Telecom and Networking

Telephone cards hacking history

Who remembers Phone booths and above all phone cards? Phone cards were a technological advance in the world of public telephone traffic in the 1990s. They allowed to make calls on many phone booths in Finland and phone cards were also a popular collector’s item, collected both used and unused: Telecom companies have placed advertising

TCP/IP is 50 years old

TCP/IP was born in this day 50 years ago when the editors of IEEE Transactions on Communications received a manuscript from Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn which described a method for sending packets across networks. Exactly which day Cerf and Kahn’s manuscript was received by the IEEE editors is not clear (it was either November

Computer history: Modems

A modem, short for “modulator-demodulator,” is a device that converts digital data from a computer or other digital device into an analog signal that can be transmitted over analog communication lines, such as a telephone line. The term Modem Definition is an acronym for modulator-demodulator. The primary modem function is to convert digital data into

Fun: Cut the cable

For network safety? You might have seen earlier this picture at https://9gag.com/tag/firewall/fresh or many other sites. You can’t hack an air gap! That seems to be real. Not a fake meme. That was a special run of cable made specifically for the OHM conference in 2013 https://www.bit.nl/news/115/88/Cut-here-to-activate-firewall-layer-1-firewalls-op-OHM2013. There is picture in Pinterest and Starecat of

Laser and light communications news

Light communications is hot in news now. Here are few headlines: LiFi 802.11bb standard uses light for in-room data transmission up to 224GB/s https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/07/14/lifi-802-11bb-wifi-standard-uses-light-for-in-room-data-transmission-up-to-224gb-s/ The 802.11bb WiFi-like standard, also called LiFi, was ratified in June 2023. It enables data transmission up to 224GB/s at a few meters range within a room using light instead of

4G on the moon soon

Can terrestrial networks can meet the communications needs of future space missions? Maybe. Nokia is planning to launch 4G internet on the moon later this year, an executive for the company said. It will be used within Nasa’s Artemis 1 mission, which aims to establish a human presence on the moon again (last time was

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication protocol that is designed to help prevent email spam and phishing attacks. It works by allowing email administrators to specify which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on behalf of a particular domain. When a receiving mail server receives an email, it can check the

Friday Fun: UUN

uun (unshielded untwisted notpair) UUP (unshielded untwisted pair) Unshielded but not so twisted wire pairs in this Ethernet cable It is essentially multiple twin lead transmission lines, but yeah, lacking the benefits of twisting. And there is that one “split pair” that goes to pins 3 and 6. If other pairs are close what they

Friday Fun: IPv6 Words

An IPv6 address is 128 bits in length and consists of eight, 16-bit fields, with each field bounded by a colon. Each field must contain a hexadecimal number. Some IPv6 addresses look more funny than other addresses. Funny IPv6 Words http://sophiedogg.com/funny-ipv6-words/ Examples: 1ce:1ce:babe ice ice babe 1:see:bad:c0de I see bad code dead:beef:cafe 1:ea7:dead:beef a11:beef:7ac0 more