3Com Q&A

FiringSquad asks

We asked 3Com's James Thomsen about what makes the 3Com modem a "Gaming Modem," and how it was different from regular 3Com hardware modems, namely the 3Com U.S. Robotics #2976 and #2977.

3Com answers

Here's Jim's response:

I'd like to take this opportunity to explain the enhancements we have made to the product and give a product overview. However, before doing this I need to step back and briefly explain how V.90 is generally implemented and what has been the standard measure of performance in the industry.

As it turns out, V.90 generally has been implemented under the context that higher Connect Speed & CPS (Characters Per Second) were the only and true measurements. In order to achieve faster CPS, we (modem manufacture's) tend to need to push the envelope on connect speed. However, a trade off introduced with higher speed & higher CPS, is often a higher BLer (Block error rate) as well as more retrains and speed shifts. However, for most common applications (i.e. downloading files or large Web pages), this does not affect overall performance as long as the overall CPS average is higher.

Online Gaming

Internet Gaming is an entirely different, though. In this application, little data is being sent. However, these packets are more time sensitive. Thus, any Blers, speed shifts or retrains cause the modem to either resend the data or stop sending data. This obviously creates a huge problem when the person playing the game is trying to send an action or move (turn in a racing game, gun fire in an action game, etc.) or receive new coordinates/updates from the server.

This brings us to the first and most critical tweak we made to the Internet Gaming Modem - we negotiate a V.90 speed which limits, and in most cases eradicates, Bler's, rate shifts or retrains. Thus in Gaming mode, we offer a highly stable connection for consistent gaming performance (i.e. - Ping times).

In addition to stability we have made some modifications to the modems firmware (code) to remove some inner delays, in buffers, and took advantage of the high speed capabilities of the PCI controller product by putting the equivalent of a 230k driver on this modem to increase the DTE speed.

Hardware differences?

I hope this gives a better overview what modifications were made and how they will benefit the user. As far as how does it compare to the 2976 and 2977 modems, it is closely related to both. In fact, the hardware is almost identical to the 2977 modem. The big differences is that the Gaming Modems' firmware is tweaked to include all the above mentioned modifications (connection stability, 230k driver and quicker buffer dumps).

As far as the 2976, the general 'guts' of the product are the same. This product, however, has voice features and jacks. Again, the main differences are that the Gaming Modem has modified firmware (or code) to give a better gaming experience. Lastly, the 2977 and 2976 are modems which are bundled with PC's, not sold in retail.