WinDSL Coming?

A number of people have written in in the last day or so regarding Motorola's rollout of software-based DSL modems. Apparently, this wil reduce the cost of the modems by 30-40%, meaning that they can put DSL into the lower-end of machines. I stand corrected - they aren't modems, they are bridges/routers - and I must be blind, because Linux support was specified in the release. IMDUM.

Comments

Re:Not a bad thing

[(void*)]

But from an engineering point of view, this is bad. The driver should be well-separated from the CPU, so that the OS does not get too complicated (read: stable, bug-free, predictable). The protocols would be cleaner, so that more OSes can use the peripheral. So that the modem is not tied needlessly to one OS, or certain types of functionality. From the users perspective, this is better. It is the users computer. He/she should *know* what he is in for when installing such a thing. Heshe should know that with such a modem, running Quake through the modem might not be such a good idea. Yet these design issues are just glossed over for something "cheap". Is this way way to treat a consumer, however clueless they may be?

DSL modems do exist...

[Cato]

http://www.whatis.com/modem.htm disagrees with you - DSL modems are sometimes called by an obscure TLA, but since they take digital in on one side (i.e. ethernet or USB) and put analogue out on the other side (taking care not to disturb the analogue voice channel), it seems to me that 'DSL modem' is a fair term. Nortel' Shasta division make DSLAMs and agree too.

The whole modem / non-modem distinction is somewhat arbitrary - after all, ultimately every digital networking device has to put signals on a wire or fibre, and those signals are ultimately analogue. The only difference is whether there is a simple encoding or a complex encoding, and whether there is an analogue-only mode for that channel, or if the link is expected to always interpret these analogue signals as digital.

Let's just agree that small devices that connect you to phone-like wires are called modems (unless they're called ISDN TAs : )

Technical accuracy?

[Dave Scherer]

Okay everyone, repeat after me. There IS NO SUCH THING AS A DSL "MODEM". "D" in DSL is for digital.

The following is quoted from this 3Com white paper

For ADSL, the most talked-about xDSL technology, there are two competing modulation schemes: carrierless amplitude phase (CAP) modulation and discrete multitone (DMT) modulation. CAP and DMT use the same fundamental modulation technique--quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)--but differ in the way they apply it.

QAM, a bandwidth conservation process routinely used in modems, enables two digital carrier signals to occupy the same transmission bandwidth. With QAM, two independent message signals are used to modulate two carrier signals that have identical frequencies, but differ in amplitude and phase. QAM receivers are able to discern whether to use lower or higher numbers of amplitude and phase states to overcome noise and interference on the wire pair.

Sounds like a MODEM to me!

You can be wrong, but don't be bitchy too..

[consume]

Please take a second and read T1.413, which is the ANSI standard for ADSL.

OR you could just read Newton's Telecom Dictionary, under Modem:
"The term "modem" is also applied (and correctly so, in the purely technical sense) to ISDN TAs (terminal adapters), ADSL TUs(Terminating Units), line drivers and short-haul modems.

Instead of using a shift-keying encoding (typically Quarternary Phase Shift Keying for 28.8kbps and higher) xDSL uses CAP (Carrierless Amplitude Phase) or DMT (discrete multi-tone) to MOdulate the digital signals onto an analog medium and DEModulate the analog signals back into ATM cells or Ethernet frames.

Keep attempting to be technical. We'll all still be here when you get back...

550 MHz?

[jonnythan]

They claim that they should work in any system that's at least 550 MHz. If you need that much processing power for a DSL modem to be hardly noticible (which is what I suppose they mean, maybe less than 20-30% processor usage), then can you imagine playing Quake 3 or UT on the net? Just your modem would be pulling a large percentage of your FPS, which would not make these people very happy.

56k WinModems are fine; even though they may be a little buggy, at least the data transfer rate doesn't require a dedicated Pentium II-class chip just to run.

Give me my hardware DSL modem, or the lovely ethernet-based cable modem i'm going to get in a few months.

Performance Hit

[NMerriam]

Unfortunately the side-effect of this is that people won't realize they're taking a big performance hit.

Software modems, for the driver problems, aren't that big of a deal on windows because the Modem isn't using much processor time anyways.

But this thing sounds like a real hog -- they couldn't implement it until now because anything below a P3-550 couldn't run it? This sounds like a great way for Intel to sell more processors.

The folks who really appreciate high-speed access (other than Warez d00ds and Pr0n Kings) are gamers, and this is really gonna suck for folks who think they're getting a great deal, only to boot up and wonder why their new P3-1000 is slower playing Diablo 2 than their old P2-233 on a dial-up.

And then of course the driver issues, when Loki comes out with Diablo 2/Linux (maybe?)...

Re:PROPER LINK HERE....

[IO ERROR]

/. is eating HTML tags for breakfast this morning. Let's try it without previewing first:

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ti cker=mot&script=410&layout=7&i tem_id=86582
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