3Com Class Action Suit 141
Petit-Monsieur Pas-de-Cou writes "3Com Corporation has been sued
in California by an alleged nationwide class, asserting claims relating to the advertising
of modems using 3Com's x2 modem technology. Among other claims, plaintiffs in these lawsuits
have alleged that 3Com engaged in deceptive advertising by claiming that modems employing x2
technology could achieve 56K speeds and/or were twice as fast as prior generation modems.
" Wow-that's a lotta legal statements.
Re:My take on 56K (Score:1)
If this case is the one I've heard about,there was some racism involved here. Apperently this cable company was charging interest rates that worked out to around 300% to people who lived in areas where there was was a lot of low-income black people. Basically it was a scam.
Baud (Score:1)
Yeah, dude, you're wrong (Score:1)
Some connection speed data (Score:1)
This is the command that generated the output, from the Radius detail files:
grep -h Connect-Info `cat list-of-pm3s` |awk '{print $3}'|sed -e 's/"//'|sort|uniq -cd|sort +1n
The data is for the month of May, until 15:18 EDT 5/31.
The output is of the form
number-of-connections connect-speed
sorted on the connect-speed column.
The pm3s service 7 different cities.
13 2400
119 4800
105 7200
130 9600
228 12000
1940 14400
268 16800
1094 19200
1015 21600
2375 24000
9434 26400
73 28000
11535 28800
45 29333
49 30666
5230 31200
320 32000
43 33333
3131 33600
323 34000
42 34666
531 36000
453 37333
275 38000
216 38666
590 40000
247 41333
1134 42000
580 42666
2298 44000
1649 45333
842 46000
644 46666
2077 48000
2329 49333
767 50000
2029 50666
413 52000
127 53333
24 54666
3 64000
The 64000's are probably ISDN. I have no data on the speed or type of modems in use by our customers. I have only anecdotal data on the quality of phone lines. I believe it is safe to assume that any connection speed over 33600 (except for 64000) is from a 56k modem of some kind.
40 miles per gallon? (Score:1)
Consumers that are upset by the 53K limitation should consider the following:
- The FCC limitation technically only cripples the commerical grade V.90 *server* modem to *sending* at a maxium rate of 53K. The consumer grade V.90 modems are not crippled *at all* and have been and will remain capable of recieving at 56K without ANY modification. If the FCC policy changes then once the ISP modem firmware is updated the consumer will possibly get a higher rate of transfer without the consumer doing anything additional.
Re:ISDN prices (Score:1)
I checked the ISDN rate for my area again and here is what they said:
$195.00 installation
$257.39 for monthly flate rate service
I could chose to only use 60 hours a month, and only pay:
$190.00 installation
$ 57.39 for monthly service charge
$ 0.03 per minute after 60 hours with a usage cap of $245.00
So if I have a very long download, or make a lot of voice calls I could pay over $302.39 not including FCC fees and taxes.
To top it all off, the TELCO does not provide any equipment except for their connection point at that price.
And in order to have "reliable" phone service, I'll need to provide backup power to the phones, and I also was told by another ISDN customer to keep a single POTS line in case of trouble with the exchange office.
Now you know why I use a 56K modem, hoping that Bellsouth would get off its ass and provide ADSL in my neighborhood.
Consumer incompetance reason to sue? (Score:2)
p.s. What *really* annoys me how they decided to rate CD-ROM speeds. Talk about something arbitrary and completely silly.
SCSI not inherently more expensive? (Score:2)
But I understand the point. SCSI drives can't be THAT more more expensive (there isn't $100 worth of logic on the drive, and a scsi controller card can't cost $100 to produce than EIDE).
Caveat Emptor (Score:2)
My point, the information was there, all over the place, its just that people don't want to look for it. 56k is max connection speed, and I'm sure under lab conditions 3Com managed to get it up to that speed. I bet the "average consumer" won't know it if they connect at 26.4 kbps (like me) as opposed to 28.8 and that a 36.6k won't do them any good. Some of these people I bet bought a 36.6k modem even though their phone lines maxed out at 26.4k. So, when they quote a connect speed, that is a maximum, but crappy phone line noise can slow it down.
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:3)
As to the 56k issue, it really isn't that bad. It depends entirely on where you live, and you don't have to limit the connect always. Where I am my 56 k does fluctuate, and only sometimes receives the connect. But at a relatives they received 52000 connect every single time. It may not be the wonder it was always advertised, but as always there is a caveat. In the advertisements and brochures the fine print was there...telling people it may not work where they lived. So I don't think 3com will necessarily lose the lawsuit.
All High Speed Technologies (Score:1)
Let's take a look at cable mdoems. Your cable modem provider, let's just say @home says you will get a 1.5 Mbit/sec downstream bandwidth cap and a 256k upload cap.
Now, the chances of you actually getting 192 KB/s is not possible. You have protocol overhead, other people on your segment eating bandwidth, @home's limited bandwidth, the ISP you are pulling files from limited bandwidth, and the limited bandwidth of the backbone provider in between.
The fact of the matter is, at least where I am, the max speed you'll ever see is around 60 KB/s, with packet loss, high latency and unstable routes.
No ISP out there tells customers what the average speed they will get is (unless you are selling guaranteed rate circuits), so why should 3com?
The modem business has always listed the maximum speed of the modem. Buy a 33,600 modem and put it on a shit line, you won't get 33.6. Buy a 56k modem and put it on a line not capable of 56k and you won't get it.
