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Technology

ITU Agrees On V.92 standard 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the gots-no-problems-with-that dept.
An unnamed correspondent writes: "The ITU has agreed on the V.92 standard. The 3 enhancements are faster upstream (max of 48 kbit/s!), reduced connect times, and internet call waiting. Unfortunately, final approval is scheduled for November 2000. If you can't get broadband, this may be the next best thing."
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ITU agrees on V.92 standard More

ITU agrees on V.92 standard

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  • I was curious how long it would take for the makers of NAS products to implement v.92--looks like availability is scarce:

    Cisco claims support on their AS5400 product line:
    http: //www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/ios/rel/1 21/prodlit/1095_pp.htm [cisco.com]

    I couldn't find anything on Lucent's website (Portmaster 3 & Portmaster 4 products).

    I couldn't find anything on 3Com's website (USR Total Control Products).

    Anyone work with any of these products and know of any published timelines or press releases on ETAs for working software?
  • Some apps to make use of your bandwidth:

    For Windows, free (banner ad supported): BinaryBoy [binaryboy.com]

    For Linux: Binary Grabber [freshmeat.net], brag [freshmeat.net], Glitter (GUI) [freshmeat.net], PicMonger (GUI) [freshmeat.net], Usenet Binary Harvester (perl) [freshmeat.net]

  • This sounds like an excuse to sell another round of modems to the unsuspecting end-user. Refinements are nice, but I suspect the new modems will cost more than what you are getting. Will flash-rom upgradeable modems be able to handle the new protocol, or will new hardware/software be mandatory?

    --
  • Acutally that copper is just fine for almost all current residential internet needs. VDSL runs over the standard copper pair you have now and is about 30 mbit/s.
  • Didn't you see that Onion article where the African tribesman used an IBM external modem to crack open a nut?

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?

  • Right now, I'm surfing with a Diamond SupraExpress 56isp on a noisy phone line. The highest download speed I ever got was 8k/sec or so. My first experience with the Internet was with my college's T1 line, and I definitely feel the difference.

    DSL and cable are available in my area (inner-city Boston), but the prices are steep. I can't afford $80 per month for cable modem (which requires cable service) or $50 for DSL (not including the hub). If I can get comparabvle service using my rinky-dink, $20-per-month ISP, I'll do it.


  • "Broadband" is the wave of the future! POTS is good for fast and easy voice transmission, but admit it: it's dead for Internet.

    Hmm, guess what... DSL uses POTS.
  • Yeah, I live in Batavia, about 20miles out of Cincinati, and recieved a big letter in my E-mail from Fuse(Cinci Bells ISP) Claiming that I can finally get ADSL, Whahoo, nope, it turned out the sent it to me on mistake, Batavia can get ADSL, my road can't, so then they came out and put in new line so I could on my road, guess what, I'm one Telephone pole off, and they refuse to extend the line.
    So I'm getting Cable internet from TimeWarner perty soon now.

    And about v.92? Don't even worry about it, just try to get broadband to everyone.
  • I happen to live 22 miles from my dial-up server and I get 49333 bps every day no matter what... Awhile ago I lived elsewhere & because I was only 1 mile from my server I managed 53333 bps (which back then I worked ISP tech support and no one could believe I could tweak my modem enough to conenct that high all the time)...

    Only thing is, the distance from the dialup server is irrelevant. The only distance that matters is between your phone jack and the switch, or the loop concentrator if that's how your line is connected. From there on your line is digitized, and the quality doesn't degrade (not before latency becomes relevant anyway). There are obviously many other parameters. For example, if robbed bit signalling is used anywhere between you and the dialup server, your speed suffers. And if you are server from a loop concentrator, there are two possible configurations, one of which is very good for modem and the other is very bad. If it's configured in universal mode, your line is digitized, carried to the switch, converted back to analog, and then back to digital in the switch. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). On the other hand, if it's in integrated mode, your line is digitized and carried to the switch, and it's not converted back to analog there. This is good for modems, especially if you're really close to the concentrator, but on the other hand AFAIK current concentrators can't handle xDSL, at least yet, so if you're server by one you're out of luck for the time being. But I digress, my main point is that it's only important how long your line is analog, and if there are any extra analog to digital conversions.

  • Quite true ... it will also probably be quite useful for laptop users.
  • Fixed point wireless.
  • Hm. I don't recall such standards in the first wave of 28.8 -- then again, I didn't exactly go grubbing through dozens of brands, either.

    Heh. The tech support people who had to explain to dopey customers what performing a flash upgrade ment, have my sympathy.

    I really just wish we could throw modems into a giant sea of circuit boards and serial ports and leap forward to global sattelite connections. Ho hum, a few more years...?
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Here in the UK Broadband is still just a dream. BT are now infamous here for using every excuse in the book to delay rollout of ADSL while the now limited number of Cable companies are giving out no information on availability of cable modems.

    BT claim ISPs haven't given them enough testers. ISPs are fuming since they have been oversubscribed several times for trials which BT have been organising. One ISP has made an official complaint over the tactics while other publically lambast BT over their handling of it.

    Even the tabloids are questioning BT's board members' competency.

    No date is given for my city's exchange upgrade for ADSL let alone street roll-out. Oh, and you need a BT phone line too, I only have cable phone lines :(

    Rediculous.
  • Yeah, until recently. I had a dedicated ISDN line to my old house for about two years, then a DSL connection. I recently moved and have found myself too far away from the CO (also have fiber in my neighborhood) for DSL. The cable company was supposed to roll out cable modems in the spring, but they were aquired by Comcast not too long ago...they have telling me "real soon now" since I moved. So, I'm back on regular dialup until "soon".

    Matt

  • where the fuck is BlueTooth? That's what the world really needs - a high speed connection whereever you are.

    Oh, and probrably a tan (or a brain tumour) from the all those microwaves flooding the planet ;)

  • Re:funny you should mention tcp/ip (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    FreeBSD does not have a threaded TCP/IP stack. NT does, and Linux 2.3/2.4 does also.

    But at least this is further proof that all the 16year old elitist linux cluebie users have finally all switched over to FreeBSD in response to linux's popularity.

    Why let silly things like facts get in the way of advocacy?

