To: W.F.Rakecky who wrote (13456 ) 3/7/1998 2:00:00 AM From: Scrapps Read Replies (1) | Respond to
W.F., The USR division of COMS is as much a software company as it is a hardware company, this was pointed out to me a year and half ago by none other than David and PRB. The USR code is well a head of the other 56K modem chip makers. The ability for USR to tune their customers modems is provided by the on board DSP using code (upgradable) from FlashRam.WHYS AND WHEREFORES To some degree, they pioneered the concept of a digital signal processor (DSP) code driven from upgradeable flashRAM. This will actually pay off rather richly here shortly. Any Courier modem manufactured in the last FOUR YEARS will be upgradeable to the new V.90 standard with no hardware at all. And all Sportsters manufactured after about October 1996 will be as well. no such thing as a "telephone network" in the United States, much less worldwide. There are lots of networks. And they vary tremendously. They issued hundreds of new versions that never saw the light of day outside of this test group to try to map the best operation across the widest variety of digital networks available. They even did this internationally to countries like Korea with truly crippled telephone networks. And they worked directly with a lot of ISPs along the way as well. As to the modems, 3COM/US Robotics x2 modem is very clearly the winner of the 56K battle at this point, and we would look for a continued dominance in actual performance on release of the new V.90 modems. Indeed, rumor has it 3COM was about to release some strongly improved code and decided to hold it for the V.90 release. So we think 56 Kbps modems will be getting better. And we now have a standard - V.90. But the battle is not precisely over. There will likely be ongoing performance differences in this round that the speed you encounter online very much a function of the modem you select. We have enjoyed a period for the past few years where almost any modem at any price would more or less work and deliver the "standard" V.34 speeds. This will simply not be the case with V.90 modems. They may interoperate, at some speed between 2,400 bps and 52 Kbps, but you will most likely get the best performance using a modem and technology that matches the one supported by your ISP. And at least initially, significantly better performance will be available from the 3COM/US Robotics V.90 products. It would appear the DSP/memory model has ousted the monolithic chipset model, even at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems. So hopefully you will find it difficult to locate a non-upgradeable modem. It would be much more comfortable for us editorially if all these modems were created more or less equal. From the test data we have available, unfortunately they are not. We do sincerely apologize for bringing this information to light in such tardy fashion given the implications for so many end users and Internet service providers.