--
Re:meaninglessness (Score:1)
The way I always understood it, the 'k' simply ment kilo, bytes or bits were not implied. You don't say, "i'm going to drive 56 k" and expect everyone to know you are talking about kilometers.
Bits are a lowercase 'b' and bytes are uppercase 'B'. The 'k' is supposed to be lowercase, but people use it in uppercase because 'kB' looks sorta funny.
56 KB or 56 kB - 56 kilobytes
56 kb or 56 Kb - 56 kilobits
Not to mention this is pretty worthless. My modem can go 56 Kb. What does that mean? Does that mean it can do 56 Kb a minute, 56 Kb a day, it can hold 56 Kb of data?
Anyway, this point is moot as USR/3com modems are marketed as '56K' (capital K) modems so them refering to them as 56K modems makes perfect sense.
--
Re:meaninglessness (Score:1)
Oh and one more thing, remember K means means 1000. 56K means 56,000 and when talking about modems it's implied as bits per second.
--
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:2)
This is incorrect. The FCC limits specific levels of power output on phone systems to prevent crosstalk seepage. USR could not figure out a way to get to 56K without exceeding these limits, so they imposed a limit of 53K.
However, Rockwell and Lucent both make chipsets that are capable of reaching the full 56K because they devised a solution that didn't require exceeding the FCC limits on power output.
So you can get a true 56000 connection with v.90 or K56flex, just not with x2 or USR's v.90.
--
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
What else will you buy? (Score:1)
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
Makes me sick.... (Score:1)
What makes me sick is the amount of money the lawyers are gonna make.
For the hassle I will get a 15 dollar coupon?
I'd be more inclined to spend my time if they were giving away 3Com T-shirts that said "Lawyers suck".
Re:ISDN prices (Score:1)
Actually, I live in the Atlanta, Ga. metro area. The ISDN line itself isn't so expensive, it's the hourly usage charges that add up. That also causes the ISP to charge more. TN for some reason has dirt cheap prices for ISDN.
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
MediaOne has been advertising broadband services including cable modems since '95. They also promise availability EVENTUALLY. Of course, if it's anything like the cable TV service, it'll be useless.
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:3)
I'll agree that 56k is a nasty hack. The problem is it had to be done. The reason it exists at all is that the local phone apparently are determined not to be dragged into the 21st century, and intend to claw the ground kicking and screaming all the way.
ISDN? In order for me to get the same deal I have now but at ISDN speeds (single channel), I would have to pay $575 a month! I do not HAVE $575 a month to spend on internet access. Without 56k modems (connecting at 41-44k), I would be at 26.4k, not ISDN. In fact, at $575/month, I could run Gigabit fiber from home to work and break even in 29 months (If I were allowed access to utility poles and conduits). As for DSL, I am promised it will be available in my area EVENTUALLY. I live in a metro area BTW.
The entire history of modems has been an end run around telcos that haven't improved in any substantial way since the mid '70s (and that was a small improvement on a system that itself hadn't changed since the '50s). If you think about it, the whole idea of analog encoding of a digital signal looks kludgy in itself. The only reason it was done was because analog circuits were widely available (POTS) and digital circuits were nowhere in sight.
As far as the class action suit goes, I don't think there was deliberate deception. I was completely unsurprised to see that 44k was the best I could get. What it amounts to is that modems are now being bought by a different class of consumers. When modem sales were restricted to people who understood computers, the probability that the modem wouldn't reach it's top speed went without saying. Apparently, it's going to have to be said now. (Warning, do not eat this modem. May cause injury if used as a frisbee, Consult your physician before using any electronic device....)
Re:Lawyer: more class action sillines (Score:2)
>lawyers for misuse of the legal system?
It's kind of tough when what they're doing is perfectly legal, and they "win" by getting a settlement.
But one of my pipe dreams is a class action against the so-called trial lawyers, the personal injury plaintiffs' bar. While it is normally the plaintiffs that form a class, it is also possible to form the defendants into a class.
And the tort? Warning labels. The silly warning labels have become so prevalent that they are ignored, eliminating the value of serious warning labels. So find people who have been injured by not reading warnings that would have been useful to normal people . . .
It's not from the plaintiffss' bar, but as an example: earplugs/ear protectors are required on constructions sites near certain equipment--because the mandated sound levels of the back-up beeps exceed the permissible levels for the sound. Hmm, and since people wear the sound-blockers, maybe we need to make the signals louder . . .
hawk, esq., who thinks the warning label on McDonald's coffe should read, "Only a low grade moron would hold this cup with her upper thighs and remove the lid in a moving vehicle."
Lawyer: more class action sillines (Score:5)
This is a fairly typical class-action settlement.
The underlying claim will strike most people familiar with the issue as silly. In all seriousness, how many people in the US took a 56k for the exact speed of 7kBytes/second? 3? 5? They diddn't buy it for a particular data rate, but for being the fastest available.
And the defense: This looks like one more that the defense would win after fighting. BUt it comes down to:
The settlement: coupons, and pay off the plaintiff lawyers. Coupons are becoming an increasingly common way of handling nuisance class action suits. There have been rumors in the past of manufacture trying to rummage up suits for this very purpose. It either locks in the consumer to buy from the same manufacturor, or it doesn't cost anything.
That is, it doesn't directly cost anything. Switching hats briefly, and speaking as an economist, this drives up prices by distorting the demand for the product. Class members pay less than they otherwise would have, but everyone else pays more. As a corrollary, the net settlement ot the consumer is less than $15, as the $15 relates to the new higher price.
