Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 12:34:26 -0800 (PST) From: Craig Johnston <caj@tower.stc.housing.washington.edu> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ISDN devices supported? Message-ID: <199602092034.MAA04298@tower.stc.housing.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <199602091627.JAA10517@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at Feb 9, 96 09:27:31 am
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> > > > The real answer is to disdain ISDN anyway: the reason for it is to > > > allow metering charges by the Telco's, and that should be discouraged. You mean "disdain _metered_ ISDN." > > > > Can you explain this a bit ? Your view might be a bit US-centric in case > > i translate the above sentence correctly ;-) > > It's simple: being switched virtual circuit based, it is possible to > charge for ISDN by use. Possible. Not necessary. Some areas in the US have fixed-rate ISDN. We recently got this in Seattle, if my source is correct. Every so often I find myself almost thinking government meddling with the "free market" isn't always a bad thing. ;) (I think it got rammed down their throats.) Of course I think at this point in time ISDN is too little too late. The bandwidth is kinda pathetic by today's standards. Oh well, that's what comes from things taking 10 years to get to market and the constant failure of people to do things 10x as big/fast/whatever as you think you'll need. Is ISDN gonna make the next upgrade in bandwidth easier than this one? I think an increase of less than an order of magnitude over the bandwidth available via POTS is pretty pathetic. 128kbits/sec? Feh. With the cost of 28.8 modems and regular phone service, it's practically in "why bother" territory. Is there something I am missing about ISDN? It would seem the cable companies should be jumping all over the opportunity to provide real bandwidth... they could cream phone companies here, no? But yeah, by all means don't go for metered ISDN, you'll just encourage them. Paying for usage is bloody prehistoric. -- Craig Johnston caj@tower.stc.housing.washington.edu
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