cupertino.  I'd be in a different county (at least 2 counties away), in a
different LATA, and, in completely different CHP dispatch zones.  Even CDF
would expect me to be talking to a different dispatch center.

Doing this right is not only hard, but, it's also just not that desirable in
my opinion.  It's a huge invasion of privacy as far as I'm concerned.

Owen


--On July 20, 2005 3:19:41 PM -0500 Shane Owens
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
>  Why not standardize this across the board for all access devices? As an
> example if my Broadband provider was required to enter location
> information in my cable modem so that when I connected a VOIP device
> (ATA, IAD, PC, etc) it would query the first IP device it encountered and
> gather location data that would solve a lot of these problems.  Any
> solution can be circumvented so no solution will be perfect, but this
> idea seems easy enough to accomplish with existing technology. It would
> even fix the VPN connection issue, unless the user was purposefully
> trying to obfuscate himself in which case I don't think we are
> necessarily concerned about his ability to contact emergency services.
> 
> Shane
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 7:22 AM
> To: nanog@merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service
> 
> 
> 
>  Maybe we should lobby government to require Wi-Fi access point
> manufacturers to include location information in their devices. After
> that, the VoIP operators and the Wi-Fi access operators should be able to
> sort out some protocol for sharing the location info.
> 
> Welcome to the 21st century! They never said it was going to be easy.
> 
> --Michael Dillon
> 
> 



-- 
If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me.


pgpAFj7DpsUGA.pgp
Description: PGP signature

RE: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Shane Owens]

 Why not standardize this across the board for all access devices? As an 
example if my Broadband provider was required to enter
location information in my cable modem so that when I connected a VOIP device 
(ATA, IAD, PC, etc) it would query the first IP device
it encountered and gather location data that would solve a lot of these 
problems.  Any solution can be circumvented so no solution
will be perfect, but this idea seems easy enough to accomplish with existing 
technology. It would even fix the VPN connection issue,
unless the user was purposefully trying to obfuscate himself in which case I 
don't think we are necessarily concerned about his
ability to contact emergency services.

Shane

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 7:22 AM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service



 Maybe we should lobby government to require Wi-Fi access point manufacturers 
to include location information in their devices.
After that, the VoIP operators and the Wi-Fi access operators should be able to 
sort out some protocol for sharing the location
info.

Welcome to the 21st century! They never said it was going to be easy.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Owen DeLong]

Perhaps the tube wasn't the best example, although, I remember making cell
calls from places in stations I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten GPS
coverage.

In any case, the fundamental assumption that detailed location information
for
e911 on every phone or phone-like capability is desirable is, in my opinion,
flawed.  I understand why the police-state zealots at places like the FBI
want it, but, I'm not sure why network operators are so anxious to solve
this
problem.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy that my laptop and it's SIP soft-phone
aren't
location traceable at all times.

Owen


pgpw8V3c1nUmv.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Bob Metcalf not taking his meds again....

[Fergie (Paul Ferguson)]

I was delighted this afternoon to see post on on /. 
entitled "Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF":

[snip]

"The inventor of Ethernet Bob Metcalfe is interviewed
by AlwaysOn on current issues. Metcalfe is known for
challenging commonly accepted wisdom and this time he's
quite confrontational. On open source and operating systems:
"If you look at Windows and Linux, both are based on 25-year-
old technology. Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's
operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems
from 1968. These are both old clunkers. So the question is,
Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?"
On IPv6 adoption and IETF: "Back when you attended the IETF,
you all looked down your noses at the ITU (or I guess it
was called CCITT at the time)--the entrenched, corporately
manipulated, corrupt, competent standards being embodied
in IT. We were the IETF--the swashbuckling, institution-
oriented, open people, the rebels. That's changed now.
The Internet has arrived, and all of those people are
now just like ITU: IETF has become the ITU.""

[snip]

http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/07/20/1529242.shtml?tid=218

One of my favorite exchanges between Metcalf and AlwaysOn,
from this article, is this one:

[snip]

AlwaysOn: Where to you think this ideology stems from?