  • Re:Hoorah! (Score:3)

    by Robert S Gormley ( 24559 ) <robert@seabreeze.asn.au> on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @02:12PM (#958136) Homepage
    The only high bandwidth option available to me here is ISDN, which is laugably expensive (line charges are at the rate of a few dollars per hour)

    Gotta correct you here... ISDN is laughably expensive (coming from someone who has 128kbps to BigPong Direct)... but the line charges are capped: AU$275/month for 64kbps and AU$435/month for 128kbps - for a "permanent connection" (i.e. your line is dialled up to the one number, and when it disconnects it redials that)...

    Pathetic though. But the satellite lag is non existant... I can get 15ms ping times Melbourne to Canberra out of ISDN, unlike POTS :)

  • Broadband is great and all, but one demographic of users will still continue to use dial-up for a long time - business travelers. How else are you going to connect your laptop to the Internet from your hotel room when you're on the road? Then again, if hotels would put Ethernet connections in their rooms...

  • Re:V.92 is dead before it even was born (Score:4)

    by doogles ( 103478 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:00PM (#958138)
    "Broadband" is the wave of the future! POTS is good for fast and easy voice transmission, but admit it: it's dead for Internet.

    For you users sitting at home with the luxury of DSL and cable modems, sure. But what about travelling users, laptops, etc. No reason why we can't milk every bit out of the PSTN that we can, bandwidthwise, for those users who don't always have the luxury of "broadband". (even if the technology ain't perfect)
  • A CO is a Central Office. It is were the wires go when they leave your house and head for the phone company. Most likely there is a CO closer to your home than the office you can "see." They're pretty easy to spot, as they are hardened for weather and civil unrest -- usually housed in a large building, maybe with a bill Bell logo on it(if it's pre-divestiture). Interestingly, just because you can get ISDN doesn't mean you can get DSL. ISDN can be repeated, DSL cannot(there's your useless fact for the day!)
  • I just read about this same thing earlier, and realized that's why I can never get above 31kbps. A while back, when we first got a net connection, we called up the phone company here (GTE) and asked for two lines. They came out and installed that type of setup with the 64k channel split into two with a battery operated device of some sorts (oh what fun, leave the ip_masq machine connected overnight on accident and we had to go to the neighbors and call the telco up and have them come change the battery). Finally, i got them to come out and replace the device with one that operates off of house power, however, i still only connect at 31kbps. Now that someone pointed out what the problem is, I think GTE will be hearing from me tomorrow about getting an actual, physical second line.
  • That message was meant for two NOW moderated postings. Sorry =)
  • What I cannot understand is why they create a standard that offers a symmetrical 56k/56k capability. While the FCC still limits modems to 53k download because of potential bleedthrough on copper lines, it surely would be the next big enhancement.

    Having a somewhat faster uplink really is something that makes me yawn on a dialup. What I am curious about is why hardware hasn't been designed to give a CONNECT string for upload and download. When I see CONNECT 48000 it really is false, still limiting my upload to 33.6. Why not something like CONNECT 48000/33600 perhaps, which would display both upload and download connectivity? Back in the days of symmetrical connections (anything = 28800 modems I believe)
    it wasn't needed.

    - Slash

    "I never really liked computers, but then the server went down on me"
  • Have you ever used ISDN? Many areas (like the one I live in) ISDN is as fast as it gets. (Unless you wanna spend over $1k per month for a T1)Even though not nearly as good as DSL or Cable, it is MUCH faster and MUCH more reliable than analog modem. Expensive? Not really. In our area you can get an ISDN line for $48 per month from Bell Atlantic. Most ISPs don't even charge any extra for ISDN because every connection (even a 14.4 analog modem) uses an entire 64k channel on the ISP end. I run a small ISP in this area, and we charge analog customers and ISDN customers the same price. ISDN customers that want both B channels simply pay for 2 accounts. (at $12 per account per month) . Does it still cost too much....YES! Is it much cheaper than 2 years ago...O YES! Is it worth the extra money for most people....probably not, but for the gamers and downloaders, its the only game in our town. As far as the V.92 standard goes, its a good thing. The pathetic lines in our community will do good to support it well though.
  • I live in rural pennsylvania where DSL/Cable internet access is a myth, where Cable Television is fully operational on a good day. Nevertheless, I never connect below 48000, usually at 49333.

    Perhaps I just somehow have a really good line, but I think most people just have bad modems. Mine is an external USR 56k. External costs more, but it will work better than your average internal mystery modem...

  • Such a foul mouth! Tis' to be expected from a country with rotten teeth.
  • Isn't a v.92 protocol in today's day and age somwwhat pointless?

    Maybe the 2.88 floppy will make a revival!

    *groan*

    ---
    Connection Closed by foreign host.

  • my experience (Score:3)

    by Tiro ( 19535 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:01PM (#958147) Journal
    I use a 56K external serial port modem, and I consitently get 48000 bps connections. Its on a dual boot system. Performance under Linux is kickass, with 5-7 KB/sec downloads from bandwidth-rich software download sites. I still get a kick about going to Freshmeat, finding a killer app, and downloading it with lynx all in the time it would take me to even figure out what I need for the job under Windows.

    Under win98, net performance is mediocre but I think we can blame that on the win tcp stack. [If John Carmack says it sucks, that's enough evidence for me :]

    That being said, I live in a fifty year old house with fifty year old wiring and fifty year old telephone equipment on the poles in the alley.

    If you or your friends are getting poor performance, try another ISP [not aol btw]

    Also, stay away from winmodems!!! I paid $90 for this generic hardware modem, but its been well worth it over the last year.

  • FCC power regulations. Possibly there's a reason for the rule, somehow I doubt it. They the gubmint, they know best...
  • That being said, I live in a fifty year old house with fifty year old wiring and fifty year old telephone equipment on the poles in the alley.

    I.E. (probably) good quality copper wiring rather than the chinsy stuff they put in today (as time goes on, people cut corners more and more), work that was done by professionals who knew what they were doing and none of those new-fangled pair gain devices (which allow one pair to the central office to connect 2 phone lines with reduced bandwidth). Old can be better.

  • It's the extra upstream!!! The download hardly matters. 32 kbps to 48 kbps. That's a good lot. The download, as you said hardly matters. (The call waiting looks fun though.)
  • While using windows, I was, according to DUN, able to connect at 44000 bps, sometimes 48000 bps. This was using netzero no less. I know of some people who have told me they can't get better than 31200, but usually they've traced that back to bad/old phone lines.

