IP – Telecommunications Training Blog

Telecom 101 – Fourth Edition, 2016 released and on sale!

Telecom 101 Textbook – Fourth Edition 2016 is out
– and on sale for a limited time!

High-Quality Reference Book and Study Guide Covering All Major Topics, Up To Date To 2016… in Plain English.

It’s been eight years since the last edition (an eon in technology time). Hot off the press! The new Fourth Edition is totally updated to today’s IP and Ethernet telecom technologies – while still starting with the fundamentals.

Packed with information, authoritative, up to date, covering all major topics – and written in plain English – Telecom 101 is an invaluable textbook and day-to-day reference on telecommunications.

Telecom 101 covers the core knowledge set required in the telecom business today: the technologies, the players, the products and services, jargon and buzzwords, and most importantly, the underlying ideas… and how it all fits together.

The course materials for Teracom’s famous Course 101 Telecom, Datacom and Networking for Non-Engineers, augmented with additional topics and bound in this one volume bring you consistency, completeness and unbeatable value.

Our approach can be summed up with a simple philosophy: Start at the beginning. Progress in a logical order. Build one concept on top of another. Finish at the end. Avoid jargon. Speak in plain English.

Bust the buzzwords, demystify jargon, and cut through doubletalk!
Fill gaps and build a solid base of structured knowledge.
Understand how everything fits together.
… knowledge and understanding that lasts a lifetime.

Ideal for anyone needing a book covering all major topics in telecom, data communications, IP and networking… in plain English.

A wealth of clear, concise, organized knowledge, impossible to find in one place anywhere else!

Join thousands of satisfied customers!
Telecom 101
7″ x 9″ softcover textbook • 488 pages
4th edition • Published March 2016
print ISBN 9781894887038
eBook ISBN 9781894887786
Print quantities are limited. Order now to avoid disappointment.
https://www.teracomtraining.com/textbook/t101.htm

Your Go-To Telecom Resource

Covering all major topics, we begin with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), then

• progress in a logical order, building one concept on top of another,
• from voice and data fundamentals to digital, packets, IP and Ethernet, VoIP,
• fiber and wireless, DSL and cable, routers and networks, MPLS, ISPs and CDNs,
• and finish with the Brave New World of IP Telecom, where voice, data and video are the same thing.

• An invaluable day-to-day reference handbook

• Learn and retain more reading a hard copy, professionally printed and bound

• Up-to-date: published 2016

• Allows you to study and review topics before attending a course

• An economical and convenient way to self-study
… these are the materials to an instructor-led course that costs $1395 to attend.

• The Certification Study Guide for the prestigious Telecommunications Certification Organization (TCO) Certified Telecommunications Analyst (CTA) telecommunications certification.

Value Pricing

Written by our top instructor, Eric Coll, M.Eng., Telecom 101 contain 35 years of knowledge and learning distilled and organized into an invaluable study guide and practical day-to-day reference for non-engineers.

Looking through the chapter list and detailed outline below, you’ll see that many chapters of Telecom 101 are like self-contained reference books on specific topics, like the PSTN, IP, LANs, MPLS and cellular.

You can get all of these topics bound in one volume for one low price.

Compare this to hunting down and paying for multiple books by different authors that may or may not cover what you need to know- and you’ll agree this is a very attractive deal.

Career- and productivity-enhancing training… an investment that will be repaid many times over.

Get your copy today!

Net Neutrality – Foolish, ignorant or disingenuous?

The popular press and news feeds have been full of stories about advocates of “net neutrality” testifying to congressional committees, lobbying the federal government and railing against the big ISPs over the past while. Not much mention of arguments against net neutrality, though. It’s hard to decide whether those arguing for net neutrality are foolish, ignorant or disingenuous.

Let’s begin with some definitions. When someone demands “net neutrality”, they usually mean that the network must not discriminate between applications being carried in IP packets; that identical transmission characteristics (throughput, delay, number of errors, etc.) are to be provided for all packets regardless of what is being carried in them. They claim (correctly) that this is not the case at present, that the network service provider is “throttling” certain applications, “slowing down” or “shaping” traffic and that this, in their opinion, must stop. They sound the rallying cry “the net should be free”.

What a load of hogwash.
But are these arguments foolish, ignorant or disingenuous? Hard to decide:

Continue reading “Net Neutrality – Foolish, ignorant or disingenuous?”

Is the Internet a Public Utility?