Metcalfe: The IETF, or maybe the IAB. They have beards
and wear T-shirts with tie-dye on them, and they live
in universities.

AlwaysOn: And they know how slide-rules work.

Metcalfe: Yes. Plus, they hate my guts; I used to
flame them with my columns. They're sweet people
underneath, but their ideology gets in the way.

[snip]

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=9712_0_3_0_C

Right, Bob. Whatever. ;-)

- ferg

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

OT: RIP, James Doohan...

[Fergie (Paul Ferguson)]

I know this is off-topic, but the "engineer's engineer"
died early today, ironically, on the 36th anniversaty of
the Apollo 11 lunar landing (20 July, 1969).

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/20/obit.doohan.ap/index.html

So long, Mr. Scott. You'll be missed.

- ferg

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Alex Rubenstein wrote:




GPS does not work through the fuselage of a aluminum airplane.

I've tried. More than once.


The gps carrier frequency is 1575.42mhz

a decent gps antenna is unfortunately a bit larger than most small gps 
recivers let alone cellphones. multipath cancelation is a serious issue 
when dealing with gps, and being in a aluminum tube mailer, under tree 
cover or inside commercial construction doesn't help your situation when 
all you have is a tiny patch antenna printed on a pcb.





On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:




If a person is calling 911 from a plane in flight, are
we really so concerned about which PSAP receieves the
call?The last known fix would likely have been the
point of origin in any case...


If a picocell on board an airplane receives an E911
call, it shouldn't route it to any PSAP. The first
responders in this situation are the flight attendants
so it should ring the flight attendant's phone.

By the way, if GPS works in the air for small aircraft
pilots, then why wouldn't it work for cellphones? The
last known fix should be 100% up to date and 100% useless.

--Michael Dillon






--
--
Joel Jaeggli   Unix Consulting [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Stephen Sprunk]

Thus spake "Kuhtz, Christian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the
call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you
are in the right county you are probably OK.


And if by chance you end up in the wrong county, as it happens
from mobile phones on occasions, they will immediately transfer
you to the right center.


At least around here, the PSAP folks answer with " 911" and you 
can request a transfer to a nearby PSAP on the rare occasion they get it 
wrong.  Other areas in the country, however, don't have the ability to 
transfer; IIRC the SF Bay Area is a prime example of each PSAP not being 
linked to its neighbors (unless they've improved recently).


One enhancement I think is needed is a way to convey the level of confidence 
in the location information so the PSAP folks know if they need to verify it 
with the caller.  "Time since last updated" is probably a good input to 
that, but so are the historical frequency of change, the precision of the 
last fix, the method (GPS vs tower vs manual entry), and probably others. 
Another complication is what to do with people whose location changes 
(either due to movement or varying fixes) during the 911 call.


S

Stephen Sprunk  "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov 

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Alex Rubenstein]

GPS does not work through the fuselage of a aluminum airplane.

I've tried. More than once.



On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:




If a person is calling 911 from a plane in flight, are
we really so concerned about which PSAP receieves the
call?The last known fix would likely have been the
point of origin in any case...


If a picocell on board an airplane receives an E911
call, it shouldn't route it to any PSAP. The first
responders in this situation are the flight attendants
so it should ring the flight attendant's phone.

By the way, if GPS works in the air for small aircraft
pilots, then why wouldn't it work for cellphones? The
last known fix should be 100% up to date and 100% useless.

--Michael Dillon



--
Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, [EMAIL PROTECTED], latency, Al Reuben
Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Michael . Dillon]

> If a person is calling 911 from a plane in flight, are
> we really so concerned about which PSAP receieves the
> call?The last known fix would likely have been the
> point of origin in any case...

If a picocell on board an airplane receives an E911
call, it shouldn't route it to any PSAP. The first 
responders in this situation are the flight attendants 
so it should ring the flight attendant's phone.

