Subject: Last time we went to Dallas

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:53:39 -0800 (PST)

I probably should have included this picture in my slideshow * :

http://yikes.com/~ole/store/MCI-IETF34.jpg

Ten years ago, MCI hosted the IETF in Dallas. Someone thought it would
be a nice idea to give every attendee an MCI card that would be good for
free calls to anywhere in the world during the IETF week.

Of course, the IETF community being what it is, a number of people decided
that "free calls anywhere" was a concept that needed to be tested, fully.

By Tuesday afternoon the hotel switchboard was overloaded and
hastily-created signs began appearing in the hallways, elevators and
elsewhere saying something to the effect of "please disconnect your
permanent connections..." A number of folks had nailed up PPP connections
from their hotel rooms to Sweden, Japan, Germany, you name it. Back at MCI
the security folks were ready to pull the plug on the entire batch of MCI
cards as the projected bill kept mounting, but they were told to keep it
all running until the end of the week. We'll probably never know how much
this particular "good idea" cost, but it was lots of fun :-)

WorldPhone, indeed.

Note to Nokia: Although we'd love a free cellphone and a SIM card for the 
week, you might want to consider the consequences...

Ole

*
http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.pdf

and

http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.key.zip

Ole J. Jacobsen 
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Academic Research and Technology Initiatives, Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   GSM: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

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From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:26:15 +0100

Yep.  No good dead ever goes unpunished.

Eliot

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From: Bill Sommerfeld <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:33:37 -0500

On Sat, 2005-11-19 at 01:53, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> A number of folks had nailed up PPP connections from their hotel rooms
> to Sweden, Japan, Germany, you name it.

It seems fitting that 30 IETF's after the host was kind enough to
provide free IP over voice, a different host provided free Voice over
IP.

						- Bill

---

From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:58:48 -0500

> that "free calls anywhere" was a concept that needed to be tested, fully.

As I recall, various parts of community interested in security and
privacy were swapping cards around to scramble any attempts by MCI
personnel to learn anything about which phone numbers we were calling.
This was before the days when companies made a regular practice of
providing a privacy statement and at least making a public commitment
to honor it (while the back office people would keep a few thousand
credit card numbers for testing purposes, natch).  

> permanent connections..." 

The switchboard was overloaded not because of the permanent
connections.  Tthere were only a few people doing this, but they were
costing MCI $$$ because the international calls resulted in real
dollars being spent on international circuits, as opposed to just
utilizing otherwise unused circuits on their domestic network.
Although it was somewhat amusing to learn that at least one employee
of one of MCI's competitors was keeping permanent connections to
places like Sweeden on MCI's nickle....

Rather, the hotel had a certain number of (voice) T-1 lines dedicated
for AT&T, SPRINT, and MCI long-distance traffic, and with the MCI
cards, it meant that everyone was overloading the outbound MCI trunks
while keeping the other trunks unutilized.  The hotel eventually
reconfigured their outbound trunks, but it was also really annoying
for the hotel because the only thing that has a higher profit margin
is alcohol, and so not only did it cost them money and extra headaches
for the hotel telecom manager (with whom I had a chance to chat at the
end of the conference as I helped the host team with the terminal room
tear down), but the hotel also lost a substantial amount of income
that they normally would have counted upon when hosting a group of our
size.  Oops.

> week, you might want to consider the consequences...

Heh.  Well, there is always the Nokia 770....

							- Ted