Reading articles and blogs about Net Neutrality, one often sees the justification for government interference in the operation of IP networks to allow people stealing copyrighted works to consume bandwidth 24/7 at line speed “because the Internet is a public utility.”

It ain’t. The Internet is a business.

Reading articles and blogs about Net Neutrality, one often sees the justification for government interference in the operation of IP networks to allow people stealing copyrighted works using bittorrent (the net neutrality advocates) to consume bandwidth 24/7 at line speed “because the Internet is a public utility.”

It ain’t. The Internet is a business.

Continue reading “Is the Internet a Public Utility?”

Net neutrality – not. VideoTutorial on Service Level Agreements, traffic shaping and traffic policing

This video tutorial explains Service Level Agreements, traffic profiles, transmission characteristics, and how Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) is implemented to be able to provide different transmission characteristics for different kinds of traffic – the EXACT OPPOSITE of net neutrality.

watch on youtube

When someone demands “net neutrality”, they usually mean that the network must not discriminate between applications being carried in IP packets; that identical transmission characteristics (throughput, delay, number of errors, etc.) are to be provided for all packets regardless of what is being carried in them. They claim (correctly) that this is not the case at present, that the network service provider is “throttling” certain applications, “slowing down” or “shaping” traffic (the correct term is “policing”) and that this, in their opinion, must stop.

It is taken from Teracom’s DVD video V9 Understanding Voice over IP 2: Voice Packetization • Voice Quality • Codecs, Jitter and Packet Loss • Diff-Serv • Network QoS with MPLS

ALL “NET NEUTRALITY” ARTICLES:

Net Neutrality – Foolish, ignorant or disingenuous?

Net Neutrality II: If the power company allowed this, your electrical bill would double

Net neutrality – not. VideoTutorial on Service Level Agreements, traffic shaping and traffic policing

Is the Internet a Public Utility?

Visit Teracom Training Institute for more information on telecommunications training and voip training

Net Neutrality II: If the power company allowed this, your electrical bill would double.

If “net neutrality” principles were applied to electricity, it would be like having no electricity meter. Everyone pays the same, regardless how much power they use. The problem: if you’re one of the 99% of normal users, you would have to pay DOUBLE what you normally would, to cover the costs of the 1% of users constantly drawing 200 amps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Following up on a previous discussion, a demand for “net neutrality” usually means a demand that the network must not discriminate between applications being carried in IP packets; that identical transmission characteristics (throughput, delay, number of errors, etc.) are to be provided for all packets regardless of what is being carried in them.

But a demand for “net neutrality” is usually also wrapped together with a demand by these same people for no metering, no usage charges. This would mean that users who are continuously transmitting and receiving packets would pay the same flat rate as someone who is paying only for a typical traffic profile.

If this principle were applied to electricity, it would be like having no electricity meter. Everyone pays the same, regardless how much power they use. The problem: if you’re one of the 99% of normal users, you would have to pay DOUBLE what you normally would, to cover the costs of the 1% of users constantly drawing 200 amps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Here’s how that would work:
Continue reading “Net Neutrality II: If the power company allowed this, your electrical bill would double.”

Digitally-Signed Email: Authentication and Digital Signatures

E-mail was one of the first “killer apps” on the Internet, and has been a major contributor to increases in productivity over the past ten years. Of course, along with email came the scourge of spam. Criminals infect computers with trojan horse programs, creating collections of machines they control remotely to send millions of unsolicited offers for fake watches, pirated software, phony medications and ecard invitations to infect your computer.

As spam reaches 30, 40 or even 100 unwanted messages per day on a targeted account, it is becoming essential to automatically separate legitimate messages from spam. One tool available to senders of legitimate emails to aid the recipient in this process is to digitally sign their messages, allowing the recipient to establish a level of comfort that the message actually came from the indicated sender.

Continue reading “Digitally-Signed Email: Authentication and Digital Signatures”

The IP-PSTN

The Packet-Switched Telecommunications Network

Over the past fifty years, several attempts have been made to develop converged networks: networks with “dial tone” that supports all communications: speech, music, text, graphics, images and video. For a number of reasons, convergence strategies employing ISDN and ATM were unsuccessful and did not gain critical mass. This time, it appears that packet-switched network service using IP will gain enough momentum to become the new kind of plain ordinary telecommunications service.

Continue reading “The IP-PSTN”

What is "Web 2.0"?