By the way, if GPS works in the air for small aircraft
pilots, then why wouldn't it work for cellphones? The
last known fix should be 100% up to date and 100% useless.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Ryuichi TAKASHIMA]

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[David Barak]

--- Brad Knowles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   If the time since last fix is several hours, then
> the person 
> might now be on a plane using a picocell or
> broadband wireless 
> network connection that is not position-enhanced,
> and using the 
> position information for routing to the presumed
> correct E911 system 
> may be inappropriate.

If a person is calling 911 from a plane in flight, are
we really so concerned about which PSAP receieves the
call?The last known fix would likely have been the
point of origin in any case...


David Barak
Need Geek Rock?  Try The Franchise: 
http://www.listentothefranchise.com




Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs 
 

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Pete Templin]

Andre Oppermann wrote:


I have never seen any real study by the emergency response services
on how many problems they actually have other than isolated worst-
cases and a lot of political rah-rah. In the end I expect that any
technically feasible improvement to the cell phone position accuracy
is miniscule to the actual effort and expenditures it requires.


(putting on my firefighting helmet for a moment)

I don't have any studies, per se, but we get enough "the house next to 
X Any Street" calls as it is that the "technically feasible 
improvement" is an improvement.


In San Antonio, people "give directions" by intersections, and leave it 
up to the recipient to actually figure out where the destination is. 
"281 and Bitters" represents a ~10 square mile area to most locals, and 
similar scenarios pop up all over.  I-10 runs "east and west" from El 
Paso to Houston through downtown.  I-35 runs "north and south" from 
Dallas to Laredo.  Loop 410 is a 54-mile loop around the city.  Loop 
1604 is a 110-mile loop around the city.  Getting cell phone calls from 
a tourist (of which we have plenty) reporting a wreck at I-10&410 
narrows it down, but still leaves ~27 miles of inaccuracy.  Add in 4-8 
exit ramps, 10 square miles of surrounding area, and a language barrier, 
and you end up with some combination of delayed response, parallel 
response to each possibility, and increased risk to rescuers and 
innocent citizens.


So yeah, I'd like better locations whenever possible.

pt

RE: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[David Lesher]

> 
> 
> I think this can work.  Put a battery backup in the ATA, to power the
> GPS and real time clock.  The ATA will maintain the internet-routable
> address it's using (not necessarily it's own IP address) indefinitely.
> If the ATA determines it's routable address (or /23 or whatever subnet)
> has changed since being disconnected, it prompts (via voice menu on
> connected phones) that it needs to be taken outside and re-GPS'ed.
> Flashing light on the box confirms when GPS has synced it's location.
> Take it back inside, plug it in, and all is ok again.  Or something
> along those lines


So will you block all useage until you do so? 

Any voluntary compliance solution will fail the CALEA aspect.

And I recall reading somewhere in the trade press that the reason
some cellular carriers went to GPS-based solutions was they could
not meet the FBI specs for accuracy with tower-timing solutions.

And needless to say, I can think of many places both cellular and
VOIP cam be used where GPS will be worthless.

One other point: both the FBI and EMS want to know which office
on which floor of the Empire State Building you are in when you
call, not just a 2-D circle of X radius.






-- 
A host is a host from coast to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
& no one will talk to a host that's close[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead20915-1433

RE: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Kuhtz, Christian]

> On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the 
> call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you 
> are in the right county you are probably OK.

And if by chance you end up in the wrong county, as it happens from
mobile phones on occasions, they will immediately transfer you to the
right center.

