Tuesday, October 20

Intel is buying Shiva, makers of the popular Lanrover line of remote access equipment. Shiva will continue to operate as an Intel subsidiary.

CNN looks at the potential of high speed digital access for online gaming.

The ITU is expected to approve a preliminary standard for DSL this week according to News.com.

If you're interested in the underpinnings of the Internet, 3Com has an excellent page, "Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know." The article examines some of the ways IP address space is being extended until IPv6 can be implemented.

V.90 upgrades and updates

Graham Marsh notes that Hayes has re-released the V.90 upgrade for the U.S. Hayes Accura 5670.

Jeff Clark reports Zoom international V.90 upgrades.

Dana Baggett and Justin Wilson note several Apple Macintosh modem updates. Modem Updater 1.2.1 for the iMac and PowerBook G3 provides the latest V.90 firmware for the iMac and PowerBook G3, and will upgrade the K56flex modems in older PowerBook G3s to V.90. The PB G3 Series Modem file corrects a power management issue relating to the modem.

Ross Dance of Motorola tech support confirmed what several readers have told me: the Denmark V.90 upgrade can be used to upgrade Motorola's 56K United Kingdom modems. Motorola's V.90 upgrades and .inf files are available at v90.motorola.com.

Incidentally, if your software starts reporting connect speeds of 230,000, 115,000, or 57,600 bps after upgrading to V.90, it's because you forgot to install the new .inf file, so you're seeing the computer-to-modem speed, which is irrelevant. This is true of Motorola or any other brand. To see the true connect speed, you need to install updated Windows .inf files or Mac modem scripts.

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Wednesday extra

If you're like most people you have a single phone line that does double duty for Internet access and voice calls. How can you be sure you won't miss important calls?

Today there's a new feature at 56K.COM: the Call Waiting and Modem FAQ by Daniel Rosenzweig. Find your options for achieving the equivalent of Internet call waiting (which is one of the options!). The solutions range from paging services and voicemail to special modems and call waiting/caller ID boxes.

 

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Friday, October 23

On Monday, October 26 Point-Topic will release the first edition of The V.90 Report, with worldwide forecasts for 56K modem sales and shipments.

Lucent is reporting better-than-expected earnings, which is has done every quarter since it was spun off from AT&T in 1996.

Gateway is using a two-port version of the ViVa RAS/56 Multiline modem with their Xeon servers, according to a CPI press release.

A USA Today story, "Cable modem users find snags," looks at problems reported by some cable modem users, along with the possibility of rate hikes.

V.90 Upgrades

A newly-discovered Philips web page has V.90 upgrades, firmware updates, and Windows .inf files.

A source says that a Cisco engineer expects the company will have V.90 code for the Cisco 5300 on November 2.

Mac OS 8.5

Apple's latest operating system has several new modem scripts for 56K modems:

• Apple/GV 56k
• Global Village 28.8-K56
• Hayes Accura 56K
• Supra 56 V90
• U.S. Robotics High Speed (supports all high speed USR modems, including x2 and V.90; same as in OS 8.1)

There are extra scripts that aren't installed by default. Only one (a U.S. Robotics x2 script) is for 56K modems, but some of them may be useful. The extra modem scripts are located on the CD:

CD:CD Extras:Additional Modem Scripts

CD:CD Extras:Network Extras:Remote Access:User Contributed Modem Scripts

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