Page 119 - DCAP104_EXPOSURE_TO_COMPUTER_DISCPLINES

Exposure to Computer Disciplines

Notes Voiceband modems generally remained at 300 and 1,200 bit/s (V.21 and V.22) into the mid 1980s.
A V.22bis 2,400-bit/s system similar in concept to the 1,200-bit/s Bell 212 signalling was introduced
in the U.S., and a slightly different one in Europe. By the late 1980s, most modems could support
all of these standards and 2,400-bit/s operation was becoming common.
6.3.1.2 Increasing Speeds (One-way Proprietary Standards)
Many other standards were also introduced for special purposes, commonly using a high-speed
channel for receiving, and a lower-speed channel for sending. One typical example was used in
the French Minitel system, in which the user’s terminals spent the majority of their time receiving
information. The modem in the Minitel terminal thus operated at 1,200 bit/s for reception, and
75 bit/s for sending commands back to the servers.

Three U.S. companies became famous for high-speed versions of the same concept. Telebit
introduced its Trailblazer modem in 1984, which used a large number of 36 bit/s channels to
send data one-way at rates up to 18,432 bit/s. A single additional channel in the reverse direction
allowed the two modems to communicate how much data was waiting at either end of the link,
and the modems could change direction on the fly. The Trailblazer modems also supported a
feature that allowed them to spoof the UUCP g protocol, commonly used on Unix systems to send
e-mail, and thereby speed UUCP up by a tremendous amount. Trailblazers thus became extremely
common on Unix systems, and maintained their dominance in this market well into the 1990s.

U.S. Robotics (USR) introduced a similar system, known as HST, although this supplied only 9,600
bit/s (in early versions at least) and provided for a larger backchannel. Rather than offer spoofing,
USR instead created a large market among Fidonet users by offering its modems to BBS sysops
at a much lower price, resulting in sales to end users who wanted faster file transfers. Hayes was
forced to compete, and introduced its own 9,600-bit/s standard, Express 96 (also known as Ping-
Pong), which was generally similar to Telebit’s PEP. Hayes, however, offered neither protocol
spoofing nor sysop discounts, and its high-speed modems remained rare.
6.3.1.3 4,800 and 9,600 bit/s (V.27ter, V.32)

Echo cancellation was the next major advance in modem design. Local telephone lines use the
same wires to send and receive, which results in a small amount of the outgoing signal bouncing
back. This signal can confuse the modem, which was unable to distinguish between the echo and
the signal from the remote modem. This was why earlier modems split the signal frequencies into
‘answer’ and ‘originate’; the modem could then ignore its own transmitting frequencies. Even
with improvements to the phone system allowing higher speeds, this splitting of available phone
signal bandwidth still imposed a half-speed limit on modems.
Echo cancellation got around this problem. Measuring the echo delays and magnitudes allowed
the modem to tell if the received signal was from itself or the remote modem, and create an equal
and opposite signal to cancel its own. Modems were then able to send over the whole frequency
spectrum in both directions at the same time, leading to the development of 4,800 and 9,600 bit/s
modems.
Increases in speed have used increasingly complicated communications theory. 1,200 and 2,400
bit/s modems used the phase shift key (PSK) concept. This could transmit two or three bits per
symbol. The next major advance encoded four bits into a combination of amplitude and phase,
known as Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). Best visualized as a constellation diagram,
the bits are mapped onto points on a graph with the x (real) and y (quadrature) coordinates
transmitted over a single carrier.
The new V.27ter and V.32 standards were able to transmit 4 bits per symbol, at a rate of 1,200
or 2,400 baud, giving an effective bit rate of 4,800 or 9,600 bit/s. The carrier frequency was 1,650
Hz. For many years, most engineers considered this rate to be the limit of data communications
over telephone networks.

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