The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which 
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of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other 
than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, 
please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers. 163

RE: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Church, Chuck]

I think this can work.  Put a battery backup in the ATA, to power the
GPS and real time clock.  The ATA will maintain the internet-routable
address it's using (not necessarily it's own IP address) indefinitely.
If the ATA determines it's routable address (or /23 or whatever subnet)
has changed since being disconnected, it prompts (via voice menu on
connected phones) that it needs to be taken outside and re-GPS'ed.
Flashing light on the box confirms when GPS has synced it's location.
Take it back inside, plug it in, and all is ok again.  Or something
along those lines


Chuck Church
Lead Design Engineer
CCIE #8776, MCNE, MCSE
Netco Government Services - Design & Implementation Team
1210 N. Parker Rd.
Greenville, SC 29609
Home office: 864-335-9473
Cell: 703-819-3495
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4371A48D 


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:32 AM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service


> >I see no other way of doing this reliably than to put some kind of 
> >GPS device into the VoIP unit.
> 
> While I agree that GPS is the likely answer, I wasn't expecting the 
> ability to work inside computer rooms and basements.

It doesn't need to work in basements, etc. It only needs to keep
a record of the last location it was at when the signal faded
away. The emergency service vehicles probably can't get any closer
than that anyway.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Andre Oppermann wrote:


This is unlikely.  GPS reception is usually determined by sight of
horizon.  For example the navigation system in my car has trouble


Looking at:

http://people.howstuffworks.com/location-tracking4.htm

"Phase II - The final phase requires carriers to place GPS receivers in 
phones in order to deliver more specific latitude and longitude location 
information. Location information must be accurate within 164 to 984 feet 
(50-300 meters)."


It does look like the requirements in E911 are designed around what can be 
done via cellphone based location services without GPS (ie some kind of 
distance to towers/angle approach).


--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Paul Vixie on the wgig report

[Fergie (Paul Ferguson)]

I would highly recommend reading Paul's comments, as he
brings up some very key issues.

He also mentioend one of my pet peeves, which is the WGIG's
posture on peering arrangements:

Vixie says:

[snip]

"WGIG seems to be concerned about the general lack of
interconnection and the anticompetitive cost of entry
for new ISPs. One can see the ITU influence here (ITU
more or less regulates international telephone service
today), but when I think of the way national sovereignty
has been abused to turn telecommunications access fees
into [ major GDP sources ], I already don't think I'm
going to like the endgame if "regulation" occurs in the
area of international Internet peering and interconnection."

[snip]

Seeing as how the Internet isn't a science project anymore,
it's a little difficult to reconcile taking something which
are now _business_ decisions for many organizations and
turing the entire peering issue into regulatory hell.

$.02,

- ferg




-- Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

http://fm.vix.com/internet/governance/wgig-report-july05.html

I like the ending -

> I think a lot of hard work went into this report, and considering the
> number and strength and diversity of views expressed during the WGIG
> process, the result has to be called herculean. I'm a bit concerned that
> it amounts to a generally agreed upon statement that "somebody ought to
> put a bell on that cat". Turning hegemony into democracy by peaceful means
> has been done only a few times in human history, and the outlook for this
> time isn't good.
>
> Paul Vixie

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Andre Oppermann]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In the US, that might be true, but, I'm betting that could be very wrong
in places like London.  I'm betting the station where you boarded the
Tube could be a LONG way from where you make the 911 call.


There are very few places in the underground tube system where you
can make calls on your mobile. Outside central London where the tube
runs aboveground I would expect that GPS reception would be available 
wherever mobile reception is available, after all the tube trains

have lots of windows.


This is unlikely.  GPS reception is usually determined by sight of
horizon.  For example the navigation system in my car has trouble
from time to time spotting enough GPS satellites when I'm driving
in the inner city of Zurich.  It keeps itself updated by compass
and tracking the movements/velocity of the car.  If a car mounted
GPS has trouble keeping up with GPS in a city I highly doubt that
a small mobile phone without any line of sight at all would be able
to get any meaningful GPS signal reception.  The low number of active
GPS satellites and their concentration over the middle east don't
help getting accuracy and reception higher up in US and EU.  The
new EU system called Galileo has a larger number of satellites
planned which makes chances higher to have a number of the in sight
all the time.  On top of that it is 20 years further in technology
refinement than GPS.  OTO it ain't there yet and any speculation
on how good it will be is moot until we can see ourselfs.