Since they could win, why does the manufacturor settle? Quite simply, it's cheaper. Instead of the legal costs of fie years of litigation, the depression of the stock price from having to report the litigation in reports, and the general effects of "consumer advocates" screaming, the company cuts a bunch of coupons, and pays hush money to the plaintiff lawyers. (MY civil procedure professor referred to these suits as a great way to get paid just for going away).
The reason that class action suits exist is the notion that they are an effective way of handling suits that are too small to bring individually, and that they cut down on the required judicial resources--it's not worth suing a major corporation ofer $100.
On the other hand, when the damage per consumer is less than forty cents, it makes no sense to worry about the matter. So the system gives them a ten cent coupon, and their lawyers a couple of million.
The only class action that I know of that has actually benefitted people who were actually injured was the Iomega settlement, in which Iomega paid rebates that it had wrongfully withheld--and in full (plus a disk). TYpically, the payment to class members is negligible, or the connection to the alleged injury spurious (e.g., the breast implant litigation).
In practice, iomega excepted, the only beneficiaries of the class action system are the attorneys who feed from it.
Re:Transfer Rates (Score:2)
Just something else the don't tell you in the fine print.
Re:9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems (Score:3)
older modems (not oldest, they used discrete frequencies) used both phase angle and amplitude to encode bits to send to the other side. 9600 baud was really 2400 baud, but it sent four bits at a time. Imagine it like the old crappy parallel port cables which could do 4 bit transfers.
as modems get faster and faster, they still stick with this 2400 baud (a signalling rate) but pack more and more bits ber baud. What you end up with is what's called a constellation pattern. a 000 is sent as a 3/4 power 24 degree signal, a 010 as a 1/8 power 0 degree signal... picture a grid that's 8x8. x is your phase, y is your amplitude. whereever the lines cross, there's a possible signal.
I'm a little dozy here after lunch but I'm pretty sure that's how the terms are used. baud is the signalling rate, and bps is the signalling rate times the number of bits sent per signal.
now there is a limit as to how "fine" this grid can get. ideally you'd want infinite changes in both phase and amplitude, but you're not gonna get it. On connect, modems do all kinds of fancy frequency and amplitude sweeps and basically "shape" the channel they're in so that they can then use adaptive equilization to flatten out the frequency spectrum and get optimal communications. I think that 8-QAM is the best you can get right now.
BTW, IANACE (communications engineer)
17.9 Amp Vacuum Cleaners (Off topic) (Score:1)
In Europe it appears that vacuum cleaners are sold by the power rating (Watts) or the depression at the nozzel (kPa). Not so long ago I bought a vacuum cleaner and was completely confused by the price versus performance metrics that were employed
Re:Deceptive advertising on box re: power limit (Score:3)
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:3)
Well, ISDN is still a pretty expensive solution
Because it isn't mainstream. Also because of regulatory issues in the USA, as I understand it.
or not that much more bandwith
It's not so much the bandwidth, as the low latency, fast connects and total reliability
IDE isn't that bad. I certainly don't mind being able to add 17 gigs for less then 250.
But if IDE didn't exist you would be able to add 17 gigs of SCSI for less than 250. There's nothing inherently more expensive about SCSI, it's just that the existence of two incompatible standards has enabled the disk manufacturers to overcharge the high-enders, knowing they don't have the option of going to EIDE because limited cable lengths and the low maximum number of units would make it unusable. And the max cable lengths on EIDE are much shorter [deja.com] than people think. That's apart from all the other issues [sunsite.auc.dk] people have because IDE keeps running out of bits every other year.
56k is a nasty hack (Score:4)
When I read how 56k was supposed to work, I thought it the most gross hack imaginable, and it seems it is. Almost everyone has to limit the top speed in order to stop it flaking out, dropping the connection at random moments and generally being a piece of analogue technology pushed far too far.
Apparently one of the best places to put a 56k modem is on the analogue port of an ISDN adapter. That way the analogue signal has the shortest distance to travel.
Re:Baud (Score:2)
Baud is a measure of signal changes per second. Thus, a 1200 baud, 1200 bps signal might look like this:
- - -- --- - - - - - - --- -- -
(where '-' is on and ' ' is off...it's a graph versus time)
Well then someone found out that it was practical to carry more than one bit on one signal change. Hence, here's a 1200 baud, 2400 bps signal (2 bits per signal change):
. -O -O - -.. O - .
(where ' ', '.', 'O' and '-' are all distinct signals)
The problem is that, especially with poor quality phone lines, it's hard for the modem to distinguish between the different signals. "Is 3V closer to 5V or 1V?"
As for the actual maximum number of baud (signal changes per second), I'm not sure, but 9600 sounds about right. For a 36.6 modem, that means 4 bits per signal change?
Re:ISDN prices addendum (Score:2)
The real reason I dropped ISDN is that the connection would die about every month or two and getting to a like human on BellSouth's "business" repair line was insane. Once I logged 6 hours on my cell phone to finally to convince them it wasn't my problem and get a tech to get the line fixed. Try getting the runaround and telling every supervisor and department that you put a scope and a meter on the line to prove it was an opened circuit (10 megaohms) with no signal. It was a game I got tired of playing.
Its analog for me at the moment.
