Monday, 2 March 1998
STAR TECH 16D
By Mitch Gitman
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

If U S West won’t let you get its DSL MegaBit Services when they come out this spring, don’t take it personally.

The limits to who gets DSL, and how much, come down to limitations inherent to DSL technology itself, limitations that aren’t corrected by sticking a DSL modem bank in a local phone company office or by fixing some old copper wire out in the field.

In trying to explain the roadblocks to DSL’s deployment, it’s easy to blame the copper it runs over.

After all, twisted pair copper is an old-fashioned, analog technology dating back a hundred years. Over the past 15-20 years phone companies have been assiduously replacing the copper between central offices (COs) with digital, high-capacity fiber optics, where beams of light are shot through super-thin glass pipes.

Indeed, from its invention in 1989, DSL has always been seen as a way to send broadband communications in spite of copper’s incapacity.

But in fact, one critical barrier DSL faces in Tucson, and in Phoenix as well, is of an opposite nature. You could almost say there’s not enough copper.

U S West MegaBit exec Greg Gum maintains that 60 percent of phone lines in Phoenix are able to carry the DSL which U S West introduced in Phoenix a week ago to replace its original DSL offering.

For at least three-quarters of the 40 percent of Phoenix customers who currently can’t get DSL, Gum said, the issue is digital loop carriers (DLCs). A DLC is a digital line (usually fiber) that runs out from the CO into the local copper network, replacing existing twisted pair. The problem is, DSL doesn’t work over DLCs.

The solution would be to install DSL modem banks, called DSLAMs, in the small boxes where the fiber of the DLC ends and the copper begins, analyst Michael Finneran said. Such a “mini-DSLAM” has not been invented yet, Finneran said, but considering the current breakneck pace of data communications development, he figures something should be on the market within a year.

That still leaves the other key problem preventing DSL adoption in Tucson. Paradoxically, it is one of too much copper.

The whole trick to DSL is that it sends information over super-high frequencies, much higher than voice’s bandwidth, explained Finneran, who wrote an article about the difficulties DSL faces in the January issue of Business Communications Review. The higher a signal’s frequency, the more data can be squeezed into it. But the higher the frequency, the shorter the distance a signal can effectively travel over a carrier like copper.

The DSL U S West is using can only run to a distance of 18,000 feet (3.4 miles), relatively far as DSL distances go. And that’s 18,000 wire feet, not feet as the crow flies, Puffett pointed out. Even within that 18,000-foot range, the farther away you are from the CO, the lower the DSL speeds you should qualify for.

In a place as spread out as Tucson, that presents a major problem, said Matthew Grossman, network operations project leader for StarNet, the Internet service of The Arizona Daily Star. For example, Grossman lives six miles from his CO, and that’s in what hardly could be called a remote part of town.

Ironically, perhaps the most sensible solution to the distance problem ultimately poses the other problem, Grossman said – digital loop carriers.

Impairments in the copper itself, according to U S West, are a relatively small concern, and in some cases they’re fixable.
Qualifying for DSL
In April or May, when MegaBit Services is introduced in Tucson, customers will be able to call a toll-free numbers to find out if their phone numbers support DSL and if so, order the service.

On a test call for a number in Scottsdale, a U S West representative said it would take about 10 days to get the service turned on and recommended professional installation of the modem and Ethernet card.

US West will offer MegaBit Services at the following Tucson central offices: Catalina, Cortaro, Craycroft, Flowing Wells, Rincon, Tanque Verde, Tucson East, Tucson Main, Tucson North, Tucson South.

US West officials declined to say which exchanges (three-digit prefixes) those COs serve. However, on a test call to US West customer service, Star Tech was told which CO served a particular Tucson number.

Monday, 16 February 1998
STAR TECH 4D
By Mitch Gitman
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

If you were to compile a list of the most influential Internet individuals in Tucson, you wouldn’t want to leave out a fast-talking young Israeli guy.

Ehud Gavron (ay’-hood gav’-ron) is senior partner of ACES Research, a Tucson company that specializes in high-grade, business-quality digital Internet service.

