Newsgroups: comp.dcom.isdn Path: nntp-server.caltech.edu!news.claremont.edu!paris.ics.uci.edu!csulb.edu!library.ucla.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV!rsg1.er.usgs.gov!pmgmac020.wr.usgs.gov!user From: rex@octopus.wr.usgs.gov (Rex Sanders) Subject: Notes from California ISDN Users Group Meeting 11/9 & 11/10/94 Message-ID: Sender: news@rsg1.er.usgs.gov Organization: US Geological Survey Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 05:22:29 GMT Lines: 523 California ISDN Users Group Meeting November 9 & 10, 1994 San Jose Hyatt Hotel Notes by Rex Sanders, who has never used ISDN, but will soon. Highlights ---------- - Pac Bell will have CCS (64 Kbps between COs) in LA & SF in the first half of 1995, and in all of CA by the end of 1995 - Pac Bell will have National ISDN-1 on all ISDN COs by the end of the year (1994 or 1995?) - As of 8-31-94, Pac Bell had 18,000 BRI lines installed, and 133 PRI lines - New Pac Bell ISDN, ZUM, and Toll rates effective 1/1/95 - PSI versus InterNex ISDN Internet access - John Day's experiences using ISDN for telecommuters at IBM Almaden - Jerry Owens' experiences using ISDN for telecommuters at LLNL - Bob Larribeau's experiences using ISDN for Internet access 8:30 - Introduction to CIUG --------------------------- Stan Kluz, Chairman of CIUG. This talk was a bit confusing at times, but quite entertaining. Stan "interactively" set CIUG policy questions by asking for a show of hands, now and later. One policy I disagreed with (and was outvoted on) was support for Calling Number ID in California. The current California PUC rules have caused Pacific Bell to not offer CNID in California (yay!). Other services based on CNID (such as custom ringing and return-last-call) are offered. Stan will send a letter to the PUC in the name of CIUG supporting CNID. By the way, if you think the density of acronyms in the last paragraph was thick, you should have been at this meeting. If anyone unfamiliar with ISDN and general telephony terms and acronyms attended, they probably left bewildered. The added effect of pronouncing some acronyms instead of spelling them didnıt help, e.g. "annie" for ANI (Automatic Number Identification), the base technology for CNID and 800 number customer identification. Maybe the meeting needs a glossary in the program, and an "Introduction to ISDN terminology & pronunciation" class! The next CIUG meeting will be in Southern California about April 1995, with the theme "Implementing ISDN Applications". Pac Bell supplied 80 ISDN lines (all BRI?) to the Hyatt hotel, and worked diligently to get them up and keep them running. No wonder I saw several Pac Bell vans in the parking lot constantly! 9:00 - ISDN and the Information SuperHighway -------------------------------------------- Christine Hemrick, Director, Product Marketing, Cisco This talk was pretty good. Christine managed to explain many topics in a way that someone somewhat familiar with the issues could understand. However, her focus (surprise!) was on the central role Routers play in Internet access. What wasnıt clear was that the RSVP protocol she described in great detail is currently implemented only by Cisco. 10:30 - ISDN and Emerging High Performance Services --------------------------------------------------- Robyn Aber - 3Com (moderator) Ella Spradley - Pacific Bell Al Araujo - USC William Bailey - AT&T **Robyn Aber** gave a very good overview of ISDN in relation to "emerging high performance services" such as ATM. **Ella Spradley** was there mostly to push Primary Rate ISDN for voice. However, since she was the only Pac Bell rep on the formal agenda, she fielded many tough questions in other areas. Some interesting factoids: - PRI ISDN PBX access is cheaper and more flexible than T-1 PBX access. - Tariff on file, probably available by June 95, for a 23B+D or 24B PRI line, $1,500 install, $395/month - As of 8-31-94, Pac Bell had 18,000 BRI lines installed, and 133 PRI lines **Al Araujo** gave a good description of the evolutionary use of ISDN at USC. They are doing a lot of cutting edge stuff, especially with telemedicine. They get ISDN and other networking gear given to them by many vendors to test in the real world. Their integration of ISDN voice and data services is pretty interesting. **William Bailey** had a good historical perspective on ISDN from AT&Tıs viewpoint. Until recently, the big selling points for ISDN access, primarily PRI voice applications for large telemarketing firms, were short call setup times (translates into higher productivity), and ANI. With ANI, American Express (for example), can bring up your account information from their database before the call is answered. Anecdote from other sources: When American Express first implemented this, the reps would answer the phone "Hello Mr. Doe, how may I help you?". This pre-identification so unnerved their customers that they quickly changed to a more customary greeting. AT&T is rolling out WorldWorx 800, which (eventually?) will allow 800 number access to ISDN callers. This service will require a PRI