  • Re:I'll Believe The Results When I See Them (Score:3)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:05PM (#958152) Homepage Journal

    I would like to agree. Modems were fine when telephone lines were the only signal that could transmit digital data to/from the common household and text-based BBSes were the norm.

    But things have changed. Now that the internet has come about and has the capability to serve multimedia data to millions of people at once, 20-some-odd thousand bits per second just isn't going to keep up.

    I personally have to question the motives of the telephone companies. They claim (or used to claim) that all the modem traffic was saturating their networks to the point of reducing the quality of service for voice callers. They are ticked that ISPs are using *their* telephone networks for essentially free while charging their $20 a month for internet access. This is the primary reason, I expect, that our telephone networks (here in the US) haven't really seen any additional upgrades or accomidations to increase the quality of service for modem users.

    DSL? I think it *could* be the magic ingredient for widespread low-cost internet access if the telco's would only let it. Here in Albuquerque, we've been promised DSL by various companies for the last few years and still there is none available for private consumers. NONE. Rumour has it that our local telephone monopoly, US West, is denying DSL providers access to the lines. If anyone from around here can provide more info or prove me wrong, please do.

    Meanwhile, I'm stuck with a maximum of 28.8 despite my V.90 modem, because all the fucking phone lines in this part of town are multiplexed and AD/DA converted a few times before the signal even sees a CO.
  • When I was using dial-up, I always connected at 44000. I do not know how this speed is derived/calculated, but I could tell you that it translated to about 3.5-4k upstream, and 5-5.5k downstream I got. Now I'm on cable (fast cable too, 100k up/300k down), so I dont' worry about such things anymore.
  • Yes, cable might only be available in the capitals, but, if you can get it, it's very good quality connection (reliable 128kbit upstream/400kbit downstream, ~20 ms pings to most Australian sites, and ~300ms pings to the US), and by world standards it's not badly priced either (60 AUD/month - that's about 35 USD).

    I don't like Telstra much either, but this isn't a bad service.

  • I cannot get any ADSL, SDSL, and cable modem services. DSL is too far from a C.O. (I am on a hill). Adelphia does not service cable modem in my area. I can get IDSL, but I don't have 109.95+ U.S. dollars to pay per month for a year contract and 144kb/sec max (it is too slow for me).

    Worse is with analog modems, I can only get 26400 to 28800 connections. Once in a while, I can get 31200 but my 56K modems (all types) detect major errors at this speed. 28800 is stable.

    Would this V.92 help me at all or will I still be in the same situation? I look forward to receiving replies soon. :)

  • So your machine 40 miles across town has a T1 hooked into a terminal server as its modem? Because you can't get above 33.6K with a 56k modem on each end.

    So you're either lying, or stupid.

    Which is it?
  • "If you can't get broadband ... move."

    Unless, of course, you have a real life.

  • I read this article today and thought it was interesting: here [zdnet.com]. I am one of those who can't get high-speed connections and get crappy speed analog modem speed (26400-28800 on a 56K). :(

  • ...spurred on by the demand for pornography.

    ----------------
    Programming, is like sex.

  • "Detritus the standard past on 27awards7"

    I found myself agreeing with your post 100% until I encountered this statement. Surely you meant something different?

  • Ninety percent of the dial-ups I've used in the last three years have connected at 31200bps or lower, with 56k modems (modems on both ends utilizing either Flex or x2).

    As the technical admin for a smallish ISP (96 lines, moving soon to well over 1300 though) I am kind of surprised to hear this. We use Cisco AS5200s and have competitors with total control centres and portmasters. Nobody has a problem offerring 56k and most of our connections are in the 45kbps range, with a few as high as 53k.

    We will be moving to Nortel CVX boxen very soon (within 2 months) and that'll replace the old 12-port cards and the AS5200s with a single "cube" which interfaces directly with an SS7 and a DS3 and provides 1344 ports per unit. Throw on CNID (Called Number ID, we can tell what number you dialled) and you have a box which can support any number of ISPs, turning yet another technical business into nothing more than a VAR with a RADIUS server.

    Seriously though, even at 7:1 user:line ratios (about as high as you can get before busy signals become the norm) we have not had a single complaint, neither with our connection speeds nor our busys. Hit a 7.2:1 and the busy signal complaints start pouring in. :-)

  • ...jimmy crack corn, and I don't care...

    Eeeking another couple bits out of an already over hacked, compressed, digital signal processed bit stream over 1920's technology (copper loops) is still slow 1920's technology. Oh wait...DSL is also the same thing -- a bit stream coated with vaseline, shoe-horned onto a copper pair !

  • In the heyday, USR and Cardinals were pretty high-quality stuff. Now it seems to be the land of Diamond.

    I agree. USR used to be really really good. Now I opt for GVC [www.gvc.ca] over all. If you want some WinModem that sucks down your P3-700, go ahead. If you've got the system to drive it right, you'll have no problems. However if you want your processor for yourself and don't want to be cluttering up your PCI bandwidth with a trillion requests about how to convert a certain screech into data and vice versa and actually want to have decent ping times for online gaming, get a true blue hardware modem. WinModems just aren't worth it IMO.

    In a slightly different mode of thought... I've found that USR Total Control Centers tend to favour (duh) USR modems and have difficulty with a variety of others, although they seem to speak fairly well to WinModems. Portmasters have the worst time with WinModems in my experience.

  • I wonder when we will start to see modems that can handle this... the call wating feature looks cool. I always wondered why a modem couldn't listen for it... then alert you. Oh well.

    I wonder how much you can actaully pump through a phone line? 56k is pretty darn fast for POTS.
  • This is what you call "Beating A Dead Horse."

    I work in the field and know it all too well.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) -GAIM: MicroBerto

  • You can enable compression methods when connecting (not sure if this works if the modems are not matched-brands -- probably, as long as they support the same compression algorithms).

    Granted, this is a bit of a cheat, but my theory was that if I could connect at a sufficient speed modem-to-modem over analog lines, then my ISP connection should be similary successful, regardless of the compression (connection itself was still at or near 33k).

    The ZOOM offered at least a couple methods of compression, but I had never used it before, so I stuck with one and gave it a shot. Effectively, you could enable full compression and transfer at 115k. The same amount of data is being sent and received, of course -- but my main point is that if I can do a modem to modem connect with full compression and find better performance, why can something similar not be approached with my ISP? Especially if we're both using the same modems? (I have no idea of your average ISP actually enables such connections - they may not).