ACES’ customers include StarNet (the Internet service of The Arizona Daily Star), Madden Publications, JewelWay International, radio stations KLPX and KFMA, the Pima Association of Governments, even Atlantic Records in New York City.

Gavron said ACES gains and maintains customers with its reliability – “100 percent up-time, no excuses, no crashes, no near misses” – and by offering responsive service that national Internet backbone providers don’t.

Matthew Grossman, StarNet network operations project leader, explained why StarNet at its inception in 1995 went with Aces rather than a national, or Tier 1, provider: “1) Tucson Newspapers didn’t have the expertise to program and maintain a router, and 2) dealing with a Tier 1 provider is a (hassle).

“Whenever something breaks, a single call to Ehud gets it fixed. If we bought bandwidth directly from Sprint, MCI, etc., we would have to call the appropriate trouble center, wait on hold for 10 to 30 minutes, give them a specific circuit ID number, open a trouble ticket, then follow up as needed whenever something broke,” Grossman said.

Roger Post of the Web site design firm Interzone agreed that ACES has stepped in to serve a market, in Tucson, that “has otherwise been underserved by Tier 1 backbone providers and companies offering equivalent levels of connectivity.”

And both Grossman and Post point out a key difference between ACES and your typical Internet service provider (ISP): It doesn’t do dial-up service, “which is a big headache for a lot of other ISPs (high maintenance, great competition, low margin, no or short-term contracts),” in Post’s opinion.

Gavron, 31, spent his childhood in Rishon Lezion, Israel. His father’s work, as a nuclear physicist, brought the family to America in 1980.

He founded ACES Research in 1991 and began providing Internet service in 1993. He’s been in demand ever since.

His network consulting fees alone are $200 an hour in Tucson, $400 for the rest of the United States. “I just kept raising prices until I had spare time,” he said with a laugh, then quickly noted, in all seriousness, that ACES’ Internet connectivity fees have risen only 10 percent cumulatively over the past three years.

Okay, so Gavron has wired himself a successful niche. But what’s really fascinating about this fellow is the provocative opinions he has about the Internet, and about Internet access in Tucson. Here are some excerpts from a recent interview at ACES’ office in a mini-mall-style office plaza on Speedway.

On Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), the variety of high-speed Internet service that U S West plans to introduce to Tucson in the spring under the brand name MegaBit Services:

“DSL is not the harbinger of great joy that everyone thinks it is.”

Few locations in Tucson will be able to take advantage of DSL at all because of the poor quality of the copper wiring of U S West’s local phone lines.

Even then, many of the customers who will be able to get DSL won’t be able to get its speeds exceeding 1 megabit per second. “The MegaBit is a misleading cliché name because most of their services are not going to be megabit,” he said.

In fact, U S West has already been providing DSL through its standard 1.536-megabit T-1 service. For five years, the phone company has used HDSL (high-speed DSL) technology to deliver its expensive T-1 service.

“I think it’s great that they’re lowering prices.” But U S West’s announced MegaBits pricing is only promotional, and “they’ll make (that) go away anytime the product takes off,” he said.

On cable modems:

“Cable modems are a fictitious mythology that never really will exist.” At least not in Tucson.

“The cable plant that was put in Tucson is a bunch of coaxial cable and splitters,” without the super-fast fiber optics needed between neighborhoods for high-speed Internet service. And he doubts that TCI of Tucson has any intention in the foreseeable future to do the costly upgrade to its network to make it cable modem-capable.

On America Online:

“I think with AOL what you’re seeing is its death throes. But AOL is such a huge beast that its death throes are going to take a long, long time. AOL has reached its peak and they are declining.”

Trouble is, AOL has the reputation as the Internet service for newbies, he said. “It’s like when I watch the Indy 500, if there’s an R next to a driver’s name, I say to myself, `Oh, he’s a rookie. He’s dangerous.’ Just like when I see an Internet address that ends with @aol.com, I go, `Oh, Internet rookie. Watch out.’ ”

Once those AOL users get used to AOL’s bad service (his opinion, of course), they move on. And “as the world becomes more Internet-savvy, which is happening every year, less and less people are going to be likely to join AOL.”