line. 12:00 - Luncheon speaker ------------------------ Ms. ?????, Switched Services Director for Pacific Bell (I didnıt get her name, not on the program). Besides announcing that she was retiring by the end of the month (how will this affect ISDN rollout for Pac Bell?): - Due to the hue and cry over shutting down the ISDN customer service center, Pac Bell is planning to *replicate* the Los Angeles ISDN service center in the Bay, North, and South regions (not defined). - Pac Bell has filed for an Education Access tariff with the California PUC, that would give 4 BRI lines to every school and library in the state, with no charge for local connect time for the first 6 months or so. They would not supply the equipment, but are working on deals with ISDN CPE (customer premises equipment) vendors. - Pac Bell will have CCS (Clear Channel Signaling) in the Los Angeles & San Francisco areas in the first half of 1995, and in all of California by the end of 1995. Currently, without CCS, ISDN data calls beyond your central office (CO) are limited to 56 kbps. With CCS, non-local calls can go full-speed (64 kbps). Besides the speed advantage, this upgrade greatly facilitates calls to Europe and Japan, which have had 64 Kbps access for quite some time, and sometimes canıt drop down to 56 kbps for calls from the U.S. - Pac Bell will have National ISDN-1 on all ISDN COs by the end of the year (I think thatıs 1994, but might be 1995). Reportedly, upgrading AT&T 5ESS switches to NI-1 costs about $1,000,000 -- EACH. Upgrading Northern Telecom DMS-100 switches is much cheaper. Pac Bell is sinking major dollars into this upgrade. - Sometime next year several vendors will have PCMCIA cards with dual ISDN BRI and analog modem connections. After lunch, the meeting split into two tracks. The other track was "International ISDN". 1:30 - Equipping Your Network for ISDN Work-at-Home --------------------------------------------------- Brad Baldwin - consultant (moderator) Curt Sanford - Ascend Richard Weeks - Xyplex Bob Downs - Sonic Systems **Brad Baldwin** gave a good overview of some of the basics of using ISDN for data applications from home. **Curt Sanford** and **Richard Weeks** basically gave technical sales presentations on the products from Ascend and Xyplex. I usually despise these kinds of talks at user group meetings, but ISDN is still a young enough technology that I learned some things from both talks. **Bob Downs** gave a talk that was interesting, but unrelated to "Equipping Your Network for ISDN Work-at-Home". He described the efforts to standardize the protocols and techniques for compressing ISDN data links using the Internet PPP protocol (tied up in the usual compression patent battles), and running PPP over multiple links - like using both B channels of a BRI line to get 128 kbps throughput. Simply running both channels in parallel on a packet-by-packet basis will give you higher throughput (packets per minute), but not lower latency ("ping" times). To lower latency, you must split things up on a bit-by-bit basis, and hold your breath that nothing goes wrong. Bob said that six vendors were conducting Multilink protocol interoperability tests at the CIUG meeting. So far, the draft standard looks solid, but some implementation details are lacking. Pac Bell has offered the use of their ISDN lab for more interoperability testing early next year. 3:30 - User Experience - Equipping Your Network for ISDN Work-at-Home --------------------------------------------------------------------- Brad Baldwin - consultant (moderator) Andy Maximow - Stanford University John Day - IBM Almaden research lab Wally Dean - Cupertino CityNet (and mayor-elect of Cupertino) The audience vigorously opposed a repeat of **Brad Baldwinıs** talk from the 1:30 session - almost all of us had already heard & seen it. Brad was smart enough not to repeat his talk :-) Due to technical snafuıs (which were experienced throughout the meeting), the order of presenters was re-arranged. **John Day** spoke first about setting up users at home using ISDN. For several years, IBM had supplied 40-50 users with leased 56 Kbps lines to the research center. People were reasonably happy, but the costs were quite high. They had dialup SLIP/PPP lines, but reserved those for travelers, not telecommuters. This is a research lab, with at least one of every computer on the market. Highlights: - 50% of users want 2 or more machines on the network at home. This requirement cannot be met with single-machine boxes like the new Ascend Pipeline 50HX. - Big problems ordering ISDN BRI lines correctly. - They used IBM 7845 NT-1s a lot (surprise!) - Use Ascend MAX as central hub, with 1 PRI and one kind of weird arrangement with a T-1 line that I canıt describe here. Working great. - Contel (local telephone service provider for Gilroy area) gave good service - GTE (local telephone service provider for Los Gatos area) - very slow implementing ISDN switches, not really up to speed on ISDN. - Pac Bell - great service, 10-15 working days from ISDN order to installation - Preferred setup: Ascend Pipeline 50 at home, going into Ascend MAX at work. - Combinet 150/160 at home going into MAX at work working well, but issues around compression (currently turned off). - Got good tech support from ISDN CPE vendors. - Interoperability not really there yet - recommend finding one vendor and sticking to their product. - Central site router management is too hard. - Remote management of home bridges & routers is too hard. - Open question: How to encourage users to limit online time without affecting productivity? - Message unit charges for a typical user are about $100 per month. Managers pay all costs. - Misconfigured routers can lead to very large phone bills. - Most traffic is IP, some other protocols (like AppleTalk). **Andy Maximow** spoke about ISDN work at home implementation at Stanford. - All costs are charged back to user department. Currently thatıs: $2,500 startup, $80 per month for ISDN Centrex users, variable monthly Pac Bell charges for non-Centrex users. - Working to provide 7 day by 24 hour support for ISDN users just like network users - not there yet. - Have about 150 users, from San Francisco to Monterey. - Have Centrex users on two Palo Alto COs, covers about 50% of users. (Under Centrex ISDN, calls within a Centrex group are not charged for connect-time by Pac Bell.) - Using all Combinet bridges - Combinet 150/160 at home, *dedicated* Combinet 400 at Stanford!!! - Security by call-back - Lose benefit of Home ISDN flat rate after hours with a call-back scheme **Wally Dean** spoke about the Cupertino CityNet project. This project is basically a really slick and comprehensive 1st Class BBS system, that can run over ISDN. ISDN speed is really needed for all the spiffy graphics. The interface, information sources, and comprehensiveness of the system is fantastic. All efforts so far have been by volunteers with donated equipment! What wasnıt obvious from the demo was that it wasnıt "live" - i.e. everything was run off a local disk, not over an ISDN line. 5:00 - Vendor demos ------------------- The vendor demo area was "the largest ISDN-only" exhibition ever, with about 35 companies represented. Everything from ISDN phones, videoconferencing, and NT-1s to ISDN bridges, routers, and even Pac Bell. Most of the names youıve heard before were there, along with some local system integrators. The **Pacific Bell** booth had a good handout explaining the new ISDN and toll rates going into effect 1/1/95: Description Install Monthly ----------- ------- ------- Home ISDN $159.75* $24.82 + usage $26.79 if multiple lines Business ISDN $195.75* same * $125 Waived for a 2 year in-service period Centrex ISDN $220+* $31.65 + non-Centrex usage + Add $200/$400 initial Centrex establishment (min 2 lines) * $150 Waived for a 2 year in-service period Toll & ZUM rates are dropping a lot. Range is from $.147/$.136 for daytime over 70 mile calls to $.0133/$.0042 for local calls nights & weekends (1st minute/additional minute). Thursday -------- Two tracks again today, just in the morning. I didnıt go to the "ISDN and Private Networks" track. 8:30 - ISDN and the Internet ---------------------------- Bob Larribeau, consultant (moderator) Chris Callendar, PSI Rober Berger, InterNex **Bob Larribeau** gave a good overview of connecting to the Internet using ISDN, including this URL for ISDN Internet Service Providers: http://alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/isdn Again, we got technical sales presentations from **PSI** and **InterNex**. The differences in their single-user Internet services were much more interesting than the similarities: - Maximum access speed PSI - 56/64 kbps (112/128 kbps 2Q95, extra charge) InterNex - 112/128 kbps - Interfaces PSI approved list (short), includes 1 TA and 1 PC ISA-bus card. Note: the only approved Macintosh access is through the ISDN TA (terminal adapter). Many Macs have problems with high serial port speeds. InterNex - anything you can get running, recommend Ascend Pipeline 50 & 50HX - IP addressing PSI - dynamic address InterNex - fixed address - Email name & domain name PSI - account#@interramp.com (Fixed, non-obvious name) InterNex - yourname@yourdomain.com (Anything you like) - Multiple CPU cost PSI - Big price difference between single user access and multiple CPU access InterNex - Small price difference PSI is aiming for a mass, nationwide market, and had to simplify the process of signing up people and machines for the Internet. Since rollout, their Interramp service has signed up 2000 users, only 10%-15% are on ISDN (most are dialup SLIP/PPP). PSI adds other services for Interramp customers, such as widespread local dialup access and Reuters newswire services. InterNex wants everyone to have high-speed Internet access via 2B ISDN, and is focused on the SF Bay area. POPs are in San Francisco, Redwood City, and San Jose. In December, InterNex will add San Ramone and Palo Alto POPs. InterNex will expand the Redwood City POP soon due to high demand. Looking at expanding to Southern California sometime next year. PSI will sell