    My experience with this is pretty shallow and I've not heard much from people regarding using the compression techniques available with their modems, even back when such a thing would have been extremely beneficial. I'm curious to know if this was a feature manufacturers packed in that was largely overlooked by users and never taken advantage of, or not. Of course, not useful for an ISP in general (and I'm going out on a bit of a whim) but for relatively closed systems still requiring such a connection, I would think it would be to one's best interest to implement this, no?
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Naw, the cost of uploading porn is amortized over more than enough downloads to make upstream bandwidth inconsequential!
  • Im just thinking if a modem has the "feature" to allow call waiting to "work", then people wont dial *70. Then when they play some low latency game, they will forget to re-add *70.

    Right now it is easy, everyone simply disables call waiting because you get hung up.

  • Will I be able to upgrade by upgrading the flash in the modem? I guess this is possible, but this will not be an option for "monetary" reasons..

    And if the uplink connection can go as high as 48kbps, isn't it possible to connect now two regular modems at higher speeds, like some upgrade of v.34+?

    And when the modem interrupts because there is an incoming call, how will it signal to the OS? Perhaps it will be transparent, the connection just stops sending/receiving data while you are talking, but then our pppds should not be any timeouts..

    Comments?
  • On a very noisy line I was getting something like 19Kbps, Compaq Armade with built-in modem; at some point I've downloaded a new microcode and got around 45Kbps, on the same noisy line. If you got a shitty modem which is not PROM-upgradable,and can't shelve a few bucks to get a decent one - well, it is *your* and not v.92 problem.
  • Aren't you the same /.er who just got done spamming the message area of the last few stories with ascii art?
    ___
  • Sure, we've got DSL and Cable Modem and what-have-you, but not everybody does. There are still places where these things are a rarity, or too pricey to afford. (Or, in some areas, where Linux users can't actually USE the local DSL provider's system because the proprietary logon software is Windows only...)

    Think, for instance, third-world countries. No way will broadband connections be affordable. I believe that it's even pretty bad in some parts of Europe.

    The complaints about "too little, too late" just go to show that most /. readers come from the States and Canada. :-)

    Nicholas
  • This is good for those who are just about out of the loop for getting DSL or have a Cable company which isn't even equipped to roll out Cable internet in the general area of the Cable building.

    You can check for DSL subscription rates and service areas at DSLReports [dslreports.com], but they themselves claim that phone companies may disagree with the distance or service areas we provide you with.

    Cable and DSL providers are not equipped to handle the millions of people who would love having a broadband connection now, what makes you think they'll remedy this by November 2000, rendering this standard useless? I've been checking with BellAtlantic over the past 2 years for DSL, and they haven't even come close to exdpanding their service area to my home. I doubt they will compensate 2 years sloth in the period of 5 months. Nevermind Cablevision's arcane method of rolling out Cable Internet to its customers (its only available in Rhode Island and Connecticut, while its main offices are in New Jersey). Whatever spruces up my Dial-Up internet connection is a good thing in my, and any other Dial-Up user's, opinion. The only bad part is that I'll have to find a hardware-based modem that supports the new standard.

  • Really? (Score:3)

    by Whelkman ( 58482 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:11PM (#958174)
    I live in South Jersey, and this area has been slated for broadband access "in the next three months" since early 1998. Our local cable company who was bought out by Comcast no longer even mentions the idea of bringing cable Internet to this area.

    I spoke with a person who works at Bell Atlantic and he said the demand for DSL in this area is huge but Bell doesn't want to put the money in for upgrading the backbone. They don't believe they'll profit even with the large demand. Far from it: in many areas around here, they're doing some "splitting" trick with the phone lines, breaking the 64 kbit channel into two 32 kbit ones. Of course, this makes dialup access suck like hell. I almost cream myself when I get 3K/sec on binary downloads.

    ISDN is nearly impossible to afford around here since "residential" plans aren't offered. All the plans are aimed for medium sized businesses and are priced accordingly.

    At this point, I'd love to have anything: cable, DSL, or even cheap ($50/month or less) ISDN, but it ain't happening. So for you who think DSL is "everywhere," think again. it's not, and not even close.

    Intrestingly enough, Bell Atlantic says that DSL will be available in my area "in the next six months," but I have a feeling any area which does not currently offer it carries that message.
  • Essentially free?! What are you smoking?! The ISP I work at pays approximately $2400 per month for the use of 96 DEAs (phone lines).
    OK, so that's about $25/line/month .. not much more than a regular residential phone line. Difference is, most residential phone lines are used less than a couple of hours a day. Modem lines probably have ~30-90% utilization. That's what originally pissed off telco's about them.

    Then telcos started to notice that (a) people started installing second lines for their modems, (b) heavy modem use was after business hours (non-peak), which meant that

    1. They were getting more money per household
    2. It was using existing infrastructure at off-peak hours
    Although they might have continued to lobby regulators for extra charges on the line ($why not?), most telcos were probably secretly happy to have modem lines come in.

    There are, of course, exceptions. In the mid '90s one ISP opened a large modem pool in New Westminister because it gave them toll-free access to the Largest part of the metropolitan Vancouver population. The telco sales people were happy, but I guess that they didn't explain things to engineering. Nobody bothered to provision extra bandwith for all of these high-utilization lines. They brought up the new modem pool and, soon thereafter, brought down phone service for the whole exchange.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø`ø,,ø`ø

  • They are ticked that ISPs are using *their* telephone networks for essentially free while charging their $20 a month for internet access.

    Essentially free?! What are you smoking?!

    The ISP I work at pays approximately $2400 per month for the use of 96 DEAs (phone lines). I guess you could claim that we are using their switching equipment (what routes our customer's exchanges to ours) for free but I don't buy it. If they would clue in and drop the prices on allowing us to either lease ports off their DSLAMs or put in our own I could see your arguement. The telcos don't want to put in the infrastructure to take the burden off. They're making more money off dialup.

    Hell one of the towns we have a POP in doesn't even have the infrastructure to support ISDN let alone DSL!

  • ITU Agrees on V.94 standard (Score:4)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @02:27PM (#958183) Homepage
    The ITU just agreed on the V.94 Standard. This a great improvement on the older V.92, which allow only 56 kbps of download, while V.94 allows 58 kbps. That's a huge improvement of 2 kbps, allowing 1 free Meg of download every hour!

