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Technology Stocks : PairGain Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chicago who wrote (25972)	9/4/1998 5:14:00 PM
From: NW Bronco Fan	Respond to of 36349

Chicago, thanks for the info.

To: Chicago who wrote (25972)	9/4/1998 9:29:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36349

DSL is better for telecommuters By Mark Housman Paradyne, 08/31/98 Digital subscriber line (DSL) is the only practical choice for telecommuters. Cable modems are to high-speed Internet access what party lines were to early telephony. As soon as phone customers were offered a private line, they took it. I recently had a cable modem installed in my home to see firsthand what it's all about. Do I think cable modems should be banished from the face of the earth? No. Even though it took four truck rolls to install mine? No. Even though they trenched my yard to lay new coaxial cable? No. Even though the cable modem couldn't plug into the existing cable jacks? No. Even though when my cable goes out, I lose Internet access and cable TV? No. In fact, I can't think of anything better than competition from cable modems to get DSL rolled out. Cable modems have an early rollout lead - despite the fact that DSL offers superior service, copper reaches 20 times the number of homes and coaxial cable doesn't really touch businesses. How could this be? Simple: The cable guys are good marketers. They bundled and priced cable as a turnkey installation with no contract, and they didn't wait for a standard. So with all of this, why is DSL better for telecommuters? First, DSL is easily installed. Your copper's already there. Your competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC ) hot-wires your connection and you can order your pizza on your phone line while you're downloading your e-mail. Cable needs fiber to the neighborhood before two-way cable modems can be installed in subscribers' houses. Second, DSL guarantees bandwidth. The bandwidth on a cable modem is shared and there are no service-level guarantees. On a DSL link, CLECs can provide specific bandwidth per customer. Third, DSL outperforms cable. Cable appears to offer good performance, but that is temporary. Cable is lightly loaded right now with few subscribers. Chuck Thacker of Microsoft recently warned: "In a heavily loaded branch ... downstream bandwidth available to any one cable modem user is about the same as it would be with a 33K bit/sec modem." What about the in-home LAN? If you are one of the growing number of users with more than one PC, you'll need to connect them all. Cable modems don't provide subaddressing or LAN capabilities. With some innovative DSL solutions, you get multiple virtual lines and the ability to do print and file sharing - without new wiring. This is the promise of the "smart home" fully realized. What about security? The cable guys will tell you they have encryption, but who cares? With DSL, you can create a virtual private network that completely bypasses the Internet. With DSL you can have either a fixed or dynamic IP address; cable only offers dynamically assigned addresses. Furthermore, with cable you have no choice of end points. Cable is terminated at the cable company's ISP; DSL services can have multiple ISPs, and one of them can be your corporate intranet. What about reliability? How often does your cable go out compared with your phone service? For performance, quality of service, security, functionality and reliability, DSL is clearly the best bet for telecommuters.