--
Andre

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Michael . Dillon]

>I guess it also depends on what you mean by "significantly".  Is 
> a 10% solution significant? 

Nope. 15% or better.

This comes from an old rule of thumb about sales, pricing, etc.
If the new supplier doesn't offer 15% or better pricing then
the hassles of switching aren't worth it. Or, you can increment
the price and keep the business as long as you don't go higher
that 15%. 

Of course in big business, you are more likely to study the
actual costs and implications to find an optimal solution. 
Somehow I suspect that the current FCC regulatory environment
is not one in which such detailed studies will be done before
deciding. So it's back to rules of thumb and letting the market
hash out the details by making mistakes.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Michael . Dillon]

> In the US, that might be true, but, I'm betting that could be very wrong
> in places like London.  I'm betting the station where you boarded the
> Tube could be a LONG way from where you make the 911 call.

There are very few places in the underground tube system where you
can make calls on your mobile. Outside central London where the tube
runs aboveground I would expect that GPS reception would be available 
wherever mobile reception is available, after all the tube trains
have lots of windows.

But you do point out that it would be shortsighted of mobile 
operators to not use the location information that is already
available in the cell base stations. As for VoIP, well if that
is not running over GPRS or 3G then I suppose it's running over
Wi-Fi and that the user has to authenticate in order for the
Wi-Fi access point to accept his MAC address. Maybe we should
lobby government to require Wi-Fi access point manufacturers 
to include location information in their devices. After that,
the VoIP operators and the Wi-Fi access operators should be
able to sort out some protocol for sharing the location info.

Welcome to the 21st century! They never said it was going
to be easy.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Owen DeLong]

It doesn't need to work in basements, etc. It only needs to keep
a record of the last location it was at when the signal faded
away. The emergency service vehicles probably can't get any closer
than that anyway.


In the US, that might be true, but, I'm betting that could be very wrong
in places like London.  I'm betting the station where you boarded the
Tube could be a LONG way from where you make the 911 call.

Owen



--
If this message was not signed with gpg key 0FE2AA3D, it's probably
a forgery.


pgpCQ8PMo5DiP.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:34 PM +0200 2005-07-20, Andre Oppermann wrote:


 So
 my guess is that the real drivers are the law enforcement agencies
 wanting to get better tracking abilities. Whether they get out of
 deal what they are hoping for remains to be seen.  Not that they will
 tell us anyway.


	Actually, the FBI has been at least somewhat open with their 
disappointment of carrier support for position-enhanced information 
and compliance with CALEA.  I've seen recent articles in the press 
that has made this obvious.  It seems that the problem is that too 
many people are holding onto their old phones, and the networks which 
selected GPS as their solution aren't getting enough uptake fast 
enough on the new position-enhanced models.


	Contrary to my previous post, Nextel appears to be one of the 
carriers that selected GPS, and Verizon and Sprint appear to have 
done the same.  AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile appear to have gone the 
tower triangulation route.


	But as far as E911 is concerned, the problem appears that many of 
the emergency services providers still aren't equipped with the 
necessary equipment -- the article at  is a 
little old, but the situation was so bad at the time that I can't 
imagine the entire world has been turned around since.



	The whole CALEA/E911 issue was known a long time back.  Even 
_Wired_ picked up on it in early 1998, in the article at 
, or 
. 
And the interaction between VOIP, E911, and CALEA is still getting 
some traction (see 
).


--
Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  SAGE member since 1995.  See  for more info.

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Brad Knowles]

At 11:21 AM +0100 2005-07-20, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the
 call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you
 are in the right county you are probably OK.


	If all you use the "last known position" information for is 
routing to the correct E911 system, that might be okay.  However, one 
thing I believe you need to also transmit along with the position 
information is "time since last fix", so that you can get some sort 
of idea how long it's been since that position information was 
reasonably accurate.


