From: malQRMassimilation@gmail.com   
      
   Richard called me on Wednesday morning, and said he'd be right over:   
   he was at the Central Office, a couple of miles away from my house.   
      
   Our dog went crazy a few minutes later, and I told Richard that “He’s   
   harmless!” while he pulled boxes out of his truck.   
      
   I hadn't been able to figure out where the old drop wire came in: the   
   fiber drop for the cable modem descends from the pole, runs over my   
   driveway, and attaches to the eave at the corner on the South side of   
   the house. There was, however, no sign of a mounting point for a   
   telephone drop wire.   
      
   I showed Richard the downstairs wall where the RG-59 coax feeds come   
   out of the box - there's a coaxial TV feed in almost every room,   
   unused for all the years I've been here, because I’ve never thought   
   that satellite TV was worth the money, and the two dishes that were   
   put up to provide it are still attached to the mounts at the front of   
   my house.. I have a cable modem, that provides me with a limited   
   Internet connection which, by the good graces of the press contact at   
   the North Carolina Governor's office, allows me ssh access to the   
   Telecom Digest servers. The new owner of the cable tv company cut that   
   off the day after they took over, and I had to borrow access to a VPN,   
   which I now pay Alexis Rosen at Panix to keep available.   
      
   The VPN allwoed me to publish the Digest, during the week or two that   
   it took the press contact at the North Carolina Governor’s office to   
   convince the new cable tv owner to stop blocking port 22. I figured   
   they would start up again in another few days, which is what Comcast   
   used to do when I lived near Boston, but port 22 is still open, so I’m   
   assuming that they don’t think I’m worth the trouble.   
      
   No complaint to the Governor’s office goes unpunished, however: my   
   Callcentric phone number - it’s a VoIP connection - stopped working   
   back around September. I’ve already posted about that fiasco, and the   
   VoIP ports are still blocked, after multiple complaints and calls from   
   oh-so-sincere-and-knowledgeable flacks who told me that the problem   
   was "CGNAT" and that I should pay for a fixed IP address - only $30   
   per month extra! - to "cure" the problem. The oh-so-sincere-and-   
   knowledgeable flacks were, for some reason, unable to give me a reason   
   why the cable tv company customers who purchase the VoIP phone   
   offering made by the cable tv company weren’t required to have a fixed   
   IP address, but they promised to do some research and get back to   
   me. That was, you guessed it, around September.   
      
   The Cisco 303 VoIP instrument has been sititng on the desk in the   
   spare bedroom, where my wife has her computer, and she plays Solitaire   
   for hours on end, with a special mouse that I bought so she could   
   still use the machine. Her hands shake too much for her to dial a cell   
   phone, but the buttons on the Cisco phone are still big enough for her   
   to use, and I want her to have a way to call 911 if there’s an   
   emergency. I had bought it on Ebay when I got my extension from   
   Hamshack Hotline, which connects me to other ham operators through an   
   Asterisk PBX in the basement of a ham who lives in Massachusetts. I   
   got one for my brother, too, since he doesn't like to talk on his   
   cellphone, and the model 303 VoIP phone has three lines available, so   
   I put in the Callcentric service so we’d have a "home" number.   
      
   My house is too far down in the hollow for me to see the mountaintops   
   where Skyrunner has their head ends, so I can’t bypass the cable tv   
   company with MMDS service. There are no other cable tv companies with   
   service up here in the hills, even though the fiber connection the   
   current pirates use was installed at taxpayer expense and is available   
   to competitors.   
      
   That left Frontier Communications, the ILEC for this area, but they   
   don't offer any fiber service. I was talking to another Ham Radio   
   operator who’s in my club, and he was telling me how he got a VPN   
   going through a linode machine, allowing him to bypass the port blocks   
   of the cable tv company to provide Echolink service to our club's   
   repeater network, and the subject of VoIP came up: I told him that my   
   brother’s club has VoIP phones they use at emergency deployments,   
   connected via microwave links to Asterisk boxes at their EOC, so that   
   the Incident Commanders and politicians at a disaster sites can use   
   the interfaces they’re familiar with. I could, I suppose, figure out   
   how to get the same VPN going, although I’d have to get a Raspberry Pi   
   box going to do the routing, unless I chose to just use my Linux box   
   all the time.   
      
   My friend asked if I could get DSL, and I realized that I hadn't   
   considered it, even though I used it for years up north. My wife   
   enjoys Netflix movies when she's not playing Solitaire, and I hadn't   
   know that there are DSL services available with speeds rivaling what   
   the cable tv company claims to provide.   
      
   I called Frontier the next day, and the Service Rep told me that I   
   could get a home phone bundled with DSL service for less than   
   Callcentric's service costs, but her computer didn't show if she could   
   sell me ADSL, so she put in "a ticket" to have it checked out, and   
   promised me a callback.   
      
   Frontier rang my cell phone on Monday - it uses a "WIFI" connection   
   when I'm at home, since the cell towers are too far away - and we   
   spoke on what is obviously a VoIP connection - funny how companies   
   with expert lawyers don’t have to worry about port blockage - and I   
   placed an order for both a landline and ADSL service.   
      
   Richard asked to see the electrical panel, and I took him to the back   
   room next to the furnace, where the Generac switch and the main   
   electric panel are, and he showed me the "Demarcation Point" box, on   
   the wall next to the electric panel, with an underground feedline that   
   apparently runs under my driveway instead of over it. He found the one   
   "JK" lead that goes to the phone outlet upstairs in my living room,   
   alongside four or five others which used to be cut down on a   
   "protection" block that was, surprisingly, on the customer side of the   
   demarc. We went upstairs, where the cable modem and my Asus router sit   
   on the shelf over the chairs where we sit and watch the news from the   
   CBS streaming service. The end of the wire had a four-prong jack on   
   it, and Richard swapped it out for an RJ-14, and asked if I wanted to   
   keep the old one. I told Richard that the Smithsonian was looking for   
   it, and that he should send it in and claim the prize, and we shared a   
   laugh and he connected the DSL modem along with a low-pass filter for   
   the POTS line. I plugged in an old "Trimline" type of phone I’ve had   
   in a box for years, amazed that the dial tone wasn't just another VoIP   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)