Teaching a class, a student asked me, “What is ‘Web 2.0′”?

Having briefly scanned some online articles about it, I answered “It doesn’t mean anything. Just hot air”.

Later, I did a bit more digging on “Web 2.0” and confirmed my initial take: hot air.

In fact, I re-defined “Web 2.0” it in my mental storage system as: “Been there, done that.”

The term “Web 2.0” appears to have been coined during a “brainstorming session” between Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International. Presumably, the purpose of this brainstorming session was to create themes for a new commercial tradeshow.

According to O’Reilly, they formulated a definition of Web 2.0 by example:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	–>	Google AdSense
Ofoto	–>	Flickr
Akamai	–>	BitTorrent
mp3.com	–>	Napster
Britannica Online	–>	Wikipedia
personal websites	–>	blogging
evite	–>	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	–>	search engine optimization
page views	–>	cost per click
screen scraping	–>	web services
publishing	–>	participation
content management systems	–>	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	–>	tagging (“folksonomy”)
stickiness	–>	syndication

The main theme: the web as a platform for applications. Second theme: collaborative efforts.

So Web 1.0 was the development and adoption of the browser, HTTP and HTML. Web 2.0 was the development of applications like Wikipedia that use it.

Been there, done that, or what?

Let’s talk about Web 3.0 and 4.0!

At Teracom, we’re interested in getting you up to speed on the technology underlying today’s and tomorrow’s telecom products and services.

Taking our acclaimed training, you’ll understand the concepts and ideas, mainstream solutions and how it all fits together.

For example: we’ll cover the idea of virtual circuits, how they are implemented in the IP world with MPLS, and how MPLS can be used to implement Quality of Service guarantees and Service Level Agreements in the IP world.

… this is knowledge you can’t get from pundits or trade shows. Career-enhancing knowledge you can leverage going forward.

So let’s talk about the next two technology steps:
call them Web 3.0 and 4.0 – or VoIP and IPTV.

Web 3.0: The IP-PSTN

Web 3.0 will have happened when the Public Switched Telephone Network and the Internet become the same thing.

You will know we have reached that point when you read that a telephone company has applied to its regulator to stop being required to provide analog POTS for new service orders.

Broadband IP Dial Tone will be the new Plain Ordinary Telephone Service.

In this future, you won’t have analog telephone service. You’ll only pay for high-speed internet access – from the cable company, the telephone company or maybe some metro wireless or metro fiber outfit.

They’ll give you a drop wire / entry cable / wireless access plus an adapter which does the functions of Modem / UPS / Gateway / Edge router / Ethernet switch / NAT (a MUGEEN).

You can plug this box into an existing phone jack and it will implement POTS on your inside wiring – dial tone, ringing, off-hook detection…

The MUGEEN also has Gigabit Ethernet ports. You can plug it onto your LAN and it provides Gigabit Ethernet LAN switching in your house and access to the Internet for anything on the LAN.

You can also plug in an Ethernet IP phone to do VoIP over the Internet. If you can set up a phone call by right-clicking on someone’s email address on your computer screen and choosing “Call” or “Talk”, then pick up the phone to use its microphone and speaker, you’ll know you have arrived at Web 3.0. Some people are already there!

Web 3.0 is covered in:

Course 130, Understanding Voice over IP (2 days, for managers) and

Course 110, IP Telecom: VoIP and the All-IP Network (3 days, for the more technically-oriented).

Web 4.0: IPTV

So if VoIP and broadband IP dial tone is Web 3.0, what is Web 4.0?

Well, as a picture is worth a thousand words…
video is next.

HD video streaming from a video server to your video display over your 20+ Mb/s Internet connection.

Subscribe to a package of “channels” or customize your own feeds via a web page.

On the web page, search for, then download or stream and initiate the playing of any television show episode, movie, sporting event or other video that has been catalogued.

Access this web page on-screen via a wireless keyboard, on your desktop or maybe see it on your wireless palmtop. Or just use a clicker.

Much of the existing video will be archived somewhere on the Web. Content that is out of copyright or public license will be free. You’ll have to pay for new episodes of Lost.

One milestone will be good-quality streaming of Standard Definition video (DVD quality, 480×720 pixels). You’ll know we are truly there when you can stream HD (1080×1920).

You’ll get a good understanding of the network that will support Web 4.0 in Course 110, IP Telecom: VoIP and the All-IP Network. We’ll beef up the IPTV content in that course as the story progresses.