From: Eileen Algaze, Rockwell public relations Sent to the editor, Jack Rickard, for April 1998 issue of Boardwatch magazine Dear Boardwatch: The long-awaited arrival of the ITU V.90 modem standard finally allows the industry to replace competitive marketing rhetoric with objective information about 56Kbps technology. Given this opportunity it is unfortunate that Boardwatch would release the results of a modem connect-rate study whose ill-conceived test methodology will only renew uncertainty and confusion about 56Kbps modems among ISPs and their customers. Boardwatch would have been of significantly greater service to its readers if it had focused on impact of the new V.90 standard. In your recently published "Busy Signal" study, Boardwatch implies that it has evaluated a random and representative sampling of K56flex and x2 dial-up connections, and claims universally superior performance for x2. What Boardwatch fails to mention is that the study is based entirely on dial-up connections from a single, atypical site -- hardly applicable across the tens of millions of locations nationwide from which Internet users make connections every minute of every day. Even after months of 56Kbps "marketing hype," it is fairly well understood that different line conditions favor different 56Kbps approaches -- that is, K56flex performs better under certain line conditions, x2 under others. We even spent considerable time with Boardwatch during the course of their study reiterating these widely understood concepts and explaining the flaw in their study. Yet Boardwatch persisted in disregarding the significance of two key 56Kbps performance variables: the behavior of the local loop and the behavior of the local central-office switch to which the client modem is connected. Boardwatch simply used the same line to call ISPs, over and over through 145,000 connections. At Boardwatch's location, local line conditions happen to favor x2. Yet Boardwatch chose to then make the illogical assumption that performance observed from their single atypical location could somehow be extrapolated across the line conditions of all known locations nationwide. (That's like testing the comfort of windbreakers vs. winter parkas in Hawaii day after day, and then making the assumption that windbreakers will be the best solution for Alaskans because people won't get too warm when they're wearing them). Rockwell spoke to the same ISPs that Boardwatch included in its study. We replicated Boardwatch's tests from our Newport Beach, Calif., location. The result? We got steady connect rates at an average of 48Kbps. This compares to the 45.2Kbps Boardwatch reported for x2 ports, and the30.8Kbps they reported for K56flex ports. Are we going to trumpet this to the world? No! It's a location-specific result that depends entirely on the behavior of our local loop and nearby central-office switch. The new V.90 standard's adaptive constellation scheme will be much more adaptive to line conditions. Even with V.90's advances, a Rockwell-based or 3Com-based modem may continue to be the superior choice given specific line conditions at a given client-side modem location. The place from which a connection originates has the greatest influence in any assessment of 56Kbps modem performance --whether V.90, x2 or K56flex. If Boardwatch's study showed low K56flex connection rates initiated from locations across the country or around the world, then Boardwatch would have a point. But this is not the case. Of all the magazines that should have gotten this right, it should have been Boardwatch. Signed, Dean Grumlose I have also included a URL that I got permission to link to, also in rebuttal to the negative publicity. http://www.inverse.net/news/pr_02-04-98.html Note: Ascend supplies Erol's, PBNI, MSN get A+ ratings
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