Amen - digital cameras too (Score:2)
Most egregiously, they count the RGB sensors as three separate pixels. By this logic, the laptop I'm typing on has 3072 x 768 pixels; pretty impressive, hm? On the very best of the digital cameras (the Nikon 950), the effective number of pixels (measured using resolution targets) is about half the claimed spec, and even then the image suffers from moire, chromatic aberration, and other artifacts.
What really opened my eyes was looking at Sound Vision's camera, which is only 800 x 600 pixels, but blows away the "megapixel" cameras in total image quality. Unfortunately, because this camera has to take three separate shots through three separate filters (R, G, and B), it's only useful for a limited range of work, so it's foundering.
As if this weren't bad enough, Kodak came out with a digital camera with about a million "pixels", but marketed it as about 1.5M, because they estimated that it delivered quality slightly superior to the 1.3Mpix cameras they were competing with. Can you imagine printers competing on this basis? At least dpi claims have tended to be fairly solid (although I'm more than a bit suspicious over Epson's 1440).
Caveat emptor, I guess.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
56k is great (Score:2)
I have gotten 53k connects, and I have gotten as low as the high 40s... These people who aren't getting better than 24000 are probably using category 3 wiring for a quarter mile in their house, exposing it to all forms of radiation and crosstalk...
Beyond that - It says on the box that you won't get 56k... It also says that you may not even get the 53k if your line is not prestine... Maybe they should have read the box before purchasing.
At my last home I had beautiful self wired phone lines, and I was less than 6 blocks from the central office... 53k was absolute...
Where I live now the phone line is shared with my neighbor and spliced quite a number of times... While standard 33.6k modems will only connect me at 26.4 -31.2 tops on this line, 56k modems get me up to 44k... I am quite greatful...
Ofcourse I did order new phone lines, and now I am not sharing and am back up to 53k, so 44k can kiss my ass...
thanks you USR and all other parties involved, nice work...
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Re:My take on 56K -- Winmodems (Score:1)
On the other hand, a lot of them are not. Just check the box man... My 56k isa modem [generic.. OEM.. no brandings] even has jumpers and dipswitches!
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
Christ, yes. US West is fighting improvement in their operations like a momma rat cornered by pit bull terriers. Here in New Mexico they recently had their pet legislators pass a bill that would have in essence removed all regulatory oversight in exchange for vague promises of eventual improvements. The Gov. shot that down, but I suspect that the payback will be that they don't begin rolling out DSL here until several years after the rest of the country endorses telepathic communication.
Re:Not always the modem's fault (Score:1)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Don't Gripe.. (Score:1)
Re:meaninglessness (Score:1)
Bits are a lowercase 'b' and bytes are uppercase 'B'. The 'k' is supposed to be lowercase, but people use it in uppercase because 'kB' looks sorta funny.
Some people use that convention but it isn't universal. I've been working with modems and data links for over 20 years. The standard terminology has always been BPS (bits per second), KBPS (kilobits (10^3) per second), MBPS (megabits (10^6) per second). The size of a byte is not always 8 bits. That is why many telecommunications standards refer to octets instead of bytes.
Re:confused windows user? (Score:2)
I think the bug is in the modem firmware, and not Windows (or other OSs that report 115Kbps). If I recall correctly, the 'Hayes compatible' way is to report the modem speed (DCE) where some modems report DTE without an init switch.
Occassionally you will run into someone that has actually switched modems because Modem A reports 19.2Kbps, while Modem B reports 115.
--
USR sucks in general. (Score:1)
At home I have a 3Com VSP cable modem (internal ISA card) which is basically the cable equivalent of a Winmodem (and seeing as how Paul Allen owns my cable company, Charter Communications [chartercom.com] it almost makes sense why). Tried every hardware hack possible to make it work, but it doesn't. My Cable Co. hopefully will have an external multiplatform modem soon, or so they tell me, but until now I'm stuck with using it the way 3Com makes me.
At work I was working on a 2x450 PII Linux machine last week with a 3Com NIC which refuses to cooperate with our network. Did a clean install of Linux, nothing nonstandard or weird in the hardware or software. I'm sure the thing works flawlessly under WinNT but under Linux it occasionally stops talking to our Sun NIS and NFS servers and is just really flaky in general.
I can't knock the Palm series though - love my Palm III....
Deceptive advertising on box re: power limit (Score:1)
I've always wondered, what is the voltage limit for, anyway? Will increasing line voltage for 56K modems fry peoples phones?
high speed modem works well for me (Score:2)
You have to be careful with how you initialize the modem. The initialization string I was using for a few months actually somehow disabled high speed connections. When I trimmed it down, things started working. And there are locations from where you can't connect--too noisy or too far from the switch. But my phone wires aren't perfect (water damage), so there seems to be at least some robustness.
My 56k modem came with my PC. I was quite sceptical about the 56k stuff and probably wouldn't have bought it, but I'm happy with it now. It will still be months until DSL becomes available, and ISDN is much more expensive.
gee 56k eh (Score:1)
meaninglessness (Score:1)
the thing that throws me the most is, there's no remedy of the problem. the modems are still labelled 56k; 3com is still free to claim their modems are twice as fast as 28.8 modems. You'd think that 3com would be required to rename them 53k modems, or something.
and dammit, who WROTE this class action thing? throughout the entire document they refer to "56K" modems. They AREN'T! they're 56k modems! using "K" means you're talking about kilobytes per second, but you're not-- you're talking about kilobits per second, "k". there's, like an 8x difference in bandwidth there. i realize i'm nitpicking, but keep in mind that misleading labeling of speed numbers is the point they sued to begin with!
anyway, look at this bit here..
