>With all due respect to Mr. Stone, who has enlightened me on numerous
>subjects in the past, I think John is correct.
entirely possible.. i've been known to be wrong before. ;-)
as far as i understood S/ADSL, i thought it was primarily an
endpoint-to-endpoint data transmission technology, roughly like a standard
modem.. just much faster. i'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the
routing, switching, or channel-allocation protocols the telcos use
internally.
the last time i saw the multi-device/single-line thing offered, it was
being done with ISDN (which i think the telcos still do use.. but i'll
agree that it's dead as a consumer technology), as a side-effect of that
protocol's channel-allocation capacity.
actually, having taken a look at the Sprint press release:
http://www.sprint.com/sprint/press/releases/9806/9806020584.html
and noting that this "ION" system has been designed in cahoots with Cicso,
i'm guessing that it's a new protocol suite descended from ATM. the
release specifically states that ION will run on an ATM backbone, and ATM
also supports channeling. it has a very powerful & flexible channeling
model, in fact.. much more butch than ISDN's. it defines a channel as a
logical abstraction, rather than a physical pair of wires like ISDN does.
IIRC, in fact, ATM also uses a master/slave device model to support
clusters of terminal devices (phones, modems, etc) running through a single
channel. the press release mentions a partnership between Sprint & Radio
Shack, which would suggest that this new system will still have a master
box coming out of the wall. but i do hope they've found a way to put all
the routing & channeling hardware in a single box, rather than forcing
everyone to buy ION-compatible phones, faxes, & modems if they want to get
in on this.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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