    My point is: who needs those improvements? 14.4 to 28.8 gave you a factor of two. V.90 to V.92 gives you almost nothing (add teh fact that the line noise will likely eliminate all this gain). It's like upgrading from a 700 MHz CPU to a 750 MHz. Except for marketing, I really don't see the idea.

  • crap modems at the ISP's (Internet service, only $9.95/month!!!)

    Whoa there. Back up.

    We [gate-way.net] are offerring unlimited interactive dialup internet for 9.95/month (prepaid 1yr, $14.95/mo otherwise). Our equipment yields over 46k connections more than 75% of the time and we're expanding into a Nortel CVX POP box within two months.

    I certainly don't consider our service crappy, although I do agree with all your other points. Especially the WinModems. People seem to love buying a $25 WinModem and throwing it in a P100 and wondering why their connect rates are so shitty and there are so many line disconnections.

  • Just about everyone I know in my city has been using DSL.

    I think that's exactly the reason why old telephone modems won't be obsolete yet. Not everybody lives in cities. And getting ADSL or cable modem or something to that part of the population isn't going very fast. It's just to expensive. I can't imagine my parents getting anything close to that any time soon.

    On the other hand, I'm enjoying the 10 Mb/s ethernet connection I have had for two and a half years now, since I moved away from home. But one must realize that internet access can be entirely different worlds depending on where you live.

  • My modem supports call waiting, and it's Linux compatible!! Actiontec makes a PCI and USB V.90 Call Waiting modem. The call waiting doesn't work all the time, but it's better than a crappy Winmodem. Unfortunately, if you talk on the phone for more than a few seconds you get disconnected from your ISP, but you get your phone calls. I'm happy with it myself.
  • Oh my,

    Being a helpdesker I really, *really* hope never to see *this* supported. I know the amount of troubles V90 gave (and K56Flex - oh, and let's not forget USR's X2), because to actually *get* a V90 connection you need to be *lucky* - i.e.
    - *your* telephone line shouldnt have too much interference,
    - the telephone company's switchers shouldn't interfere too much,
    - your modem should support it well (gawd the amount of time I've seen that those "WE ARE V90" stickers and found out that they *werent*...)
    - and for all windows users, there's this issue with Windows which has an instable Dial-up Networking which seems quite happy to NOT work when you reinstall everything - even if it did before.

    and if *all* that works for you, and you actually *do* get a connection at more then 33k6 bps then you can only hope that it's *stable* - which, in about 50 % of all connections, it isn't, due to the aforementioned reasons.

    No, V90 is like balancing on the edge of the cliff of what's possible using analog (non-DSL) modems, and as such it's just another way to drive up sales.
    (and make crappier modems - the modem industry probably learned from MS that you dont need a good product, as long as the people dont know it's not good).
    Pushing it even further is nice for a theoretical discussion and proof of human capabilities to crank (possibly) even more out of an already overstretched way of communication, but it's already too unstable.

    Cpt. Fwiffo
  • Forget the speed increase -- I want Internet Call Waiting! That will free up my phone line until my DSL arrives. Imagine that, talking to real people! (For me, a little more important than 16 kbps)

    Additionally, this feature will allow others to avoid giving the monopolistic telco's another $20/month for a second line.

  • And the leased lines it used were damned expensive, too; the cheaper leased lines used by some leaf nodes were actually as slow as 8Kbps. This was true as little as 18 years ago, back when TCP/IP was just being invented. (Betcha didn't know that the ARPANET didn't always use TCP/IP.) So it's silly to say that TCP/IP wasn't designed for such low datarates -- at the time there wasn't much that was faster.

    -Ed
    ARPAnaut since '76
  • The v.90 etc limits have a lot to do with the fact that current modems (not cable modems etc) are analogue in nature and the set-up of an analogue phone lins is such that that's about all the data it can reliably handle - and then only in a perfect world.

    Most people with v.90 modems will never get anywhere near the limit of the technology due to crosstalk and other noise on the line.

    This has nothing really to do with the fact that it's a copper wire to your house, if you sent digital data through the copper, all nicely packet switched and stuff, you'd get Mbit rates with ease.

    Analogue bad, digital good :)

    Troc

  • Why would anybody want a PCI OR an ISA modem in the first place? Don't you realize that with any internal modem, you're plugging your computer into a big antenna for lightening strikes and other unpleasantries?

    Any lightning strike great enough to blow your modem to ratshit is great enough to travel along a 5' length of 26AWG to your computer and take it out, too. If the lightning strike only fries the modem and/or it's protection circuitry that same circuitry is in the internal modem as well, as part of the Part-15 interface.

    I used to think the same way as you but in the last three years I've come to the conclusion that the extra wall wart and cabling and plastic box with lights doesn't give me a whole lot of advantage to the card in the computer. I can tell what's going on with pppd -debug or -kdebug and ifconfig.

    Besides, that's what backups and insurance are for.

  • Machine to machine? What are you talking about? You mean, modem to modem? What brand? As I explained above, when I was goofing around with modem to modem connections from work to home, I was enabling the provided compression methods. My real connect was likely 33k (or pretty damned close).

    If you were getting a literal 40k+ connection, you were probably not connecting from (or maybe to) a standard modem? If you're using anything but an analog connection from one machine, you probably weren't connecting directly to your other modem. In fact.. I'm not even sure how you could connect if it were from an ISDN or other service to a modem...?
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Last week my local central office installed DSL. I have been using it since. In fact, just about everyone I know in my city has been using DSL.
    "Broadband" is the wave of the future! POTS is good for fast and easy voice transmission, but admit it: it's dead for Internet.

    Sorry to disappoint you, but DSL *DOES* run on POTS by definition. That's the good thing about DSL. It doesn't require re-wiring, and your POTS will do. You can have a good explanation of DSL and its variations (ADSL, HDSL, SDSL, and others) here [whatis.com].
  • I bet the telco's put up a pretty big fight over this. They gain nothing from providing faster access over analog lines. Instead, they'd rather you switch over to one of their slick DSL lines, for a slightly higher fee...

    One thing I'm a bit curious about is this 'v42bis reccomendation'. I've never heard of this, and as far as I know, only v32 is currently supported or used.

    Anyone know more information about it?

