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To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (22718)	11/11/1997 5:00:00 PM
From: norm chin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

The following is an extract from an email that I received from Erols today. Erols states that it will deploy the flex modem and NOT the x2: Subject: 56k Update Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:06:27 -0400 From: Erol's Help Desk <> SPECIAL 56K UPDATE: PLEASE READ Erol's is getting ready to expand our 56K capabilities in Springfield, Virginia (703-321-4887 and 703-354-6534), and upgrade Manassas, Virginia (703-331-5562), to 56K. These changes will start on Monday, November 17, and will be completed on Wednesday, November 19. Please check below if you have any problems before you call our technical support department. CONNECTING WITH YOUR K56 FLEX MODEM There are two kinds of 56K modems, Flex and X2. Erol's supports modems that utilize K56 flex. We do not support the 56k X2 (US Robotics) technology. Because of the numerous upgrades to k56 flex some modem manufacturer's firmware is already out of date. This means a modem purchased a week ago may have an outdated version of the flex firmware...

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (22718)	11/11/1997 7:29:00 PM
From: Pullin-GS	Respond to of 61433

It seems to me that k56Flex is winning out over x2. For every pro-k56flex write up, there is a pro-X2 write up. It depends on who's FUD you believe. ;-) K56flexT is a trademark of Lucent Technologies Inc. and Rockwell International Corp. A trademark? Show me an international ITU-T standard that is owned by a vendor and I'll eat my shorts. How does the Open 56K Forum standard compare to other standards like U.S. Robotics x2? I have heard good things about each when compared to current 33.3 limitations of existing standard. As far as who does 56K better, I won't attempt an answer. I do not have any statistics, other than those I read from the two camps....each of course stating their's is superior. The x2 protocol is not interoperable at 56 Kbps with the Open 56K Forum standard, which is based on K56flex. No, your wrong. The Open 56K Forum's implementation is not interoperable with the X2 implementation. <G> However, x2 is a proprietary specification from U.S. Robotics. And k56flex is proprietary. Name one standards body that has specified k56flex as a standard....Joe's PC shop does not count. The standards bodies are the following: ITU-T, ANSI, IETF (sort of), IEEE, OSHA, etc. This is no small issue. Do you by chance remember V.fast "standard" modems .vs. hayes-standard-9.6-pingpong "standard" in that war on speed some years back?? Well guess what? Neither one was chosen to be the industry standard. All the FUD in the world could not make it work. They were merely evolutional weak links in the chain to a better technology leading to 28Kbps asychronous communications.