The Fairy Godmother Element.

Modems may seem like old hat if you have a speedy broadband connection to the Internet, but the reality is that it's still only a small percentage of people who reach out and touch the Web using a DSL or cable connection. And even those folks do, sometimes, take their notebooks on the road and have to tap back into the world of telephone modems. So it's nice to know that advances are still being made on the modem front!

For the past few years, the V.90 modem specification (the "56K modem") has ruled the roost, providing a top end of 53 kilobits/second download speed (I know -- it's not really 56K because of power limitations that the FCC imposes), and 33.6 kilobits/second upload speed (which of course we almost never see). But V.90 modems will now have to take a back seat to the new "V.92" spec. While the changes are not
earth-shattering, if (when) you rely on a modem to sip at the Internet's straw, a connection with V.92 modems on both ends will make your Internet experience more pleasing.

Hayes Microcomputer, the granddaddy of modem manufacturers, has just begun shipping their "Accura V.92" line of internal ($59) and external ($99) V.92 modems, which use the increased power of their internal DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chips to replace the old V.42bis text-oriented compression scheme with a new one called "V.44" (http://www.hayesmicro.com/v92/ ). V.44 holds the potential to double the download speed of graphics-intensive Web pages. Also, the maximum upload speed has been raised from 33.6 kilobits/second to 48 kilobits/second.

Another benefit we'll see in V.92 modems is that the ubiquitous "modem song," the handshaking that goes on between two modems so they can identify their capabilities and adjust to the conditions of the current phone connection, will now take place in half the time. V.92 modems can also interact with the phone company's "Call Waiting" service, to let you interrupt, and later resume, your Internet session when someone calls.

Of course there is one fly in the ointment. Although the new V.92 modems are fully backwards compatible with existing modems, we won't gain V.92's benefits until the modem on the OTHER end of a connection is also V.92-compatible. The Jan. 4 PC World suggests that most ISPs will upgrade their modems before the end of this year (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=37526).

Pretty good improvements, overall, but there's even a "Fairy Godmother" element to this story -- you may not need to purchase a new modem to get these V.92 benefits! That's because most contemporary modems are really driven by software that's stored in "flash" (non-volatile) memory. So if a modem's DSP chip is fast enough, and if it has enough internal memory to handle the new V.92 features, the modem manufacturer may incorporate V.92 into an instant software upgrade. Real life "smoke and mirrors!"

I still remember my first modem -- it moved data at a then-incredible 110 characters per second -- and it was absolute magic. Less than thirty years ago, it opened up a world of being able to reach out and
touch the mainframe computers of the day.

Those early modems, and their descendents, have radically changed our world. And I can't help but speculate, with great wonder, at the changes yet to come.

This is an excerpt from the "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing, " a free weekly multimedia technology journal written by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal Member of Technical Staff for the Corporate Strategy group at Compaq. A more extensive version of this discussion, as well as others around the innovations and trends of contemporary computing and the technologies that drive them, are available at http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc . Jeff's opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Compaq. The RCFoC is a service of, and Copyright 2000, Compaq Computer Corp."