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ITU Agrees On V.92 standard
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."
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.
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...?
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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.
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 :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
"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!)
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"
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.
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.)
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
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.
I don't like Telstra much either, but this isn't a bad service.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I read this article today and thought it was interesting: here. I am one of those who can't get high-speed connections and get crappy speed analog modem speed (26400-28800 on a 56K). :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
----------------
Programming, is like sex.
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. :-)
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, 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.
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.
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!
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.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
crap modems at the ISP's (Internet service, only $9.95/month!!!)
Whoa there. Back up.
We 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.
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.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
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.
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
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
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.
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...?
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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.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
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...
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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...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
B1ood
Note to self: pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours. -- John Carmack
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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)
---
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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?"
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
'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).
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
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
The average local loop length is much longer in the United States than in Europe.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.)
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.
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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.
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.
"For spirit of Minjin, who feeds on the souls of those who graze too late"
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.
.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!
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
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 - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
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.
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?
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?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Your comment is completely false. The Internet is transparent upon the networking medium. Take a look at RFC1011 "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.
Enjoy life, drink beer.
No it's not. And it won't be for quite some time. Check out this page 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
:) Of course it was posted on April 1st, but it's technically correct.
Just to reinforce this statement, I'd like to remember there's RFC 1149 regarding Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, i.e. pigeons. It's worth reading
There's also an amendment, RFC 2549 that adds QOS to Avian Carriers.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
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....
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
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