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Thread: It's Not Only Facebook!

  1. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by Carlos Alvarez View Post
    The ugly thing is that the brand new neighborhood near me was ... wired with telco copper. Sigh. I thought, "Bless their little hearts." Our local cable company offers coax-based gigabit at $120/mo. Doesn't suck, when you work from home and everything is online.
    For pretty much all of my 21 years with my former employer, I was virtual office at home. FiOS was a game-changer for me when it became available because I could finally use ALL the bells and whistles I had been selling to my customers. And the symmetrical service clearly helped a lot when higher-bandwidth video became commonplace. I don't understand why ANY provider would install legacy copper in a new neighborhood at this point...sheesh!
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  2. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    Mike, Carlos is correct that SS7 has been largely depreciated since it was developed for the old class 4 and class 5 network switches which in the current world have been replaced by soft switches and IP/SIP in the network core. "Circuits" are a thing of the past outside of legacy gear that may still exist in some "mom and pop" areas in the US and some countries elsewhere. "PSTN" runs largely on IP/SIP at this point beyond the local CO and any remaining copper lines to homes and businesses.

    I just retired from 21 years in that ecosystem that dates back to ol' Alexander Graham Bell.
    It doesn't matter what you call it, Jim, the international telephone network is going to have a control system that has all the functionality and security of SS7, and probably more. So for discussion we can use the functionality of SS7 and not be too far off. You still have to set up a call, report call progress indications, and tear down the call when it's complete.

    But the control system used does not have anything to do with whether a fax is a secure way to send information between two doctors. I maintain that it's pretty hard to hack into a specific call unless you're part of the system.

    I haven't looked it up, but I expect that fax over IP is handled by coding/decoding the fax modem at the end points and then sending the actual data across in IP packets. The alternative would be to carry the fax modem modulation over the network, which would require replicating a 64kbps circuit. If only the data is sent, that data could be encrypted, just like any other data. I don't know if fax over IP encrypts.

    I think we agree that hacking into the telephone network and extracting one specific "circuit" is extremely difficult for an outside person and that the only reasonable way someone could get the data is to wiretap the access line.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  3. #48
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    The major carrier networks are IMS three-layer networks and use SIP for signaling. All of the functions you describe are part of that design and there's no SS7 utilized.

    Fax over IP is very much related to Modem over IP. The same is true for legacy "secure" communications that entities like the government uses, although they are quickly moving to secure SIP via endpoints like General Dynamics vIPer sets.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  4. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    The major carrier networks are IMS three-layer networks and use SIP for signaling. All of the functions you describe are part of that design and there's no SS7 utilized.

    Fax over IP is very much related to Modem over IP. The same is true for legacy "secure" communications that entities like the government uses, although they are quickly moving to secure SIP via endpoints like General Dynamics vIPer sets.
    Note that I said that whatever was used for control MUST have at least the functionality of SS7, and probably has more functionality and security. If I use the functionality of SS7 for discussion, I'll be pretty close.

    Mike

    [I just looked up T.38 (fax over IP) and there's no mention of encryption.]

    [It's been over 10 years since I retired but when I retired there were an enormous number of class 5 switches in the network serving the local loops. There were also an enormous number of DSLAMs in the neighborhoods that served the local loops and then went back to the class 5 switch via an optical link. That investment was huge. I doubt if every class 5 switch has been replaced by some other type of equipment today.
    It was interesting to visit some of the old central offices in urban areas. They were sized for the steppers used to switch calls years ago. So what you'd see is a large, somewhat empty, building with a class 5 switch at one end.]
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 03-21-2018 at 8:39 PM.
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  5. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Edwin Santos View Post
    This is an interesting discussion.
    Help out a non-techie here - so if I'm following correctly, a fax can be intercepted by wiretapping the analog phone line whereas an email cannot.
    So this would require physical presence in the sense that say, an Albanian hacker would have to get to the incoming or outgoing analog line in order to wiretap it.

    However, can an email be accessed remotely by the Albanian hacker if he/she had the skills to hack the email server through the internet from wherever? I'm trying to understand the distinction in difficulty as well as the distinction in proximity.
    I'm thinking of the news stories of how John Podesta's email was hacked during the Clinton campaign.

    Edwin
    Nearly all "email hacking" is done by non-technical methods such as using social engineering to find the password. I have no idea who John Podesta is or his story, but did you hear the method used to crack the account? Also there's a big difference between somehow logging into the place where the mail is stored and intercepting it on the way there. Most of this conversation has been about interception. A fax stored on a server, or an e-mail stored on a server both have the same vulnerability. A fax sitting on a machine is open to snooping with physical access.

