April 24

Livingston, a division of Lucent Technologies, has beta V.90 code for the U.S. and Canadian models of the PortMaster 3 remote access server. More information is available in the beta release notes. Jordan Mendelson writes:

Livingston has put out code for the Livingston Portmaster 3 which supports v90 with Lucent & 3com based chipsets. I have verified it myself connecting with a 3com v90 modem to my PM3 and connected (after 10 seconds) @ 49333!

Shane Lord of Sirius Technologies reports that the NetComm Roadster II 56 Ultra is now shipping, with dual simultaneous support for K56flex and V.90. Shane was the first to explain the limits of previous 1 MB Rockwell chips. He notes that the new modem uses a 2 MB chipset, and the upcoming Banksia MyModem 56V will be Sirius Technology's first modem to use Rockwell's new 2 chip solution, which also contains 2 MB of memory.

We have a followup to the question of which Canadian ISP was the first to support V.90 (see Wednesday's news). Monica Salvo of Netcom Canada public relations writes:

Regarding your question as to when exactly did Netcom upgrade to V.90? -- the exact date for that was April 7, 1998. A week before the actual press release was issued. V.90 service was available in 36 locations from Halifax to Victoria on that day.

Going to the links of the two other ISPs that claimed to have upgraded to V.90, I noticed they are NOT national ISPs. That's how Netcom Canada differentiates itself in this release. We are indeed the first National ISP to have upgraded our entire network to V.90.

3Com has a new remote access system for small to medium sized businesses. The Super Stack II Remote Access System 1500 provides up to 24 dial-in ports, and offers inter-office routing. x2, V.90, and ISDN connections are supported. Prices start at US$2990.

Simon Slater notes new international Diamond Multimedia K56flex firmware.

David Jessup earns net.fame by knowing the source for Wednesday's teleportation factoid. He points to an IBM page on teleporting goulash. From there, you can find a link to "A Fun Talk on Teleportation," which includes the factoid, where the figure given is 100 million centuries to teleport a human body using today's fastest fiber optic technology. David also recommends a Fortean Slips article, which attributes the calculation to Cecil Adams, he of the Straight Dope fame.

April 22

PC Magazine has once again named 56K.COM as one of the Top 100 Web Sites on the Internet.

IBM Global Services has upgraded 400 points of presence (POPs) to V.90. Better known by its member's email addresses of ibm.net, IBM Global Services has 110,000 members in 164 countries.

Viking Components is now shipping V.90 modems that are backwards-compatible with K56flex.

A reader named Dustin pointed out Boca Research V.90 upgrades.

Netopia has announced the Netopia Internet Router. The unit includes an eight-port Ethernet hub, two modems that support V.90 and K56flex, and a port for a third modem. By bonding two phone lines, the new device can provide bandwidth of up to 112K and serve the Internet access needs of a small office. Adding an external 56K modem can bump the maximum bandwidth up to 168K. The Netopia Internet Router can intelligently share its phone lines with a telephone or facsimile machine, and supports caller ID and distinctive ring.

In an Internetnews.com story dated April 16th, Netcom Canada claims to be the first Canadian ISP to support V.90. Two other companies may hold claim to that title. Bishop Clark of Connected Networks wrote to say that his company has been V.90 compatible since April 8th, and points to a maintenance page noting the upgrade. Geoff Birt says that his ISP, Internet Direct, has had V.90 for several weeks. I've emailed Netcom Canada to find out exactly when their upgrades were installed.

Here's an interesting teleportation factoid I found in comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (paraphrased slightly for clarity):

Using today's fastest fiber optic cabling, it would take 96 million years to move a human body one foot.

Does anyone know the source of this factoid?

April 20

Rockwell is abandoning the market for fast Ethernet chip sets. Layoffs are expected. Rockwell will concentrate on producing chipsets for 56K, cable, and xdsl modems.

V.90 upgrades for 3Com/U.S. Robotics Winmodems were supposed to have been released, but are delayed. 3Com's Upgrade Advisor states that Winmodem upgrades are available now, but readers report that the date has been moved back to April 27th. The advisor states that Voice Winmodem upgrades have been pushed back to May 14th.

Global Village announced that it will change its name to OneWorld once it has completed the sale of its modem business to Boca Research. Global Village's existing line of OneWorld servers provide Internet access, remote access, and fax services. The company also announced a new NASDAQ stock symbol, OWLD.

I've expanded the 53K limit page. Many people are still interested in this topic, and many still don't believe me when I say that K56flex isn't affected by the FCC limits. I've archived some material from old 56K.COM news, and added comments from Diamond Multimedia's Dan Moore.

Hayes has reorganized their Web site, and many URLs have changed. In most cases, changing "www.hayes.com" to "www1.hayes.com" will lead to the correct page for North American customers. As of Sunday night, some of the pages also seemed to have trouble with their internal CSS links.

Smooth Web page transitions

Small rant follows. Every month or two a modem company rearranges its Web site, causing links and bookmarks to the site to suddenly stop working. That's bad for customers, not to mention people like me who maintain lots of links.

Changing your site doesn't necessarily mean changing your director structure or file names. Re-use file names whenever possible. If you do have to change URLs, there are ways of making the change transparent to your customers. Learn to use the UNIX symlink command, or use server side redirects if you have control of the server.

Even if you move your site to a different domain name, you can redirect to the new domain as long as you still own the old one.

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