Gavron later qualifies that he doesn’t think America Online will die, just “you’re going to see a large decline in the number of people joining AOL.”

On competition between Internet providers:

“I think that the movement is for rollups and acquisitions into eventual ownerships by the telecommunications giants.”

Gavron predicts that in two years, there will be half the Internet providers there are now in town. “Probably within five years, I would be surprised if all Internet providers aren’t either large newspapers or telecommunications companies.”

Obviously, Gavron would talk a favorable outlook for his own newspaper customer. But for local ISPs in general having to compete against nationals, long-term success is “probably very tough.”

While “the local ISPs can bring something to the table that the national ISPs cannot,” there is a natural trend for consumers to go to nationals.

On U S West:

“U S West is one of the best regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs). They want the U S West company to be the first one offering new technology. . . .

“The problem is people downgrade U S West, but they live in an area where they’re not familiar with the other six RBOCs.” (Upon further query, Gavron allows that Bell Atlantic is the one better baby Bell out there.)

Of course, keep in mind that ACES does business with U S West, as Gavron goes on: “One of our successes has largely come from playing hand-in-hand with U S West, instead of fighting them.”

Then again, he said, “For local phone lines, U S West is horrible. They have a bad track record. The (Arizona) Corporation Commission has come down on them so many times. They have billing errors, they have delayed installations, their subscriber loops (the same ones that won’t provide DSL) are poor and provide line noise for people.

“You hear these radio ads that say, `Life’s better here.’ I don’t know where they’re living.”

On ACES’ being a desirable acquisition target:

“We have no immediate plans to sell the business,” although “there have been some interested parties.”

“Everything has its price, but we’re looking for the ability to maintain the level of quality that we’ve built. . . . If some company wants to do business with us, they’ll locate to Tucson and they’ll continue to treat our customers the way we do.

“And they’ll give me a huge golden parachute.”

Pioneer Planet

May 30, 1997

What’s in a name? On the Internet, the right domain name can be worth thousands of dollars (or at least a free T-shirt).

Matthew Grossman collects Internet domain names as trophies. The 21-year-old University of Arizona student has registered dozens of trademark names, including 7up.com., dirtdevil.com and universalstudios.com, only to give them up for token gifts.

Grossman asked for and received a case of Seven-Up and a T-shirt for giving up the name to the soft-drink maker. He got 10 amusement-park passes when he turned over knottsberryfarm.com.

“I always ask for something that really doesn’t cost the company,” says Grossman, who says he registered about 100 names before the InterNIC — the firm that handles domain name registrations — began charging a $100 fee last September.

While Grossman ended his pursuit for trophies when claims started to cost, others have continued to grab. David Graves, business manager for InterNIC, says 364,000 domain names have already been registered, and 10,000 are being processed weekly.

Monday, 5 May 1997
STAR TECH 16D
Mitch Gitman
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

As if mandatory microchipping isn’t enough, The Humane Society of Tucson has another technology initiative under way that could be a big help to companion animals and companion animal lovers.

The Humane Society plans to debut today the preliminary version of a World Wide Web site that will eventually provide a database of all the animals the society’s shelter has available for adoption.

The “Online Adoptions” feature will display a small photo and a thumbnail description of the animal. When it is fully functional, possibly in a few months, it will be updated daily. Initially it will have a weekly roster of five animals.

“In terms of an educational standpoint, it’s going to allow us to reach a great number of people that would never have access to the shelter itself,” education manager Marsh Myers said. “And through what either we offer or the links we have to other Web pages, they’re going to have a ton of pet-related information at their fingertips.”

The Humane Society Web site will also have regional information for pet owners, Myers said.

The Humane Society Web site is coming together thanks to the volunteer efforts of a few people affiliated with StarNet, the Internet access service and online edition of The Arizona Daily Star.

Matthew Grossman, network operations project leader at StarNet, donated about $1,500 worth of equipment to get the site up and running. The Humane Society will also receive a free subscription to a digital ISDN Internet link.

The agency plans to eventually offer an alert system, where you can enter into the Web site specifications for the kind of animal you want to adopt, Grossman said. Then when an animal comes into the shelter that meets that description, you will automatically receive an e-mail.