    You know, I'm not so sure service providers are going to like the 'hold' feature that allows you to take an incoming call without disconnecting your network activity. Just what they need, someone taking up their network connection while they spend an hour talking to Aunt Beatrice...
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Frankly I am forced to live outside of the city where they don't understand someone might like DSL... Heck 3 cities within 75 miles of me are capable of using either DSL or Cable modems. I'm not living in the middle of a desert either... So their are probably 50 cities within that 75 miles which makes 3 of 50... Which is pretty small... I can't even get ISDN here, and only about another 20 or so cities in that area can get that...

    Guess what that means? That means that most of us around here have to use dial-ups. That or the phone company has to decide we are a market... Frankly the local cable company doesn't even have an office in this city because we are 'only' 5500 people, so I doubt they care for providing us broadband.

    My point is we don't all have the option of living in broadband access areas, so your point is completely worthless in the real world outside of the large cities with huge markets to spur the use of broadband installation...
  • it's far too easy to blame the ISP's cheap modems than it is to realize that the phone lines and garbage modems that customers have are truly the problem. whenever i see an hcf winmodem i cringe because i know that they are utter crap and there are plenty of other types of modems being shipped by big names like compaq and hp that are a v.90 modem in name only. coupled with the fact that most telco's are less than willing to guarantee anything above a 14.4 connection and you have an equation for disaster. but what do people do? they read 56k v.90 on their spec sheet (if they even read it) and assume that if they don't get 56000 connects that their isp is cutting them short.

    B1ood

  • Re:They said it couldn't be done! (Score:4)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:40PM (#958221) Homepage
    The limitation on modem speed was not a lack of imagination on the part of modem designers, it was a matter of cost. For example, a 9600 bps full-duplex modem in 1976 cost about $10,000. It replaced a 2400 bps full-duplex modem that used up half of a 19" rack. The availability of cheap, high-speed modems is directly related to improvements in integrated circuit density, speed and cost. Modern V.34 modems are the result of cheap, high-speed digital signal processor (DSP) technology.

    There is no magic bullet that will make modems run significantly faster that 33.6 kbps. For a given bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio, you can push only so many bits through a channel. V.90 technology cheats this by exploiting the fact that a subscriber's telephone line is not limited to 3 kHz of bandwidth, and is directly connected to a CODEC (coder/decoder) at a modern central office switch. If that isn't true, you are going to have to live with V.34 class speeds.

  • Why don't the ITU start designing a new copper line standard with a, say, 8kHz bandwidth.
    1- The sound would be much clearer, AM radio quality
    2- It would immediately triple the bandwidth of dialups modems
    3- Unlike DSL, it would retain compatibility with existing equipments (Modems, Phones, FAX)
    ---
  • First time I've actually seen it in use, but .int is for international organizations; here's the IANA's page [iana.org] explaining what you have to do to get a domain under it.

    --

  • Highly offtopic, but.........

    A friend of mine wrote a program to hop onto a given list of usenet groups and download all attached binaries that end with .jpg. Running that thing for about an hour on my cable modem resulted in 500+ megs of porn, some of which was so disturbing it haunts me to this very day.

    Cheeio
  • Yeah, definitely laughable pricing :)

    Ping times reminds me of something I heard, about a large company (Yahoo? definitely not sure tho), one of whose managers complained that the ping times between the US and UK were too high.

    "What do you want me to do? Bend the laws of relativity?"

  • Narrowband, Wideband, Definition please? (Score:4)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @02:53PM (#958239)

    'Wideband' - Broadcasting the same signal over many bands at once.
    'Narrowband' - using a very narrow band to transmit. Sort of opposite of wideband.

    'Broadband' - The use of multiple 'bands' for transmission (or reception). ie: cable TV is broadband. Using multuiple carrier frequencies to divide a medium into many different bands.
    Baseband - using a single, base channel for all transmission. ie: Ethernet.

    Please not that although there are obvious real-world examples of how broadband has a higher capacity than baseband, neither definnition has anything whatsoever to do with speed of data transmition.

    Your cable modem is 'broadband' only because it modulates it's signal up into RF for transmission on the cable line. Technically, it doestn' really have 'broadband' characteristics; it can't receive on multiple channels at once.

    If you had a 100baseT ethernet connection to your house, that would still be baseband, not broadband (hey.. that's what the 'base' stands for)

    Perhaps one could consider CDPD data (19kbps or whatever) to the palmpilot or something, whatever it is, to be broadband. It is modulated up over a broadband medium (space).

  • In the heyday, USR and Cardinals were pretty high-quality stuff. Now it seems to be the land of Diamond. I've had poor connections with every ISP I've used (never below 28.8k of course) but the last one used Diamond Supra-Expresses. So I dished out a couple hundred bucks and bought a 56k external Supra-Express v.90.

    I connected fine, for three days. Then my connections dropped to around 32k, consistantly. Upon further investigation, I found out that the ISP had dumped all of their Supra's for a cheaper set of Zoom's.

    But no connection was ever as poor as what I have now, while waiting for DSL. I expected to have kick-ass connections and bandwidth available in Silicon Valley. I mean, if you can't get reliable connections there.. well, where the hell can you?

    Of course, you can -- just not over PacBell's lines. You have to get DSL, which is what everyone and their grandmother have around here -- as long as you have the patience to wait.
    ---
    seumas.com

  • I have a few friends in remote areas that broadband access is not possible. This will lift their spirits. I personally only got broadband cable access in my area last year, which really sucked. Service is not bad though.
    Atleast this isn;t taking the same route as 56K did. X2 and KFlex, before finally settling at V.90. That created alot of unhappy people

  • Re:I'll Believe The Results When I See Them (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @01:50PM (#958248) Homepage
    I have no idea why you guys in america get such poor rates. (I'm guessing that here)

    The average local loop length is much longer in the United States than in Europe.

  • V.92 will never take off. It's like releasing an operating system tied to the x86 architecture which will be obsolete eventually. V.92 is tied to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

    Think about that statement for a minute. What's the first OS that springs to mind that's tied to the x86 architecture which will be obsolete eventually? MS-DOS/Windows was pretty popular last time I checked. Plenty of businesses still run on Windows 3.11 and plenty more will be running Win95/98/NT4/2000 for many years to come.

