The end of POTS?

[tubaman]

Do not forget ANY VPN Provider is "in the middle" (this includes in the middle of any and all encryption, and on the route used to exchange keys)

Done here, I guess some people just DO NOT GET IT!

As is your ISP "in the middle" - I hope you trust them?

[TymerTopCat]

You can have my POTS line when you can pry it from my cold dead hands. MIB

[5415551212]

I think markosjal is getting at the key exchange weakness, its well known and used by hackers often;
"The Diffie-Hellman key exchange is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. In this attack, an opponent Carol (AKA your VPN provider) intercepts Alice's public value and sends her own public value to Bob.
When Bob transmits his public value, Carol substitutes it with her own and sends it to Alice.
Carol and Alice thus agree on one shared key and Carol and Bob agree on another shared key.
 After this exchange, Carol simply decrypts any messages sent out by Alice or Bob, and then reads and possibly modifies them before re-encrypting with the appropriate key and transmitting them to the other party.
This vulnerability is present because Diffie-Hellman key exchange does not authenticate the participants.
 Possible solutions include the use of digital signatures and other protocol variants."

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10471009/how-does-the-man-in-the-middle-attack-work-in-diffie-hellman

[markosjal]

You can have my POTS line when you can pry it from my cold dead hands. MIB

NOPE they WILL take if before that as they did with my brother. Wanting him to pay WAY MORE for Fiber optic internet with a VoIP line.

[TelePlay]

I see more and more of these as time goes on. Walked past this one today so grabbed the pictures. It's been sitting open like this for a couple of years now.

The pedestal is Ameritech land lines and fiber has been put in the area so they seemed to have just abandon copper.

[HarrySmith]

Looks like someone ripped it open. Probably to take out all the copper.

[TelePlay]

Looks like someone ripped it open. Probably to take out all the copper.

Don't know Harry. Looks like nothing is missing but what's inside is covered with grass cuttings.

About 300 feet down the street there is another one in fine condition. I think a sidewalk snow plow hit the first one and no one cared to fix it.

[TelePlay]

They don't care about these anymore. 6 weeks later the only change is the person who cuts the grass put the front cover that was laying on the ground up against the pedestal.

[ka1axy]

Yes, because the circuitry to detect loop disconnect dialling is the same as that required to detect on/off hook and time break recall (hookflash).

so it's a question of inclination not ability.

It's probably more the particular SLIC chip they're using in their line cards. They may no longer include the circuitry to count the dial pulses.

[TelePlay]

Someone could write a book: "101 Ways to Loose a POTS Line"

Here's one, how it happened to me.

AT&T is putting FO in everywhere in my city. AT&T marked their desired path through my back yard utility easement to horizontal bore in a FO conduit.

Underground marking company marked all underground phone, gas and power lines.

Marking was not perfect.

The underground directional boring bit ran into a 50 pair phone cable and as the cable was wrapped around the bit, it pulled the cable out of the pedestal about 4 feet from the bit.

That cable was running to another pedestal about 50 feet away. That pedestal provided copper grid phone service to some 20 homes, including mine.

Service guy came out and ran 8 fifty foot long patch cables to reconnect the pedestals, restored service.

Talked to the technician. He told me they will most likely give buried FO to every home affected at no charge (they are not going to replace the now dead 50 pair cable).

They will install a new FO pedestal, bury a FO cable to my house, install whatever is needed in my basement including a new WiFi/internet/phone modem.

After all is done, POTS won't even be an option for me. The copper grid will be gone from my homes point of view. Will no longer even have a choice to keep copper or switch to FO service.

Have had copper VOIP for 5 years now and my 616 continues to give me rotary dial out abilities. Just no more copper coming into my house since this horizontal boring incident.

[5415551212]

Someone could write a book: "101 Ways to Loose a POTS Line"

Here's one, how it happened to me.

AT&T is putting FO in everywhere in my city. AT&T marked their desired path through my back yard utility easement to horizontal bore in a FO conduit.

Underground marking company marked all underground phone, gas and power lines.

Marking was not perfect.

The underground directional boring bit ran into a 50 pair phone cable and as the cable was wrapped around the bit, it pulled the cable out of the pedestal about 4 feet from the bit.

That cable was running to another pedestal about 50 feet away. That pedestal provided copper grid phone service to some 20 homes, including mine.

Service guy came out and ran 8 fifty foot long patch cables to reconnect the pedestals, restored service.

Talked to the technician. He told me they will most likely give buried FO to every home affected at no charge (they are not going to replace the now dead 50 pair cable).

They will install a new FO pedestal, bury a FO cable to my house, install whatever is needed in my basement including a new WiFi/internet/phone modem.

After all is done, POTS won't even be an option for me. The copper grid will be gone from my homes point of view. Will no longer even have a choice to keep copper or switch to FO service.

Have had copper VOIP for 5 years now and my 616 continues to give me rotary dial out abilities. Just no more copper coming into my house since this horizontal boring incident.

Wow what a hassle.
You'll hopefully get a decent speed boost on your internet.

[TelePlay]

You'll hopefully get a decent speed boost on your internet.

The hassle was no internet for 24 hours, but they did respond to the outage quickly.

Yes, looking for a speed increase, to be followed by a monthly price increase in a year or so.

Guess that's why I keep finding the busted up pedestals along a major city street near my house. The copper pedestals will all be gone some day.