New Hope For Modem Users

By Acheron July 25, 2000 9:20 AM

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(Fox)The latest craze in the analog modem line a few weeks ago was the aging V.90 standard which allowed for 56K downstream and 33.6K upstream transmissions. While that was good for people who were not privledged to have broadband access in their area, or didn't feel the need for it, it was still lacking. Today, Lucent Technologies announced thier new V.92 chips which allow for faster connections and Internet call waiting.

With the new V.92 chipset, analog users will see a performance boost from 33.6K to 48K upstream transmission, but still only go downstream at 56K, due to federal regulations. The most notable features are that it will allow for incoming calls to be received, and as long as they're not too lengthy, it will not mess up your network connection. It also boasts a faster handshake time. Before users would have to wait 20 seconds before their connection was established. That time has been cut in half to about 10 seconds. Another thing that I found really neat was that the modems would remember phone lines that they called from. As long as you called from the same phone line, it would remember faults with the line and transmission capabilties/limitations. With this learned information, it would try to compensate to get you the best connection possible.

Cisco has committed to supporting V.92 in their Remote Access Servers, and modem producers, Xircom, Xoom, Compaq, HP, and Dell have committed to using the new V.92 chipset. It will also be supported in upcomin Internet appliances. While most tech savvy people won't notice too much difference because they're accustomed to waiting while online, the more inexperienced will notice a difference because things will be more immediate. Sounds funny, but that's what they're telling us.

This is great for people that still don't have broadband service. According to Fox News, only about 27% of the US has access to broadband services, so there's a lot of people that will benefit from this. Luckily I'm part of that 27%, and I'll stick with my cable modem, thank you very much. Happy surfing.

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