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Technology Stocks : IATV-ACTV Digital Convergence Software-HyperTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mike.com who wrote (8071)	11/28/1999 9:04:00 PM
From: art slott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13157

By: FormerT Reply To: 8942 by croatty2 Sunday, 28 Nov 1999 at 1:30 PM EST Post # of 9046 Croatty2: Good points. I maintain that this was a controlled introduction, and the best possible way to ferret out exactly the kinds of problems they encountered. So if the goal was to find the bugs and create fixes, they were very successful. Look at all the feedback they got from this board! But don't discount the problems on the user end. I'm going to assume that most of the users were dial-up modem connections rather than DSL or cable modems. A lot of the problems people experienced may have been cockpit errors masquerading as network and/or server errors. I wonder how many users are dial-up at 28.8, the minimum recommended speed for HyperTV. At 28.8 the user can probably expect a minimal experience. Graphics can use a lot of resource and are through-put hogs. An awful lot of data is trying to get through a very small pipe. Another problem is that people "assume" that their modem line is okay because they can connect to their ISP, without ever checking it to see if it really is okay. A noisy static filled line will work....just not very good. But you'll never know if the line's okay if you don't periodically check it. A line with static or induced noise (cross-talk) can cause all kinds of problems between the user's PC and their ISP, including slow and bursty transmission, getting cut-off, etc. An easy way to tell if there is a problem is to disconnect the line cord where it plugs into the modem and connect it to a phone that you know works, then make a call. You wouldn't tolerate a noisy phone call filled with static and/or ground hums or other conversations in the background, and neither can your modem or the modem you're dialing into. Most telcos consider an analog dial tone line as "voice grade" and make no claims as to the reliability of the line for data transmission, but you don't have to tolerate a bad voice grade line (assuming it's the phone company's problem and not the wiring in your house). Make them fix it. Then there's the network latency problem that happens when there are too many "hops" between the user's ISP and the server they're accessing, or too little bandwidth in the network, or routers that are too busy......all causing network congestion. TCP/IP (the internet protocol) has to re-transmit packets that are lost in the order they're sent and received, so the more problems there are the more re-transmits there are, slowing things down even more. People dialing in to the HyperTV site and having trouble getting in, or with using the application, shouldn't automatically assume that HyperTV has the problem. After all, others got in and navigated just fine....especially those with DSL and cable modems. Raging Bull Advertisement - $7 Internet trades at ScoTTrade.com BoardMark MemberMark