	If the time since last fix is several hours, then the person 
might now be on a plane using a picocell or broadband wireless 
network connection that is not position-enhanced, and using the 
position information for routing to the presumed correct E911 system 
may be inappropriate.



	So long as we give additional information which gives the system 
an idea of the expected level of age and error in the information, I 
think the risks should be able to be reasonably minimized.



 In any case, no solution to E911 and VoIP is likely to meet
 100% of its requirements, but if you can improve the situation
 significantly, then it is still worth doing.


	I guess it also depends on what you mean by "significantly".  Is 
a 10% solution significant?  Do you need 90% before you're 
significant?  And what's the cost of false positives, as well as 
false negatives?  I think all these factors need to be considered, 
when looking at potential solutions.


--
Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  SAGE member since 1995.  See  for more info.

Re: clec vs ilec, how do you know who's lying?

[John Curran]

David,

   It depends a little on what sort of "continuous blame" the CLEC
   is pointing at the ILEC...   If the statement is that the ILEC fails
   to show up multiple times, then cancel with the CLEC and order
   elsewhere.   As someone else pointed out, CLEC's are customers
   of the ILEC wholesale teams, and while a missed delivery date
   happens all the time, multiple missed dates on one order means
   that the CLEC isn't managing the process and escalating as needed.

   If the reason is due to a "lack of facilities" claim by the ILEC, then
   give the CLEC a specific date (which is about 15 days out) to achieve
   activation.   The CLEC should have the ability to prioritize their LEC
   orders to get this in on time, or even to order expensive retail service,
   watch it get installed fast despite the supposed facility shortage, and
   then convert it to special access after the fact. 

   CLEC's remain a great bargain but recognize that they're operating
   in a regulatory environment that has turned hostile.   Long-term,
   CLEC's may not be able to provide any delivery certainty to customers
   not on their direct fiber plants...

/John

At 6:29 PM -0400 7/18/05, David Hubbard wrote:
>Hello everyone, not sure if this is off topic or not
>since it is will be operational in nature if I can ever
>get the service set up. :-)  I'm having the pleasure, or
>lack thereof, of ordering some data connectivity via a
>very large clec which requires the ilec to provide the
>local loops.  Well we're about two months past the
>estimated install completion and all I get from the clec
>is continuous blame pointed at the ilec who has now
>missed three install dates and in turn has wasted staff
>time sitting there from 8 to 5 each of the days; assuming
>they were really scheduled in the first place.  I know the
>two types of entities don't particularly like each other
>but at this point how do I tell who's lying to me?  I
>have supposed work order numbers for the ilec but I don't
>have any direct contact with them to see if they are
>real numbers and if the disposition of the previous
>work orders are what the clec has told me or if they are
>messing things up themselves and trying to cover it up.
>
>Thanks,
>
>David

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Andre Oppermann]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  In either case, simply keeping the last known signal lock may 
very well be one of the worst things you could do.


Depends on what you want to do with the location info. If you
want to immediately dispatch a vehicle, then you have to realize
that you may be sending one to the edge of the cell tower's range
when the caller is many miles away. Or that you might be sending
one to the east side of the downtown highrise district when the
caller has moved on to the west side of the downtown highrise
district.

On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the
call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you
are in the right county you are probably OK.

In any case, no solution to E911 and VoIP is likely to meet
100% of its requirements, but if you can improve the situation
significantly, then it is still worth doing.


I have never seen any real study by the emergency response services
on how many problems they actually have other than isolated worst-
cases and a lot of political rah-rah. In the end I expect that any
technically feasible improvement to the cell phone position accuracy
is miniscule to the actual effort and expenditures it requires. So
my guess is that the real drivers are the law enforcement agencies
wanting to get better tracking abilities. Whether they get out of
deal what they are hoping for remains to be seen.  Not that they will
tell us anyway.

--
Andre

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Andre Oppermann]

Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:


On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Andre Oppermann wrote:

To sum it up: Using GPS to geo-locate VoIP phones or adapters is 
broken by design.


