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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications-News Only!!! (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (994)	1/21/1998 2:06:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ASND works with XCOM, a CLEC on voice equipment The SS7-ization of the Internet By Daniel Briere and Christine Heckart L eave it to the little guys to do what's important in the market. Little-known competitive local exchange carrier XCOM Technologies, Inc., which humorously dubs itself "the data phone company,'' has come up with a way to bypass heavily burdened central office switches when data traffic is involved. XCOM's first client, Ascend, is probably one of many that is going to start using the smarts of the voice network to figure out what the heck to do with all the data traffic that is blowing through the central office. The XCOM platform separates data from normal voice traffic using features and intelligence in the public switched telephone network (PSTN), such as Signaling System 7 (SS7) and proprietary software developed by XCOM. Acting like a traffic cop, XCOM's box identifies and directs incoming data straight to a terminal server, bypassing the voice switch entirely. The result? Data is off-loaded from the congested PSTN, enabling better connectivity and true integration of data and voice traffic. What will make hot technologies such as virtual private networks hum, and bring IP telephony folk into the mainstream, is the interface of the IP layers with the smarts of existing SS7 databases, to do the things that make sense to all of us.

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (994)	1/21/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ASND works on voice equipments, Part II Recall that it is SS7 and centralized databases that allow you to do geographic and time-based routing of phone calls. If your New York office were closed, then all calls would be routed to your California office, which would still be open. The same would be true of IP-based telephony calls. The need for similar routing is clearly there. When MCI launched its Vault capability last year, if you squinted at the architecture schematics, you could see dotted lines from the IP switching layer to the SS7 data access points in the MCI architecture. This was really the first public play for serious integration of data networking with voice networking because it was being done on more than just a transport layer. As you see telcos such as GTE preparing to do battle with extensive nationwide IP networks, a critical piece has to be SS7 integration. Still, achieving SS7 and data network integration won't be a trivial task. For example, data networks, and the Internet in particular, handle calls in fundamentally different ways. There are a lot of neat features that carriers have developed over time, such as routing by area code, that will be tough to carry over to the data environment. But then there are features that reside in the data network that should work easily in an SS7-data network environment. For example, look-ahead routing, which scouts forward in the network for congestion and busy signals, should work well. After all, SS7 is a packet network that talks to all the switches and other network adjunct devices.

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (994)	1/21/1998 2:11:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Test results: Ascend DSLpipe, 11/3/97 Summary: Ascend RADSL. The Ascend SDSL product is similar to the Ascend RADSL equipment. Ascend RADSL high bandwidth latency CPE to CO: Ascend RADSL high bandwidth latency CO to CPE: The Ascend RADSL equipment shows a fairly steady state of latency, between 320000 and 400000 microseconds, on both the upstream and downstream links. Ascend RADSL low bandwidth latency CPE to CO: Ascend RADSL low bandwidth.. nwfusion.com

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (994)	1/21/1998 2:48:00 PM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Diamond Aims Shotgun At Bandwidth Limitations New Modem Reaches 112Kbps By Coupling Two Phone Lines by Betty Yuan Originally published in the February 1998 issue The last advance in analog modem speed involved squeezing 56Kbps throughput from a conventional phone line. Diamond Multimedia Systems hasn't beaten that limit, but has doubled the ante: The company's new Shotgun technology lets two 56Kbps modems work as one to achieve a maximum theoretical throughput of 112Kbps using two phone lines. Diamond sees Shotgun as a more affordable alternative to ISDN service. According to market research firm International Data Corp., 25 million U.S. households already have multiple phone lines. By bonding two analog lines, consumers can approach ISDN's 128Kbps speeds. Diamond also touts Shotgun's ability to deliver "bandwidth on demand"--to activate the second line when a user needs a faster connection, then release it for voice or fax use when Internet traffic is low. Jeff Orr, product line manager of Diamond's communications division, says the company is planning to implement the technology in two ways: "[Shotgun] is being included in two product lines. First, across all our SupraExpress 56K products." He says customers who already own SupraExpress 56K modems will be able to update their units to Shotgun technology during the first quarter of 1998 via a free download from Diamond's Web site. Afterward, given two phone lines, an owner can combine his or her modem with another--with a 33.6Kbps unit, for instance, for a total throughput of 89.6Kbps. The second Shotgun offering will be a new dual-line modem, the SupraSonic II, which Diamond also plans to ship in the first quarter for an estimated price of $199.95. Shotgun technology requires Ascend Communications' Multichannel Plus Protocol (MP+) on the server end; according to the market research firm DataQuest, Ascend services 75 to 85 percent of large Internet service providers (ISPs). One such ISP is Earthlink. Its director of product management, Barry Friedman, estimates that ISP-side support for Shotgun technology should be in place "by the time the retail product hits the market." "I truly believe that ISDN is the best," Friedman adds, "but [Shotgun technology] will be accepted by the masses in far greater numbers." Diamond isn't the only company coupling analog lines. Boca Research has announced a similar 112Kbps technology, dubbed Dynamic Duo, which at press time it intended to ship by the end of 1997.

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (994)	1/22/1998 7:52:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

RCN acquires major east coast ISPs RCN Corporation announced Wednesday that it had signed definitive agreements to acquire Boston and Washington's largest Internet service providers UltraNet Communications Inc. and Erol's Internet Inc. for a combined $110.5 million in cash and RCN Common stock. The two Net providers serve 325,000 subscribers. David C. McCourt, RCN's chairman and CEO, explained the strategy behind the deals saying "They give us an opportunity to offer our phone and cable services to a much larger existing customer base." RCN Corporation is currently providing local phone, long distance, cable television and Internet access in several markets in the Boston to Washington, D.C. corridor. McCourt crowed about the expansion of his company, suggesting these deals are only a start. "We're going to be bigger than Bell Atlantic in all measurements, in the not too distant future," he told the New York Daily News.