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Tuesday, November 17
Forbes
Digital Tool grills High Speed Access Corp. President
Ronald Pitcock over the cable modem industry's role in
providing access and customer service in an open market.
Compaq
is encouraging the adoption of high speed Internet access,
and is making DSL an option in its build to order PCs.
Diamond
Multimedia announced layoffs of 120 full time and 60
part time positions, or about 20% of its work force. The
press release doesn't mention the competitive modem market
as the cause of the restructuring, and News.com
lays the blame on an oversaturated graphics card market.
Enter.net followup
On Friday I reported that several Enter.net
customers informed me their ISP had dropped support for x2
when they upgraded to V.90. That turns out to be misleading.
Daniel Hauer of Enter.net support wrote in with the whole
story:
We see by your recent posting that you have
received E-mail from some of our users that Enter.Net no
longer supports x2 upon completion of our upgrade to
V.90. This is only partially true, with the following
explanation:
Along with our upgrade to V.90 we embarked upon a
major network upgrade, consisting of a consolidation of
the majority of our remote POP's along with access number
changes for those areas. This was accomplished with the
purchase of a quantity of Lucent and Ascend units. It was
decided on some cases to discontinue the use of 3com's
Total Control racks, due to their reliabilty problems,
slow availability of code upgrades, and the poor quality
of 3com's technical support, as well as the client side
modems misreporting of their true running carrier
speed.
During our upgrade to V.90 all users were notified
by E-mail of these changes, as well as urged to upgrade
to V.90, and Enter.Net provided links to manufacturers,
and as much technical assistance by phone and E-mail
whenever possible to assist our users in upgrading their
modem to the V.90 standard.
Geoffrey Welsh notes that something similar happened when
PSINet bought iSTAR.
iSTAR had used 3Com x2 equipment, but PSINet standardizes
their POPs on Ascend equipment, which uses K56flex as its
legacy 56K protocol.
PowerBook G3 V.90 upgrade
The November 16th MacInTouch
reports reader problems with the PowerBook G3 V.90 upgrade.
Juston Wilson found out about a new
PowerBook V.90 G3 script that supposedly solves the
problem:
Versiontracker.com
is listing an Apple PowerBook v.90 modem script. The
little description reads like this:
"modem script for PowerBook G3 series,use if the
'Modem Updater 1.2.1' won't give V.90 connections anymore
your ISP must have V.90 USR modems for it to work"
The script is not listed on Apple's software
updates page, so it must not be "standard issue" by
Apple.
I have not installed it yet on my PB266, so I will
keep you posted. My ISP was running 3Com/usr x2 modems
before they flashed them to v.90. Maybe this will solve my
problem of my flex modem in my PowerBook not connecting any
higher than [rest of message clipped]
Friday, November 20
56K.COM server upgrade
If you're reading this, you're on the new dedicated
server. It will take a few days for the DNS changes to
propagate around the world, so many people will still see
the old server when they go to 56k.com addresses. If anyone
you know has trouble getting to the new site, they can use
the IP address of http://www.56k.com.
The major site CGI programs are all working, including
the message board, search facility, and classified ads
board. The only features I know of that don't work are the
add a link and add an ISP functions (later: add an ISP
and add a link now work). I should be able to get those
fixed today.
The new server is serving pages much faster than the old
server and the old web host. Traceroutes in particular are
much faster. I'm very happy to have a fast server once
again. Once all of the traffic is directed to the new
server, I'll look at the performance and decide if I need to
upgrade the RAM.
The news
3Com's new Modem
Manager software allows users to monitor modem
throughput, and interfaces directly with the 3Com Modem
Upgrade Wizard. It's based on VitalSigns'
Net.Medic. Modem Manager will be included with select
3Com modems, and registered 3Com modem owners can download
it from the Modem
Manager page.
ActionTec announced a new home
networking and modem solution. The V.90 PCI card
networks multiple computers together using unused telephone
wires at speeds up to 1 megabit per second on the local area
network, and up to 56 kilobits per second to the Internet.
Suggested retail is $99.
AOpen
announced two new routers that integrate four-port Ethernet
hubs. The IRoute128 is a dual channel ISDN router, while the
PRoute112 can use one or two V.90 modem connections. Cost
for either device is expected to be $350.
PalmPilot users: check out MyPilot's wireless page for
info on PalmPilot
pagers, cell phones, and wireless modems.
Matt Chambers notes the release of ComOS
3.8 for the Livingston PortMaster 3.
Joe Phillips writes:
FINALLY! The v.90 upgrade for the Fujitsu
Lifebook internal LT modems. Released this morning, and
available for download from this address. http://support.fujitsu-pc.com/drivers_frm.html
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