FW: Ultimate geekhood

Dan Kohn (dan@teledesic.com)
Mon, 20 Oct 1997 15:30:55 -0700


I had dinner last week in Geneva with Dave Crocker, who wrote the Internet
e-mail standard, RFC 822.

- dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker / IMC [SMTP:dcrocker@imc.org]
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 1997 1:40 PM
To: (trip); (humor-select)
Subject: Ultimate geekhood

Saturday I participated in a rather bizarre use of technology, which was
all the more remarkable for the fact that it worked pretty well.

I'm experimenting with Vocaltec's Internet phone. Using I-Pass to call
into a Geneva ISP with a full 28.8 connection. The dial-in connection has
been working fine for email exchange, but the voice usage has been very,
very erratic and almost never worth the trouble.

Well, I needed to coordinate with Dan Kohn, of Teledesic, who was staying
at a nearby hotel and he gave me his cellular number. Alas, the number was
his Seattle number, which diverts to his cellular phone wherever he is
located, including Geneva.

So I used Internet phone, though the Geneva ISP, across the Internet,
probably to Vocaltec's partner Biztran's gateway in San Francisco, which
used the telephone system to call Seattle, which knew (automatically) to
switch to his cellular phone in Geneva. It actually worked quite well.
Other than a mega-delay (about 1.5 seconds, as opposed to a satellite
channel's 0.5 seconds) the fidelity was pretty good.

No, I couldn't just call him directly.

I didn't know his phone number in Geneva...

over and out.

d/

ps. He reports a downside to the cellular mobility feature working that
well. Someone called him at the end of the day in Seattle. Woke him up at
3am in Geneva.

d/

--------------------
Dave Crocker dcrocker@imc.org
Internet Mail Consortium +1 408 246 8253
675 Spruce Dr. fax: +1 408 249 6205
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA info@imc.org, http://www.imc.org