Connectivity Providers Database

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 07:39:53 -0400 To: nsrc@nsrc.org From: zvezdi@plovdiv.uspc.bg (Zvezdelin Vladov) Hello from Bulgaria (southeastern Europe). In few words, I'll try to explain two things: 1. Physical Structure of the Connections in Bulgaria 2. Logical Structure of the Internet Connections in Bulgaria. 1. Physical Structure. Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC) has the following structure deployed in the country, with the money from European Union. SDH/PDH as part of the SONET specification running at 155 Mb/s. The country is devied into 2 main regions -- eastern optical ring and western optical ring. The rings are from different vendors -- as far as I know - Alcatel and Northern Telecom. They are linked in two points thru getting down the 155 Mb/s in Nx2Mb/s links in two cities in the country. The BTC says that they already use the SDH for intracity phonecalls. The PDH is in the capital city (Sofia). There are firms which are deploying xDSL technologies in the capital and other cities. Internet has never been carried into this structure, because of small market for Internet services, and for problems from BTC. The BTC until recently could only give you 2Mb/s as the smallest link capacity throughout the country via the SDH. Until now, because it bought multyplexers for 2Mb/s=Nx64Kb/s. Still it is expensive, but if you want to have connection from some city to the capital, for example, in terms of capacity the only choice you would have is to do it the hard way -- which means you lease lines, as many as you need, but the only speed you could get per link, as maximum, is 28.8 Kb/s, thru analog connection from one city to the capital. Now are available, the digital links, but many people think that they are expensive. Also, thru the tactical move, called "try & buy" principle, IBM-Bulgaria has been able to install ATM testbed in one area of the capital city, though, for good or bad, officals from BTC say, that "why should we buy ATM, as we already have SDH deployed". We have offices of the major telecomunication companies --- AT&T, MCI, Northern Telecom. BTC these days said that it is going to buy 2Mb/s channel to the Internet from IBM, which is going to strike very hard the local ISPs which buy the way, sells at least 2,3,4 times the link capacity, and in this way it is close to impossible to use Internet. To the customer is presented the an offer of like this -- 60 USD inital tax for connecting and after this 25 USD per month for 60 hours of time online without limit for the data transfer, and the ISP have 33.6 Kb/s modems. 2. Logical Structure. The very first of the ISPs which came out in the market is called Digital Systems. This is one of the oldest one -- started operations about 1993. It is connected to EUNET in Amsterdam. It is the one who is maintaining the DNS database ( well, most of it ). Now, the company (its service) is unusable, because of overselling its structure. So, speeds like 30/40 bytes per second and even less are not unlikely to be seen. They don't have any customer service until recently. Their address is www.digsys.bg, www.eunet.bg. As someone can notice from its name, they could really dig you in the earth :)--DigSys:). There are other ISPs, most of the linked to EU structure, but there are few linked to US, as well, thru satellite dish and Global One and a little firm which is distributor of Digital Expres Net -- digex.net, called Spectrum PCT LTD--their web: www.spct.net (spct=spectrum Pct.net). 3. National Academic Network - domain name 'acad.bg' There is national academic network run with the support of many organizations, but right now it is a little bit slow. In the capital city, though, three of the biggest universities are conneted into an FDDI optical ring(100Mb/s). But for the other participiants from the country the links are no more than the usual analog one - 28.8 Kb/s to Sofia(the capital city). This network is mainly financed from TEMPUS --a European Union's project. 4. Public Data Networks -- Used mainly for hacking :( -- The last well know case -- a famous virus writer has became a hacker and thru X.25's country wide public data network and thru its connection to the outside world (the capacity of this outside link is in Kb/s range) has been able to get into the computers of one of the oldest state universities -- University of Sofia. He calls himself dav -- Dark Avanger. So, check out your /etc/passwd or similar file and if you find something like unknown user called 'dav' it is better to pull out you internet cable for couple of hours. This guy went to US thru X.25 and from there manipulating DNS protocol, and thru a bug in Talk Demon goes into your system into the root account. After this he creates user called dav. Check this out -- He got into the computers of the University of Sofia at the speed of 2400 b/s (2400 bits per second!) and has used some scripts to add himself to the /etc/passwd file. He's used also 'vi' to add himself to the /etc/passwd list. This thing happend about December 1996, and report has been generated to CERT. Zvezdelin Vladov --- /**************************************************************************** * Zvezdelin Vladov, Assistant, United States Peace Corps - Bulgaria * * Phones: 35932 226546; 35932 272009; fax: 35932 563382; City of Plovdiv * ****************************************************************************/