If you do not request exclusion from the Settlement Class, you will be represented free of charge by the class counsel for the Settlement Class listed below. You may also appear through your own separate counsel at your own expense
i suggest any 3com users here (unless they for some reason want a $15 coupon) request they be excluded, and maybe band together later for a class action suit with more meaningful results (assuming you care). Because if you send in a request of exclusion, that means the lawyers get paid less.
And we all know that even though the 3com users get basically nothing, a lawyer somewhere is getting millions of dollars in fees.
Jaded ISP Tech Rant Follows- (Score:2)
It's especially funny when they call in on a line that is so noisey I can barely understand them through the static. "Why can't I get 56K speeds? I can only connect at 19200!".
Sometimes they have 20 feet of phone cord between their computer and the wall when their computer is right up against the wall and 2 feet from the walljack... I could go on, but why waste even more space...
Re:USR sucks in general. NOT! (Score:1)
I can't speak much for their NICs (although I use one) but regarding their modems, you are seriously overgeneralizing. My USR Courier (Which I guess, is now a 3Com Courier) is the greatest modem I've ever used. I even lent it to the company I work for once, because it was the only modem we could come up with that could do synchronous connections (we needed to connect a couple of MUXes over a leased line). If it weren't for the Courier's ability to handle this once-in-a-lifetime weird situation, we would have been S.O.L. for a few days.
Oh, and ... I bought this modem in 1995, and last December I upgraded the firmware to V.90. Firmware upgrades w/out having to touch the hardware? The Courier was one of the first.
Sheesh, if I ever have to buy another modem and I think there's any chance that I might have to do something "nonstandard" with it, a 3Com Courier would be my #1 choice. Couriers rock! And it just goes to prove that black equipment is usually the best. ;-)
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
I'll agree with you that SCSI and ISDN are better standards-- but let's face it. IDE _did_ exist simply because it was easier/cheaper. New standards come and go, and most of the time they're better, but that doesn't mean we should all be jumping on to each new one that comes along.
I'm glad I missed out on ISDN. And although cable modems and ADSL aren't much "better" standards, they certainly are faster-- and much better supported.
It just takes a change in what society as a whole wants to make one standard or another the most popular. Back in the days when no one wore seatbelts and no one even bothered to do crash tests, I doubt paying twice the cost of a regular car for a "safer, better" Volvo would have got many customers.
Nowadays, of course, almost all cars are as safe as a Volvo.
And of course, there are always those who will fork out even more for the Mercedes with quad-steel-graphite-diamond side-front-back-underneath impact beams.
Re:POTS Bandpass (Score:1)
'tis why I put the disclaimer on there...I didn't remember the actual frequency response...but knew it was a fairly small fraction of what the actual copper wire could handle.
Thanks for correcting the freq. response numbers.
Jeff
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:5)
ISDN is a bit different...its a digital connection to the home, so the terminal adaptor or ISDN router is responsible for digitizing the data...and for analog signals on the back of your TA, it does it in much the same way that the telco switches do for the analog line above...for a data connection...well, the data is already digital from the computer, so its just a matter of encoding it for the line protocol that ISDN uses...thus it soak up the full 64Kbps channel available to it. In the telco switches, its just a matter of taking that already encoded data and switching it...this is fairly trivial since you're already dealing with digital data, its just a matter of taking it off of one line and throwing it on another (well...there's more to it than that in implementation of course, but the basic idea is simple). However, because the telco network was set up with 64Kbps (sometimes just 56Kbps) channels for transmission of the digitized audio data, ISDN limits at 64Kbps as well...this is a direct result of the analog connections in the first point. The whole telephone system was set up to handle 64Kbps chunks, so that's what ISDN gets, since its transmitted across largely the same telco infrastructure.
xDSL is a whole different beast entirely. As I figure most of you are aware, the physical copper wires that are run into your house (business, whatever) are physically capable of handling a much greater bandwidth response than the telco's are making use of (*this* is where Shannon's limit really comes in). So, xDSL uses frequency responses that the telephone network has never made use of before (4000Hz up to some really bignum Hz). However, because the telco infrastructure isn't designed to handle these frequency responses (and bandwidth quantities!) the switches and trunks and other telco stuff can't handle DSL directly... Here's where the really big limitation with DSL really is...the DSL equipment has to be on the copper line *before* it hits the switch, or, if the signal goes through the switch, it gets clipped back to the 40-4000Hz signal that the switches are designed to handle. So, your DSL equipment has to be at the telco Central Office (a considerable expense for non-telco's to co-locate equipment), your phone line (actual copper wire) has to be rewired to hit the DSL equipment and then split off from there into the switch, and because the switches can't handle the frequency response (and bandwidth) it can't be "switched" meaning you can't place calls on DSL...really...in the telco world, this seriously limits the usefulness of DSL. Even in the ISP world its somewhat limiting...if you are using one ISP for your DSL, you can't hang up and dial another DSL provider...you'd have to have a completely seperate DSL line in from that second provider to use that...kinda sucks.
Don't get me wrong...DSL is really cool...but there are some serious limitations.
To get back on topic a bit
Oh, another point...before you go off and complaining to your ISP about your v.90 connect speeds, the critical side of a v.90 connect is the client side modem...ie, the one attached to your computer, not theirs. For example, if you have a Lucent WinModem, you better make *darn* sure you have at least version 5.32 of the code on your modem before you start calling up and complaining to your ISP or you're going to be sending them some sheepish apologies eventually. There are other code revisions that help with other types of modems...a good resourse is http://www.56k.com for finding this information.