The Humane Society Web of Tucson Web site: www.humane-tucson.org

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Miami Herald June 3, 1996

Matthew Grossman collects Internet domain names as trophies.

The 21-year-old University of Arizona student has registered dozens of trademark names, including 7up.com, dirtdevil.com and universalstudios.com, only to give them up for token gifts.

Grossman askedd for and received a case of Seven-Up and a T-shirt for giving up the name to the soft-drink maker. He got 10 amusement-park passes when he turned over knottsberryfarm.com.

Some of his other transactions: a vacuum cleaner for dirtdevil.com. a case of ice cream for breyers.com, and surf wear for billabong.com.

“I always ask for something that really doesn’t cost the company,” says Grossman, who says he registered about 100 names before Internic – the firm that handles domain name registrations – began charging a $100 fee.

A domain name is the core of your Internet address, whether for e-mail ([email protected]) or on the Web (www.domain.com). On the Internet frontier. domain names been pretty much doled out to whomever claims them first.

While Grossman ended his pursuit for trophies when claims started to cost. others have continued to grab.

David Graves. business manager for Internic, says 364,000 domain names have already been registered, and 10,000 are being processed weekly. But some predict the rush will end soon.

“Most of the good ones are taken,” says David Milligan, who founded a British Columbia firm called Vanity Mail Serviecs, which provides e-mail addresses and domain names.

To that. Graves says yes – and no.

“Among the single simple words, there might not be many left,” he notes. “But that doesn’t consider the combinations of single, simple words.” A domain name can be as long as 27 letters.

James Romenesko, Knight-Ridder Newspapers
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

SECTION: NEWS

PAGE: 2A

Matthew Grossman collects Internet domain names as trophies.

The 21-year-old University of Arizona student has registered dozens of trademark names, including 7up.com, dirtdevil.com and universalstudios.com, only to give them up for token gifts.

Grossman asked for and received a case of Seven-Up and a T-shirt for giving up the name to the soft-drink maker. He got 10 amusement-park passes when he turned over knottsberryfarm.com.

Some of his other transactions: a vacuum cleaner for dirtdevil.com, a case of ice cream for breyers.com.

“I always ask for something that really doesn’t cost the company,” says Grossman, who says he registered about 100 names before Internic – the firm that handles domain name registrations – began charging a $100 fee in September.

A domain name is the core of your Internet address, whether for e-mail (jdoedomain.com) or on the Web (www.domain.com). On the Internet frontier, domain names have been pretty much doled out to whoever claims them first.

While Grossman ended his pursuit of trophies when claims started to cost, others have continued to grab. David Graves, business manager for Internic, says 364,000 domain names have already been registered, and 10,000 are being processed weekly.

But some predict the rush will end soon.

“Most of the good ones are taken,” says David Milligan, who founded a Vancouver, British Columbia, firm called VanityMail Services, which provides e-mail addresses and Internet domain names for customers.

While the so-called good names are being grabbed, businesses and individuals are still finding suitable alternatives and quickly registering them. InterNet Info, a firm that analyzes commercial domain name registration, reports that the number of commercial domain names (ending in .com) increased more than 60 percent in the first quarter of 1996. In the same period, the number of organization (.org) names increased 48.8 percent, while education (.edu) names climbed just 8.2 percent.

Corporations take domain names seriously, scarfing up whatever they see as having possible future commercial use. Procter and Gamble has registered not only its many product names but also diarrhea.com, underarm.com, badbreath.com and a host of other names that involve unpleasant body functions.

But no business has been busier than Kraft Foods in registering names; it has 147, says Internet Info.

Firm handling registrations was getting government subsidy
By Laura Evenson
Chronicle Staff Writer

InterNIC, the company that registers Internet domain names — the equivolent of license plates for online sites — has registered several obscene and racist names.

The Herndon, Va., company has let at least 10 offensive domain names slip through its filters. In the past, it also has let private individuals register trademark names such as McDonald’s and Disneyland.

Until September, the company, which is owned by defense contractor Science Applications International Corp., received federal funds to handle the registration of sites on the Internet.