    Attacking networks--voice or data--can be done either with physical access or with remote cracking methods. A claim was made that it's very hard to crack the networks, and sure, "hard" is relative. But it happens.

  6. #51
    Boy has this thread assumed a life of it's own, right down a rabbet hole. Back to original post. The brand of SR flour I mentioned is a regional brand, not a national brand. I had talked to SIL by phone earlier, but didn't mention any brand names. She asked me to email her recipe. The recipe was for biscuits, FYI.

  7. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    For pretty much all of my 21 years with my former employer, I was virtual office at home. FiOS was a game-changer for me when it became available because I could finally use ALL the bells and whistles I had been selling to my customers. And the symmetrical service clearly helped a lot when higher-bandwidth video became commonplace. I don't understand why ANY provider would install legacy copper in a new neighborhood at this point...sheesh!
    I was so thrilled when I got an ISDN BRI at home to dial into my office with (I managed a state-wide ISP at the time). Damn, I'm old. They installed copper because the laws are still antiquated and they must. Though I guess that brings in DSL too, for those who don't care about speed and reliability. It's cheap.

  8. #53
    SS7 is horribly insecure, and it's not hard to secure SIP. You can also do vastly more with SIP. We have direct IP to T-Mobile and Verizon now, so we can totally bypass the old real PSTN for those calls. Which means we get high-quality voice (enough for non-techs to comment on it), better caller ID control, etc etc.

  9. #54
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    The big issue with the class 5 switches is that they have been out of production for a very long time and there is no ability to get parts and software updates anymore. Lucent stopped making the 5ESS a long time ago and the DMS switches from the former Nortel are in the same situation. One of my government customers was using a 5ESS and couldn't get software to "upgrade" to T1 PRI...and that was ten years ago. Yea, there are still a bunch of them out there in local COs, particularly in more rural areas, but they are becoming a significant liability.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  10. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    The big issue with the class 5 switches is that they have been out of production for a very long time and there is no ability to get parts and software updates anymore. Lucent stopped making the 5ESS a long time ago and the DMS switches from the former Nortel are in the same situation. One of my government customers was using a 5ESS and couldn't get software to "upgrade" to T1 PRI...and that was ten years ago. Yea, there are still a bunch of them out there in local COs, particularly in more rural areas, but they are becoming a significant liability.
    There's a phase-out plan for neutral tandems. The cell carriers are already heavily interconnected by SIP; our calls to Verizon and T-Mobile are pure SIP, no PSTN. It's all moving quickly because it's more expensive and wastes more time to just maintain old class 5 gear than to just re-do it all with SIP. Not to mention the future costs of electricity, cooling, maintenance, and the like. A friend of mine works for <big carrier> and it's been a couple years since they replaced their thousands of network probes with virtualized software. They gather 13 petabytes/week of network activity logs.

  11. #56
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    Yes, IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) Networks that are pure SIP offer so much more than traditional TDM networks, including the types of integrations that wireless and other carriers need for all kinds of billing situations, scaleability and interoperability with legacy systems. The architecture is so well thought out that my former employer based it's entire enterprise SIP architecture on it, just stripping out the carrier focused things that were not needed in the enterprise to reduce complexity.
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    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  12. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Wrenn View Post
    Boy has this thread assumed a life of it's own, right down a rabbet hole. Back to original post. The brand of SR flour I mentioned is a regional brand, not a national brand. I had talked to SIL by phone earlier, but didn't mention any brand names. She asked me to email her recipe. The recipe was for biscuits, FYI.
    Now I see the problem here. Biscuits will telegraph through to the surface after they dry. Especially in soft woods. Much better to spend the money and get a domino.

    This has been covered many many times here.

    Apologies.

  13. #58
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    "One ringie dingie...."

    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  14. #59
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    Do you find yourself making large biscuits all the time? If not, the smaller domino should be just fine.

    That's what I use and I make fancy biscuits all the time.

  15. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by andrew whicker View Post
    Do you find yourself making large biscuits all the time? If not, the smaller domino should be just fine.

    That's what I use and I make fancy biscuits all the time.
    Made a pan full this morning (21 biscuits.) Some were plain biscuits to be eaten with country ham or jelly and butter, and others were cinnamon raisin biscuits with cream cheese icing. Y'all eat yet?

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