you their service, and the approved ISDN boxes, but you must call Pac Bell for ISDN service. PSI will help with line configuration, etc. InterNex is an authorized Pac Bell reseller, and can take care of everything for you. More information via the Web: PSI: http://www.interramp.com InterNex: http://www.internex.net/homepage.html 10:30 - User Experience - ISDN and the Internet ----------------------------------------------- Jerry Owens, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) Bob Larribeau, consultant **Jerry Owens** gave the only "live" ISDN demo during the talks. Actually, his whole talk was a series of WWW pages. Much of Jerryıs talk was really a Mosaic and WWW demo, but the details of the LLNL telecommuting net were more interesting. This talk could have been in yesterdayıs "work at home" session. The LLNL approach was basically: the user interface at home is Ethernet. This greatly simplifies things. Dealing with PC ISA bus ISDN cards is a configuration nightmare. User can configure PC/Mac/workstation at work on the Ethernet, take it home with a pre-configured Combinet bridge, plug it in, and make it work. With PC ISA Ethernet cards under $100, this makes lots of sense. - Most users canıt tell speed difference between 112/128 kbps at home and Ethernet connection at work. - Early rollout was to local (Livermore area) users, but now have users from Modesto to Berkeley. - Large enough concentration in Berkeley to set up ISDN Centrex and backhaul net connection to Livermore. - Problems with review & release of Web pages. Current procedure: -- Web pages online for 2 days in special access section -- R&R people approve/comment/disapprove by email -- Only large organizational units may put up Web pages. -- No "personal" Web servers (e.g. no Mac httpd) - Current main LLNL server is a Sun 2! Upgrading to Sparc 10 soon. - Web used internally for new applications. For engineering drawings, defined new MIME type and wrote viewer. - Best decision: stuck with one vendor for ISDN boxes: Combinet 150/160 at home, big Combinet setup at LLNL. - Use callbacks for security. **Bob Larribeau** described his personal use of ISDN. Bob's been involved with ISDN for many years, and works from home as a consultant. He recently signed up with InterNex for Internet access, using an Ascend Pipeline 50. He uses Eudora to check for email every 30 minutes during the day. His first Pac Bell phone bill, after 2 weeks of Internet use, showed $17 in usage charges, for 1,055 minutes of daytime use. He has Home ISDN, so his 1,595 minutes of night/weekend use were free. Bob has 2 ISDN lines at home. One for Internet access, one with 2 ISDN phones and a zillion features. He also has one POTS line for his fax machine. He finds this setup very productive. Miscellaneous comments ---------------------- - Many users said ISDN was painful to install, but once up, it was rock solid. The hard part of installs seems to be getting the ISDN line provisioned correctly. Pac Bell says they are working on this. National ISDN-1 isn't enough. - Big benefits of using ISDN over modems: -- Higher transfer speed. Even a 56 Kbps (uncompressed) ISDN line is noticably faster than a 28.8 Kbps (uncompressed) V.34 modem. V.34 throughput is not reliable - often falls back to slower speeds even on local connections. With 2B (112/128 Kbps), ISDN is *much* faster. -- Much quicker connection. Typical modem connection time is 30 seconds or longer. Typical ISDN connection time is 2 seconds. Challenge your modem friends to a race: who can transfer the most data in 30 seconds, starting with a disconnected line. (Paraphrased from Jerry Owens) -- Error rates. Modems need error correcting protocols to compensate for bad phone lines, and add overhead and slow down to do error correction. ISDN is end-to-end digital. Bob Larribeau told of 18 hour ISDN bit-error-rate tests finding zero errors! - If I had to put together an ISDN telecommuting program right now, I'd want an Ascend MAX or 400 at work, Ascend Pipeline 50 or 50HX at home, and Pac Bell service. - If I had to select an ISDN Internet Service Provider right now, I'd choose InterNex. Note that I'm of the Keep It Simple school, and a big believer in Macintosh because of that. - Unsolved problem with dialup or ISDN Internet access: someone on the Internet can't initiate a call to you. Technically, this could be done. Practically - what if someone maliciously starts up Unix "ping" to your remote site, running forever? Your phone & access bill is at the mercy of anyone on the Internet. However, you might want access to your home machine while at work or elsewhere. How can we solve this problem? ========== I highly recommend this meeting to anyone thinking of working with ISDN for data communication. But learn the language before you go. -- Rex Sanders rex@octopus.wr.usgs.gov Disclaimer: None of this is the official opinion of the US Government, Department of Interior, Geological Survey, Geologic Division, Office of Energy and Marine Geology, Branch of Pacific Marine Geology, or anyone remotely resembling them.