    Sure dial-up sucks, but it's what people are used to. Just last week, I had to help out a friend who got a new dial-up account for $25/month. For about $40/month he could have had a cable modem which is faster, more reliable, and easier to set up (click "DHCP"). When I asked him why he didn't just pay the extra $15 or $20 instead of wasting hours trying to get his modem working, he said he didn't need the extra speed.

    Why is it that people will choose the crappiest possible solution, even if the superior alternative is almost the same price or even cheaper? Do they feel guilty if they don't use all the benefits, so they choose something with fewer benefits to use? When I can answer that, I will understand why dial-up is still so common-place. (I live in Canada and have been enjoying cable modems for years now.)

  • I'll Believe The Results When I See Them (Score:5)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @12:46PM (#958258)
    Ninety percent of the dial-ups I've used in the last three years have connected at 31200bps or lower, with 56k modems (modems on both ends utilizing either Flex or x2).

    Dozens of people have complained to me over the last year or two, about their inability to connect to their 56k account at anything higher than 19200bps. That's 19200bps! I haven't seen connections like that since late in 1994!

    It's only become worse. I'm still waiting for my DSL and the company that is providing it offered free dial-up service until my DSL is actually installed and running. Only problem? I can't actually connect to a single one of their dial-up numbers. After a flurry of handshaking and choking on signals, both modems give up and I'm left with the recorded voice of the operating piping through my computer, telling me that if I'd like to make a call, perhaps I should hang up and try again.

    As long as dial-up providers keep implementing cheap modems to so they can claim "20,000 modems -- no busy signals!", connections will still be poor. Clinging to a v.92 standard is fine, but a lame-duck modem is still a lame-duck modem.
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Wireless will save the outback. Really.
    Just wait and see.
  • So they've increased the compression when downloading by upwards of 25%.

    But how can they claim to have increased data throughput rates from 150-200 kbit/s to over 300 kbit/s ? This is a 50-100% speedup.
  • Yes, modern modems. But this was the first 56k I'd purchased and it was (I believe) the first one Zoom released. This was before there was much of a consensus for compression as far as I can tell.

    Also, back with 28.8k modems, there were numerous compression methods you could choose from, depending on the manufacturer. This meant that your USR may connect (excuse me, transfer an equivalent amount of data) at 115kbps, but if you connected it to say, a Zoom, Cardinal, Cobra, yadda yadda yadda, it would probably transfer at 28.8k -- if it would even connect (I'm not sure what happened if you tried to enable compression and then connect with a modem that couldn't understand that compression method. I think it just resorted to a standard mode?).

    You're right, that compression doesn't matter much when you're transfering ARC'd files or JPG's, but back in the day when more people were online with their favorite BBS than the Internet, the speed would have been nice. There was nothing like playing BRE, LORD or TW2002 on a slow modem (or worse, a noisey line -- when line noise used to actually show up as cryptic characters on your screen before dropping the unpleaseent [NO CARRIER] on your lap), watching the ANSI images literally crawling acrossed yoru screen... well, it sucked!
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Re:I'll Believe The Results When I See Them (Score:4)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @03:11PM (#958266) Homepage
    "with 56k modems (modems on both ends utilizing either Flex or x2)."

    You answered your own question. End to end analog modems will never connect above ~33kbps (less overhead), because that is the maximum your phone system can handle. For the real ~50kbps (less overhead), one of the ends must be a digital connection. This is why your ISP needs ISDN or a T1 endpoint to feed the 56k modems. Please read the documentation that comes with your modem if this concept eludes you.

    [analog] === ~33kbps === [analog]

    [digital] === ~50kbps === [analog]

    Of course, digital to digital is best. So what you should do is petition your local cable/telco monopoly to get some real broadband access. That way the Internet will come to you in a nice, high-capacity pipe, instead of like a bowling ball through a garden hose.
    ---
  • Whilst all you Americans, Canadians and Europeans may think this 'too little, too late', this is great news for us Aussies.

    In Australia there is a keen, competitive dialup ISP market - but the one & only local loop telco, telstra, is a complete joke.

    The great thing about this new modem standard is that the upgrading need only be done at the ISP end and the user end.....

    No need for the telco to do anything - Telstra has been able to do ADSL for years, but there is not a single available ADSL connection in Australia.

    And aside from the capital cities, cable is very much over the horizon, looking into 2001 or 2002.

    The only high bandwidth option available to me here is ISDN, which is laugably expensive (line charges are at the rate of a few dollars per hour) or satellite, which is expensive to setup and the lag means that quake II isnt happening over it.

    Thus ive found the best solution is to multilink in three 56k modems to the ISP - 168kbps d/l - i can almost pretend I have ADSL.

    With the introduction of this standard, hopefully sometime early next year Ill have the upstream to go with that d/l speed.
  • I happen to live 22 miles from my dial-up server and I get 49333 bps every day no matter what... Awhile ago I lived elsewhere & because I was only 1 mile from my server I managed 53333 bps (which back then I worked ISP tech support and no one could believe I could tweak my modem enough to conenct that high all the time)...

    But really their are just to many things that determine what speed you'll get with a modem. So it's a matter of tweaking the modem, your internal phone lines, the phone lines between you and the server, the phone companies phone switches, and finally teh settings for the ISP's servers... 2 people in the same house can get 2 very different speeds.
  • There are a lot of people on here that seem to think that a new standard for transmission over the POTS is a waste of time because of the availability of DSL/Cable/Whatever.

    This is, as usual, a very narrow minded and selfish approach.
    Of course internet over POTS is going to survive.

    I live in Australia, here we are just beginning trials of DSL, and even when it comes in it'll only be available in metropolitan areas.
    Considering we are a country that has some of the most remote internet users (many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city), I can't see broadband or services with similar speeds for a similar price getting out into the rural areas for a long time! Hence net over POTS lives on!

    Then you have to take into consideration all the other third world countries where the internet is only available to a select few. These people aren't going to be getting DSL to their houses like the rich fat americans any time soon!

    Next to consider is the average household user. The person who just wants to get/send emails and maybe do a bit of surfing sometimes. Why would they bother with anything other than a V.92 modem?

    There's also the people using satellite .net connections to think about. A lot of those use a modem as their uplink. I'm sure they'd welcome an extra 15Kbps upstream!

    With all that, without even mentioning the cost difference between analogue and digital services, I think the humble modem will live a while longer. Even if only half what I've said is valid!