No, it isn't. Relying on satellite connectivity to do so broken, but 
that's not how it works anymore. Did you even read the article regarding 
indoor GPS that I posted earlier in the thread?


I did but those ground based transmitters are only for improving accuracy
by sending you the position delta determined vs. real for that region. It
doesn't help if you don't receive a GPS signal. That ain't satellite radio
which is being terristrically re-broadcast.

For more information have a look the descriptions of these augumented GPS
systems:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS#Techniques_to_improve_GPS_accuracy
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration

To sum it up: Without having good GPS reception you can't do trilateration
and without it you can't apply any accuracy improvements.

--
Andre

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Michael . Dillon]

>In either case, simply keeping the last known signal lock may 
> very well be one of the worst things you could do.

Depends on what you want to do with the location info. If you
want to immediately dispatch a vehicle, then you have to realize
that you may be sending one to the edge of the cell tower's range
when the caller is many miles away. Or that you might be sending
one to the east side of the downtown highrise district when the
caller has moved on to the west side of the downtown highrise
district.

On the other hand, maybe all you want to do is to route the
call to the right E911 center. In that case, as long as you
are in the right county you are probably OK.

In any case, no solution to E911 and VoIP is likely to meet
100% of its requirements, but if you can improve the situation
significantly, then it is still worth doing.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Andre Oppermann wrote:

To sum it up: Using GPS to geo-locate VoIP phones or adapters is broken 
by design.


No, it isn't. Relying on satellite connectivity to do so broken, but 
that's not how it works anymore. Did you even read the article regarding 
indoor GPS that I posted earlier in the thread?


--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:32 AM +0100 2005-07-20, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 While I agree that GPS is the likely answer, I wasn't expecting the
 ability to work inside computer rooms and basements.


 It doesn't need to work in basements, etc. It only needs to keep
 a record of the last location it was at when the signal faded
 away. The emergency service vehicles probably can't get any closer
 than that anyway.


	I've been doing some reading on this subject.  It seems that both 
GPS and tower triangulation methods suck.  For GPS, the problems are 
signal acquisition and penetration in urban environments, especially 
with non-dedicated handheld devices.  For tower triangulation, the 
problem appears to be areas with poor signal coverage where you might 
only be able to barely see one tower, and where TDoA, AoA, and EOTD 
aren't going to do you any good.


	In either case, simply keeping the last known signal lock may 
very well be one of the worst things you could do.



	It seems to me that we need to use both technologies in order to 
get any real hope of reasonably sustainable accuracy, either for E911 
or any other location-aware technology.  And I'm not convinced even 
that's enough.


So, anyone want to place any bets on what's really going to happen?

--
Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  SAGE member since 1995.  See  for more info.

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Andre Oppermann]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I see no other way of doing this reliably than to put some kind of 
GPS device into the VoIP unit.


While I agree that GPS is the likely answer, I wasn't expecting the 
ability to work inside computer rooms and basements.



It doesn't need to work in basements, etc. It only needs to keep
a record of the last location it was at when the signal faded
away. The emergency service vehicles probably can't get any closer
than that anyway.


I wonder how that works with VoIP ATA adapters. Last time I looked
they didn't work while I was carrying it around in its box from the
dealer home.

To sum it up: Using GPS to geo-locate VoIP phones or adapters is broken
by design.

--
Andre

prodigy.net.mx contact please?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Preferably someone with mailops experience there, who can troubleshoot
what appears to be some mail delivery brokenness at prodigy.net.mx -
that is causing email to their users to be accepted by your users and
then lost.

regards
srs

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service

[Michael . Dillon]

> >I see no other way of doing this reliably than to put some kind of 
> >GPS device into the VoIP unit.
> 
> While I agree that GPS is the likely answer, I wasn't expecting the 
> ability to work inside computer rooms and basements.

It doesn't need to work in basements, etc. It only needs to keep
a record of the last location it was at when the signal faded
away. The emergency service vehicles probably can't get any closer
than that anyway.

--Michael Dillon