Cream of the Crop 3/Cream of the Crop 3.iso/comm/v34notes.zip/V34NOTES.TXT

Text File | 1993-11-24 | 4KB | 85 lines

    For Immediate Release
    Contact:Karen Novak, [phone]
        Lauri Lentz, [phone]

NEW V.34 HIGH-SPEED MODEM STANDARD
MOVES INTO THE FAST LANE FOR ADOPTION

SKOKIE, Ill., -- November 15, 1993 -- V.34, the forthcoming standard for 28.8
Kbps dial-up modem transmission, moved closer to adoption at a recent ITU-T
(formerly CCITT) meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

After almost three years of intense effort, all of the technical issues
relating to the data phase of the V.34 standard have been resolved,
assuring fully interoperable analog communications at 28.8 Kbps.  Field
testing of the new high-speed data transmission standard will begin in early
1994, using prototype modems that conform to the draft standard.  Formal
adoption of V.34 is expected in June 1994 by Study Group 14 of the ITU-T,
which is responsible for international modem standards.  Prior to that
meeting, a "stable technical draft" of V.34 is scheduled for approval at a
meeting of the V.34 rapporteur's group in Orlando, Fla. December 13 and 14.

"We're not at the point where you could build the final modem from what we've
written, but we are pretty close,"  says Ken Jones, chief scientist at
Telebit and a member of the V.34 rapporteur's group.  "We'll finish up the
technical details in December, but the technical choices are pretty much
done.  Right now it's down to a matter of some decisions that in some cases
get down to heads or tails kinds of choices."

V.34 Modems in February?
Dick Brandt, Chairman, Working Party 1 of Study Group 14, says he expects
V.34-compliant modems to appear in the market soon after the completed draft
standard is submitted to the ITU-T in February.

At the recent Dublin meetings, the rapporteur's group got international
support for much of its work and straightened out most of the details
on the training sequence or "handshake" that allows two V.34 modems to
communicate.  The rapporteur's group agreed on a 64-state trellis coding
that increases V.34 modems' immunity to line noise.

"The more powerful coding increases noise immunity by an additional db and it
works under almost any line condition," explains Dale Walsh, U.S. Robotics
vice president of advanced development and a member of the committee
developing the standard once simply called V.fast.

Adds fellow committee member Dave Forney, vice president, technical staff,
of Motorola, "On any given connection, V.34 will always work better than V.32
or V.32 bis because it takes advantage of whatever the line conditions are.
It will use every bit of available bandwidth.  In addition to higher data
rate, it will also give users more robustness and flexibility."

V.Last?  Don't Bet on It
At some of the earliest V.34 committee meetings, the standard -- then known
as V.fast -- was also jokingly referred to as "V.last" by some members, since
it stretched the limits of dial-up telephone lines.  But those same committee
members are already thinking about a new, faster standard, tentatively called
V.34 bis.

There was talk at the Dublin meeting about tweaking V.34 to make it a little
faster, admits Telebit's Jones.  "I think we could the push data rate a little
if we really want to spend some time on that, but I can't see us getting much
beyond 32 Kbps on dial-up lines."

A Standard by Any Other Name Isn't a Standard
Walsh also notes that users should not confuse the many non-standard
high-speed modems, like the 19.2 Kbps V.32 terbo or 28.8 Kbps V.Fast Class
modems, with V.34.  These technologies may be useful, but will most likely
not communicate with standard ITU-T V.34 modems without some sort of upgrade.
These technologies arose from the delays associated with the V.34 standard,
as an effort to provide data transmission at higher speeds.

# # # # #

Additional contacts:
Dick Brandt, Chairman, Working Party 1 of Study Group 14, [phone]
Bill Heimbach, Motorola Codex, [phone]
Ken Jones, Telebit, [phone]
Fred Lucas, General Datacomm, [phone]
Michael McLaughlin, Cornel, [phone] (Ireland)
Haig Sarkissian, AT&T Microelectronics, [phone]
Richard Williams, British Telecom, [phone] (United Kingdom)

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