From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Jul 5 15:56:15 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA17949 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jul 1996 15:56:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from po1.glue.umd.edu (po1.glue.umd.edu [129.2.128.44]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA17944 for ; Fri, 5 Jul 1996 15:56:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from downlink.eng.umd.edu (downlink.eng.umd.edu [129.2.98.182]) by po1.glue.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA01711; Fri, 5 Jul 1996 18:52:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from chuckr@localhost) by downlink.eng.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA14156; Fri, 5 Jul 1996 18:52:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 18:52:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@downlink.eng.umd.edu To: "Jacob M. Parnas" cc: Michael Hancock , Michael Smith , stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua, Kevin_Swanson@blacksmith.com, hardware@freebsd.org, bsdi-users@bsdi.com Subject: Re: muliport boards - building a PPP dialup server In-Reply-To: <199607052059.QAA03102@jparnas.cybercom.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 5 Jul 1996, Jacob M. Parnas wrote: > Things will change. Remember how expensive V.34 or V.fast was at first, > or CD's or calculators, or digital watches, or P6 processors? When they > were announced, the 200 Mhz ones were $1325 in Quant. 1000. I've recently > seen the same thing for about $750, just about 9 months later. > > Yes, today ISDN is expensive. But I heard that in some parts of California > ISDN costs the same as regular analog phones. This will spread. Things are > not static, and just as I'm sure the designers of UARTs that couldn't go > faster than 19200 baud reliably even after problems with earlier ones and the > relatively low cost of much faster ones, felt that they were doing the best, > but for analog modems, most good connections these days are at 115, 200 baud. > > So while ISDN isn't mainstream today that doesn't mean it won't be soon. You're forgetting that while the price of a P6-200 is determined by technology and competition, the price of telephone service is determined by the PUC and local political goals. Your prediction is not on completely firm ground. It might actually happen, but I sure wouldn't bet on it. ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and n3lxx, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 2.2 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------