[10338] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: Internet "PayPhones"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Larry Walker)
Sat Feb 19 01:26:37 1994
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 19:59:48 CST
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: walkerl@med.ge.com (Larry Walker)
Per Gregers Bilse <bilse@EU.net> wrote:
>
>This discussion seems to have spilled into com-priv from another
>origin -- at least, I didn't see the start. Anyway, there are
>solutions to the basic problems:
Yes, I'm not sure where it started exactly, but it seems certainly related
to commercialization of the Internet!
>
>1) For the plug-problem, a British company (TeleAdapt) is
>manufacturing/selling adapters for practically all the different
>kinds of telephone plugs you'll find. They also sell
>noise-filters, line-test equipment, acoustic couplers claimed to
>be able to handle V.32, and even a cellular telephone data
>interface. They can be reached as 100111.2713@compuserve.com
I have found a couple of similar sources; yes, they are invaluable. But
they still don't fix the broken paradigm of dialing halfway around the
world via an analog/modem voice call.
>2) Once hooked up, in most European countries you can get dial-up
>Internet access via a local (at worst, national) telephone call,
>from EUnet, provided you have an Internet-connected home host.
>What we provide is an 8bit clean telnet herald, allowing the user
>to telnet to a home (or any other, for that matter) host. Telnet
>to traveller.EU.net for more information; it's a simple credit
>card deal.
This is interesting news at first glance. But my POP mailserver sits behind
a corporate security firewall, which combines with the following:
>We seriously considered making EUnet Traveller, as it's called,
>genuine IP, BTW, but dropped the idea in the initial deployment.
>Providing an IP connection would mean either assigning dynamically an
>IP number on each connection, or reserving a series of numbers for
>the user to use throughout Europe, depending on where the connection
>was made (anything else would generate an unwanted amount of routing
>updates). Both solutions present problems of their own, and reducing
>the 'technology content' to a telnet session made the whole thing
>much more feasible and available to many more users.
So the least-common-denominator rules again. You've just relegated your
customers back to Unix cmd-line mail, have you not? I need (want) a PPP
dialin on your (the public network) end and I need (need!) a good
transparent security scheme for my private network end of the link.
Hopefully something more transparent and less annoying than Kerberos or
smart card schemes.
Anyone got a public-key-encrypted IP stack that reads a PCMCIA security card?
Larry
