Re: 56 kbps modems

[Steve Bryan <sbryan@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

>Speaking of ISDN, how many people, can afford to have a personal ISDN
>line in there house?  And then afford to connect to something/someone
>else on a next to permanent basis monthly?

As I write this message I'm in the last day of my ISDN service for now.
When I was doing independent consulting work I installed ISDN at my office.
This was to facilitate connectivity to work in California from Minnesota.
After taking a job working for a company locally in Minneapolis I succumbed
to the temptation of installing ISDN at my home and moved my Combinet
router home. I won't deny that I'll be giving up considerable convenience
since the ISDN connection has the ability to come up quickly and
automatically as I send packets to external destinations (that's in theory,
your mileage can vary considerably). But the price per month is ridiculous
for the marginal improvement in connectivity I get over my U of M account
that only costs me about $100 per year. For the price I'm paying for ISDN
Internet connectivity I could buy 32 meg of memory or a gigabyte drive
every month.

The driving force in my decision is the continuing improvement in modem
speeds. When I started with ISDN, my modem speed was 9600 and plenty
finicky at that. Now you can get 33.6 modems for less than $200.

_________________
Steve Bryan
sbryan@gofast.net