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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."
"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)
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Programming, is like sex.
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
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
'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).
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
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
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