Sorry so long.
Jeff
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:5)
2nd, with all digital technologies like xDSL, and ISDN, you get much higher data rates because you never have to convert the signal. POTS, ISDN and xDSL all use the same 2 wires, but with various encoding methods, and consequentially different equipment both at your end, and at the telco end. The biggest reason why DSL is so much faster than ISDN is because the xDSL spec has shorter distance limits that ISDN does. It's pretty similar to the distance restrictions of Gigabit/Fast/Ethernet.
The reason that you hear lots of people complain abot the FCC and 56K, is not that they want to restrict bandwidth, but that they have a limit on how much power you can send across phone lines. Because of this restriction, the tricks that the 56K modems use to get above 33.6 can't be maximized on "crystal clear" phone lines. You'ld be hard pressed to find a line where it mattered anyway, but that's another issue.
56K modems are a pretty neat trick, and most people I know do have 56K. I decided about two years ago to just hold out for one of the current multi-migabit technologies. I'd spent too much already on 14.4, 28.8 and 33.6 to spend a dime on any new modem. I pondered ISDN for a while, but it is _so_ much money. I just can't justify that monthly bill.
here ends the lesson...
-earl
Plain English (Score:4)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
the highest stable connection that I've ever seen was 54000bps. I still think that is a real nice speed.
I find this incredibly hard to believe, considering that the FCC prevents speeds higher than 53k. And connecting with a 56k modem (USR model) returns that it's downloading at 53333bps (which I attribute to a) the fact that modem speeds are always returned as specific numbers, or using powers of 2). This is when going through my ISDN modem so it goes through the very clean ISDN line.
I have never failed to achieve maximum modem connection while using this line.
On another note (more pertaining to the actual topic) I don't remember if 3com actually made it clear that the FCC restricted connection speeds, but even if they didn't, I honestly believe them when they say these modems can achieve 56k... in closed circuit tests in which the FCC cannot intervene. However it's a real world occurrence (in the US at least) that you just can't go above 53k. This would be like an auto manufacturer advertising a top speed of 150mph on their car, and then suing them when you get a speeding ticket.
Re:56K everytime (Score:1)
I'd wager you NEVER connect at 57600. That speed isn't attainable (to the best of my knowledge).
It is, however, one of those speeds that is always listed in dropboxes and that you have to put in your
Anyway, if you want to see your true download speed, I'm fairly sure there's a modem init string that will return that value to Windows DUN.
Re:56k is great (Score:1)
Well that's what the lawsuit is about: Printing magazine ads screaming "56K!!! X2!!!!" and then putting "You'll only get 53K if you live next door to the phone company and you re-wire the entire phone lines in your house" on small print at the bottom of the box doesn't cut it as responsible advertising.
Actually, as long as they meet the government standards, it is considered responsible advertising.
56k technology DOES approximately double the download speed.
56k connect speeds ARE attainable with 56k modems. They just aren't attainable with the modems that your ISP uses. And 53k is nothing to sneeze at.
If you notice, the symbol for X2 looked something like X(superscript 2). I don't think ANYONE thought that X2 squared your connect speed (tho I wish it did!).
Anyway, as long as the fine print is there, and large enough to be legal, 3com is not in the wrong. They're probably settling out of court so they won't look bad.
Re:My take on 56K -- Winmodems (Score:1)
This is a great reason to learn C and take the time to write a Winmodem driver for Linux/*BSD. Not only will it let you use the cheaper hardware, but you will probably be considered a hero to alot of people who were duped into buying a Winmodem (I was too, luckily the store I bought it from let me exchange it).
Re:ISDN not too bad.. (Score:1)
Tennesee's ISDN prices are't the norm. The Public Utility Commission there has forced BellSouth to offer ISDN at prices well below the national norm.
Re:confused windows user? (Score:1)
Nowadays the connect speed really doesn't tell you anything anyway. Far more useful is the BPS rate you get on various downloads. FTP a large compressed file with a REAL ftp program (not a browser) and see what it says at the end of the download...thats the only way to get a useful number.
Re:Lawyer: more class action sillines (Score:1)
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:1)
>considerable expense for non-telco's to co-locate equipment), your
>phone line (actual copper wire) has to be rewired to hit the DSL
>equipment and then split off from there into the switch, and because
>the switches can't handle the frequency response (and bandwidth) it
>can't be "switched" meaning you can't place calls on DSL...really...in
>the telco world, this seriously limits the usefulness of DSL. Even in
>the ISP world its somewhat limiting...if you are using one ISP for
>your DSL, you can't hang up and dial another DSL provider...you'd have
>to have a completely seperate DSL line in from that second provider to
>use that...kinda sucks.
The way they handle this in Canada, is the phone company *is* the ISP.
i.e. Bell = Sympatico
Bell/Sympatico uses Nortel "1-Meg" modems and Nortel xDSL line cards/racks.
Rates are $40 Canadian/month (~$25 US) for 1.5Mbps xDSL!
Likewise with the local cable companies and @Home being the only ISP choice. I wonder if other ISP's have a chance, in the long term...
Richard
Class Action Suits (Score:1)
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
Is this truely the case? I have a USR Courier (upgraded from a 28.8 VFC to v.90 free of charge) and I get consistent connects at 45333 and have never disabled any features on the modem.
Some day cable or DSL will be available in my area.
jms
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:1)
So flaky in fact that the tech support lines often give you a greeting that there is 'widespread problems and most cable modems are affected'.