Grant Clark, a spokesman for InterNIC, said the company has no formal written policy against offensive names. But, said Clark, the company tries to weed them out using obscenity guidelines followed by the Federal Communication Commission and local departments of motor vehicles.

“We try to apply a common-sense standard as any state would in issuing a vanity license plate for a car,” he said. “Without seeing the specific domain names in question, its hard to comment on whether we would have prohibited their use.”

Upon being told about some of the offensive names found online, Clark said they indicate that “the system doesn’t work perfectly and we’d have to investigate this.” InterNIC receives 1,000 new domain names a day for review.

Problems with InterNIC’s censorship guidelines emerged after Internet consultant Leigh Benson successfully registered several obscene domain names late last August. At that time, InterNIC was still on the payroll of the National Science Foundation. Starting in September, InterNIC went private and began charging $50 a year per domain name to cover its costs for handling the registrations.

Benson’s registrations were discussed in a story that appeared late yesterday on the Netly News, an online program on Time Warner’s Pathfinder Website at http://pathfinder.com/Netly.

“Basically, I experimented with registering the obscene names out of concern for freedom of speech and expression, said Benson, a Phoenix consultant. “I did it after a group of friends and I were sitting around one night talking about sexual laws and how out-dated they are. Someone suggested I register an obscene domain name, just to test the Internet’s limits, and so I did.”

He apparently is not the only one to test InterNIC’s boundaries. Joshua Quittner, a writter for Newsday, successfully registered the McDonald’s name as mcdonalds.com late last year, in a move that eventually lead to a legal tussle over trademark infringement. Similarly, Matthew Grossman, a friend of Benson’s, registered obscene names as well as trademark names such as Disneyland.com and Knottsberryfarm.com. Grossman has since handed over the trademark domain names — in exchange for free theme park passes.

By Joe Salkowski
The Arizona Daily Star

When a powerful explosion rocked the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, millions of people nationwide reacted with shock, horror and grief.

But Tucson resident Matthew Grossman responded with something more – a page on the World Wide Web.

Less than 12 hours after the deadly April 19 blast, Grossman had created a site on the worldwide computer network known as the Internet where computer users could find up-to-date information about the bombing.

“After I saw reports of the bombing, I spent half an hour looking around the Internet before I found any information about it,” said Grossman, a 20-year-old media arts junior at the University of Arizona.

“In disaster situations, many people are desperate for information,” he continued. “I realized that if it took me a half-hour to find something, new users might not be able to find anything.”

So Grossman came up with the Disaster Information Network, which provides users with news updates, pictures and quick, simple connections to a variety of other computers with more information about the blast.

After finishing the initial version of the program, he realized his personal computer equipment – set up in the home he shares with his parents – wouldn’t be able to handle the load of users who might want to access the service.

So he sent the program to the Phoenix offices of Internet Direct, a company that provides Internet access to computer users in Tucson, Phoenix and Albuquerque. Grossman works as a salesman and technician for the company.

Internet Direct posted the Disaster Information Network on one of its computers and gave it a place on the World Wide Web, a part of the Internet that supports pictures, graphics and links to other sites. Company employees also contributed to the site, f ine-tuning graphics and updating links to information about the deadly explosion.

Computer users worldwide can access the Disaster Information Network for free at this address: http://www. disaster.org/. Nearly 89,000 people had checked into the site as of Friday morning, computer records show.

“We figured that being here in Arizona, this was about the best way we could help,” said Jason Ayers, director of graphic design for Internet Direct. “It’s just nice to feel like you’ve done something.”

The company also has lent space on its computers to help ease the burden of calls to Oklahoma City Internet providers that have posted information about the blast. Many calls to those providers now lead users to files maintained at the Internet Direct’s Phoenix offices.

When demand for information about the Oklahoma City blast subsides, Internet Direct plans to keep the site open as a resource for information about earthquakes, floods or other future disasters.

“We view it as a way of giving back to the Internet community,” Grossman said. “There’s a lot of controversy over the commercialization of the Internet, which used to be purely academic. But we’d like to show that commercialization can have a good side.”