    "How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge [insurge.com.au] - AK47
  • Ah, this is typically true -- however, the people I'm speaking specifically of are not your run-of-the-mill home user. They are tech professionals (many colleagues) who would rather cut off their right arm than stoop to a Winmodem.

    Poor lines are often the case, too. But to test this theory, I tried connecting to another machine of mine 40 miles across town, running the same modem (at the time, a Zoom 56kFlex) and made it consistantly at 44k. Not great, but a huge jump from the 31.2k I'd been connecting to the ISP at.

    Granted, there is the possibility that the ISP's lines were poor, too -- but what ISP would set up shop in an area of town without testing the quality of their lines first?!
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Thanks for the clarification... as you say, though.. tdme deals iwth 'time slots', not simply having more than one transmitter separated temporally.

    A PRI circuit would be TDMA, as each 'channel' is defined by a particular timeslice.

    Ethernet is CSMA/CD, and may or may not be baseband depending on the medium. Also, according to 802.3, the backoff is not'random' but binary exponential.

  • How? (Score:5)

    by doogles ( 103478 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @12:48PM (#958285)
    Anyone have some good links on exactly how the increased upstream works?

    I thought the whole "trick" to v90 was taking advantage of the lack of an analog/digital conversion on the ISP/provider end (straight telco trunks in to NAS equipment), which was why the 56k downstream was possible (64k per channel + robbed bit signaling = 56k).

    It's quite obvious the "customer side" is analog though, so how are we scamming 48k upstream?

  • Upgrades? (Score:5)

    by LinuxGeek ( 6139 ) <djand.ncNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @12:48PM (#958288)
    Does anyone have reliable information about upgrades for existing v.90 modems? This could be quite interesting for a software update, but not very handy (or cost effective) if new modems are needed.

    Also, it would be nice if the high and low-speed channels were reversible like the old courier 9600-HSTs. The 9600 and 1200baud channels were reversible to accommodate the direction that needed the highest bandwidth. Is this possible with the mixed analog-digital signaling of a 56k modem?

  • Re:Oh mercy :-( (Score:3)

    by orange syringe ( 207312 ) on Tuesday July 04, 2000 @12:52PM (#958294) Homepage
    Your comment is completely false. The Internet is transparent upon the networking medium. Take a look at RFC1011 [isi.edu] "Official Internet Protocols". Basically, IP is used to handle getting a packet somewhere (routing et cetra), and transmission protocols like TCP/UDP are used to handle transfering of data via packets.

    TCP/IP does not define any standard protocols in the OSI "Physical" layer. This is the job of the physical network medium itself. In fact, IP has a Maximum Transmission Unit field to specify the maximum transmission or receive unit of the underlying medium -- in other words, how much the given medium can send at a time. Ethernet, being the most common on the Internet, has a MTU of 1500 but this is no means the only possible networking media.

    The Internet can and will adapt to any media, even something as unreliable as two cans and a tight string. TCP provides reliability services, allowing the Internet to run on anything -- even a noisy phone line.

  • "High speed internet access is available to pretty much anyone"

    No it's not. And it won't be for quite some time. Check out this page [newsbytes.com] for the reason why, complete with actual numbers. Where I live (rural NH, USA), we won't have a high speed internet connection until/unless 2-way satellite systems come online at an affordable price. No way will I ever see cable or ADSL here, ever. Population density is simply too low.

    Y'all might want to keep this article in mind while designing your web pages :-)

    - sgage

  • Your comment is completely false. The Internet is transparent upon the networking medium

    Just to reinforce this statement, I'd like to remember there's RFC 1149 [isi.edu] regarding Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, i.e. pigeons. It's worth reading :) Of course it was posted on April 1st, but it's technically correct.

    There's also an amendment, RFC 2549 [isi.edu] that adds QOS to Avian Carriers.
  • If your close enough to your CO to get decent speeds over 33.6K, you can usually qualify for DSL. The poor bastards that are 18,000+ feet from their CO can't get DSL and they can't get more than about 28.8K either because of all the bridge taps, repeaters, whatever, that the telco throws into the loop when you are that far out. So the ones who "need" it the most can't benefit at all from V.90, let alone V.92...

    And I'm one of them. Around here (northern Delaware), all of the COs are in run down urban areas. Bell Atlantic hasn't built a CO in Delaware for over 40 years. And guess where the cable company is offering cable modem access? Yup, only in the urban areas, the same damn areas that can get DSL. Poor bastards in the 'burbs around here can't get DSL *or* cable modem....

    In '96 our cable system was TCI and they began test deployments of cable modems in downtown Wilmington (the people who can least afford it). When they were ready to expand deployment, they got bought by Suburban Cable (of Phila). When I called them in '98 they said that all cable modem rollouts were delayed due to the sale of the cable system. So last year my area was scheduled for cable modem capability "in six months." So what happens, Comcast Cable buys out the system and what do you know, they now tell me that cable modem expansions are "on hold" for at least six months due to change of ownership.

    Sigh... No DSL, no cable, and V.92 won't help me out in the least....

  • Why bother? Because broadband connections are only available to a tiny minority of potential internet users perhaps? Try getting a broadband connection anywhere in the developing world - or indeed in any rural part of the US.

    Nick

  • How did you do this - the modem to modem connect?

    56k modem connecting to a 56k modem will only connect at 33.6k *maximum*. This is because when you dial an ISP, you're not connecting to their USR or whatever, you're connecting to a digital condenser which (probably oversimplifying here) fools the phone line into thinking it's ISDN.

    These cost rather a bit more than a modem.

  • Every time they bring out a new standard, they said that it was the limitation of analogue carrier modulation over the copper medium that would prevent any advance in speed. When V34 came in, they said we'd never get higher than 28.8Kbit/s. With the V90 standard, they said it was absolutely impossible to get more than 33.6Kbit/s upstream out of the copper, and now they're saying we'll get 48Kbit/s!! Next thing, in two years time, we'll have 64Kbit/s from one phone line!

    Well, I'm not complaining. I get free internet access via modem, and it can only be a good thing. My area will some time this year get ADSL, but the spec keeps getting worse. Originally it was going to be 128K upstream, 512K downstream. Now it may be limited to 256K downstream. It looks like it's gonna cost $75/month. I'm quite happy getting free modem access at V90 speeds for now. My cable TV is good enough for watching movies on, and V90 is good enough for VOIP if I want to use that.

    Cheers,
    J

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