What's worse is the 1 hour plus waiting times for tech support. I remember when a few friends and I took turns passing the phone around for a whole afternoon.. Noon till 3:30. And still on hold when we gave up.
I don't have too many bad experiences with telco's, but before I got cable I had access through the local 'big' ISP called CADVision. But thanks to the fact that DSL tech is almost all on the telco side.. The prices they offered on DSL were just awful (even if it were 2 Megabit). And I didn't go through the telco, they had download quotas.
The idea of ISP's going out and there being no real choice in the matter bothers me greatly. I liked the ISP war in this city before @Home rolled around at an affordable price (~40$CDN a month, plus no need for a second phone line). Lately though, it's just all going to the big companies who control the networks of cabling (be it copper or coaxial).
It's a sad state of affairs
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:1)
Re:Cable modems (Score:1)
Avi
Transfer Rates (Score:2)
I am on a cable modem now and I could never go back to a plain modem, but for people who are in areas where they can't get highspeed access, they're better off with 56k than 33.6.
Just my 2 cents.
Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Countries (Score:1)
Re:They already lost the lawsuit (Score:1)
It's quite clear from the document linked above [3com.com] that the lawsuit is being settled.
The Death of Meaningful Specs (Score:3)
In days past, if you bought a 300 bps modem, you would expect nothing less than 300. This probably held true up to about 9600 bps, then, gradually, we got used to not connecting at full speeds. It's funny now that the happy posters in this topic are happy at 45K, not 56K or even 53K. Nobody would have been happy with 220 bps from their 300 bps modem.
But modem's aren't special; they're just following the trend. Show me a printer which will really live up to its pages-per-minute spec. In fact, show me an old dot matrix printer that got anywhere near its characters per second spec. Show me a monitor that's actually sold based on its viewable screen area. (Actual viewable area is only a footnote now, and only because of another one of these class action suits.) And I'd take any hard drive or CD-ROM drive claims with a huge grain of salt, too.
As consumers, all we can do is become informed. I don't expect the manufacturers to start selling 17.9" monitors -- they'd be afraid of being excluded from a PC Rag's roundup of 300 19" monitors. But maybe we can insist on more realistic reporting. It just might be possible now that there are lots of web sites reviewing hardware and basically making PC Rags obsolete.
USR Courier Dual Standard v.Everything (Score:1)
It was a 28.8 back when the 28.8 standard had just been finalized.
It got upgraded to 33.6 when the 33.6 standard was finalized.
They added caller ID and distinctive ring while there were no new standards to add.
They added x2 (and I got it for free even because I registered for the enabling key while they were free).
Of course it was also a $700 modem... But if anyone remembers BBSes, they probably also remember that most of the good ones had these modems.. why? because they cost $250 for sysops (and I had a good BBS back then).
Of course the modem is for "Demonstration purposes only, not for resale". Like I would ever want to sell it, I'm kind of attached to it now.
Oh.. and it's external too (I like the lights).
As far as connection speeds go, I *ALWAYS* get greater speed than with a 33.6.
Also, don't forget that what your OS says the modem has connected at is total BS, it is constantly changing speeds to accomodate line conditions.. Load up minicom -o and type in ATIn where n is somewhere around 10 and see what speed it achieved.
I remember a time... (Score:1)
ISDN not too bad.. (Score:1)
ISDN prices (Score:1)
You must live in a rural or lagging area
I can tell you that Memphis is not at the leading edge in telecommunications, but I've been using ISDN for years and will be getting a cable modem soon.
I just looked up Bell South's prices for my area: Installation of the line is $45.50. Basic ISDN (two phone numbers and caller ID) is $33.44 a month - not much more than a POTS line, and not a bad deal since it is equivalent to two POTS lines.
Access? A single 64K channel is $19.95 a month with Bell South. I use a different ISP, but prices are comparable. Perhaps the prices you were quoted were for ISDN with a fixed IP address?
ISDN prices addendum (Score:1)
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
Re:USR sucks in general. (Score:1)
What's next? Consumers sue 10BT NIC manufacturers becuase they don't actually achieve 10mbits/sec throughput?
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Re:gee 56k eh (Score:1)
Re:56K everytime (Score:1)
This is probably limiting the actual data transfer rate, as the modem may be doing data compression over the phone line, but does not do this over the serial link.
I would recommend changing the serial speed to 115200, if your UART can handle it. Only relatively old hardware would have a problem with this speed.
Not always the modem's fault (Score:1)
The sad part is that we have dsl here and he can afford it, but he lives about 2 blocks too far away to get it.
56K everytime (Score:1)
I was connecting at 44k but I installed new firmware code from Motorola. Your connection speed mainly depends on your phone lines. You should also verify that your ISP supports V.90. x2 and 56K are not as good as the V.90 standard.
If you want excellent dial-up access and superb technical support, use Voyager Online (www.vol.com)
Cable modems (Score:1)
When I got back from my fast ethernet conenction and had to use my home computer again, I got tired of the 28.8k, and was prejudiced against ISDN as it is WAY too expesnive for a still puny connection. DSL not available here, but what is available is cable modems. Internet access at VERY high and reliable connection for 40 dollars a month.. I ended getting a 56k modem though and am fine with it. The cable mdoem cost too much for me (i.e. 500 dollars) and I don't have the extra money for the service either. I still can't understand why anyone would be on ISDN in this day an age when cheaper, faster alternatives are available..
Re:9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems (Score:1)
- 9600 *was* the max transfer rate a few years ago, until modem technology (and telco infrastructure) improved. It's no longer a limit.
- The 56k number is 56k, not 57.6k. It's not part of the same 9.6, 14.4, 28.8 33.6 series. It just doesn't work the same way. Its related to the 64k clear channel digital circuit that is the basic unit of currency within the phone system, rather than the old datacom standards which we're used to. So 57.6 is just plain wrong. So.. back to the topic in hand, it *is* impossible to get double the speed of 28.8 if you do the sums.
- It *is* possible to get a 56K connection, but it is extremely unusual and almost impossible in the real world. I work for a big network equipment manufacturer and one of our field engineers was so pleased when he got a real 56k connection, he emailed the whole company. I don't think it was in the US.
- The entire phone system is digital apart from the last bit which connects you to your CO. 56K technology uses this assumption to enable data transfer IN ONE DIRECTION ONLY, along a path which is digital all through the phone network apart from the 'last mile' (your copper connection to the local CO).
- Have you ever thought about what is at the other end of the phone line in your ISP? Your ISP typically doesn't have a whole bunch of analog phone lines connected to modems - they use multiple T1/E1s (24 or 30 digital 64k channels) depending on location connected to a big expensive box which has racks of boards with 16, 24 or more modem chips on them. Depending on how recently your ISP bought its equipment these modems may not be capable of 56K. Even if they are capable, the performance of competing manufacturers chipsets varies considerably.
I'm losing track now, so I'll stop. I hope this clears up a little confusion.
Re:9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems (Score:1)
outside our exchange costs as much as long distance. Hmmmm...
Consider yourself lucky. BT charges minimum 4p+VAT per call (about $.08). Plus, US phone users don't know how lucky they are not to get charged per minute. BT makes about $1M profit every 7.3 nanoseconds at our expense.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
false. It used to report that I was connected
at 56000.
So perhaps AOL does (or used to do) some form of
rounding, perhaps to make the customer feel good.
Now 44000 is the max I get reported.
Ger.
Irony (Score:1)
A common solution is (as EvilGoat noted in a response to a prior comment in this thread) putting in Digital Line Concentrators (aka PairGain and other trademarks). Unfortunately, modems don't work well over a DLC... I usually get 26.4 over mine, and V.90 is out of the question.
Ironically, those extra phone lines usually were ordered specifically to be used with a modem.
DSL also doesn't work well over DLC (more irony: one of the big DSL equipment manufacturers is PairGain, which also is a big name in DLC).
The problem with DSL over DLC, as I understand it, is not technical... it's that there's no room inside the DLC huts to stick the DSL electronics.
9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems (Score:1)
2, if I remember right, 9600 actually is the maximum physical transfer rate for modems. Everything else is just compression. Someone correct me if I'm wrong?
Re:56k is a nasty hack (Score:1)
Whether with my modem (USR Sportster Voice 56K) or the various types of modems I deal with at work (all the way down to piece-of-shit PCtel HSP Winmodems), I've never had to do any special tinkering with 56K modems to get them to run right. Some of 'em definitely work better than others (the USRs I use at home and at work consistently get connect speeds in the mid- to high-40s with nearly any ISP), but I haven't seen one yet that completely fails to work as described.
Hell, getting speeds short of the maximum isn't even new with V.90/x2/K56flex; don't these clowns who filed this lawsuit remember V.34? You didn't always get 28.8; with a SupraFAXmodem 288, I usually got 26.4 or 28.8, but a noisy line could drop that as low as 21.6 or even 19.2. Where were these people then?
They already lost the lawsuit (Score:2)
Just go back and RTFLD, its in legal-speak so you have to read it sideways, preferably after taking some mind-altering substances
IANAL, and I Hate Lawyers
the AntiCypher
My own phone switch (Score:3)
We use it to prove that different modems only connect at far less than the 53.3k even under the most ideal conditions. We measure the length of the local loop in inches
But USR modems are no worse than any of the others, even at ideal conditions. Sometimes they hit the theoretical 53.3 max, sometimes they don't.
Me thinks this to be a lawsuit against all the advertising and slimy sales promotions USR is known for. Certainly their technology is about the same as all their competition.
Re:9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems (Score:1)
Re:Blame it on Shannon (Score:1)
Invent a bandwidth break through thats as cheap and accessable as a modem, but fast as a cable.
*sigh*... maybe one day...
Re:56k is great (Score:2)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
One:when they (suers) say that they (3com) can produce modems that can acheive speeds of 56.6k that does not mean that it will connect at that speed. Connection speed is controlled by the phone lines of your city. Unless of course you have a dedicated line.
Two:about the fact that they say their modems are 2x faster that means that they can convert digital to analog and back again faster than prior generations could.
Re:My take on 56K -- Winmodems (Score:1)
2: Here's the problem. There really IS no winmodem. The winmodem is little more than a dongle (except maybe Lucent's, there's seems to actually be pretty cool) that allows a hardware connect. The real modem is the software, so you would have to write code that emulates a modem. I'm sure you could find info on how to interface the modem, but the harder part would be the modem "driver."
No offense, but I SERIOUSLY doubt you would ever come up with anything useful. It may be worth trying just because it will allow your budding skills to advance, but you shouldn't be too worried when you don't come up with something that works.
The good news is that the core of a driver like this should be portable between winmodems, with only the hardware interface portion needing to be re-written...
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:1)