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Group Project 2

ISDN

DOB: 1988
Alias: Judge Dredd
Occupation: Law Enforcement/Regulation
Saying: "I am the law!"

Integrated Services Digital Network(ISDN) is a set of standard for the transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional telephone switch network. It was first introduced in 1988. ISDN allowed speech and data to simultaneously transfer on the same line, which previously could not be done on traditional phone lines. ISDN also allowed packet switched networks, which allows digital voice and data to be sent over typical copper telephone wire created a clearer digital sound instead of analog. It offers circuit-switched connections (for either voice or data), and packet-switched connections (for data), in increments of 64 kbit/s. In some countries ISDN is offered as an Internet access, created speeds up to 128 kbit/s. In a videoconference setting, ISDN would provides simultaneous voice, video, and text transmission between videoconferencing systems and group (room) videoconferencing systems. ISDN is very popular in Germany, servicing over 25 million channels (29% of all subscriber lines in Germany as of 2003 and 20% of all ISDN channels worldwide).

T-Carriers

Alias: Speak & Spell
DOB: 1960
Activity: Digital Voice Box
Favorite song: Styx - Mr.Roboto

In telecommunications, T-carrier, sometimes abbreviated as T-CXR, is the generic designator for any of several digitally multiplexed telecommunications carrier systems originally developed by Bell Labs and used in North America, Japan, and South Korea. The basic unit of the T-carrier system is the DS0, which has a transmission rate of 64 kbit/s, and is commonly used for one voice circuit.Existing frequency-division multiplexing carrier systems worked well for connections between distant cities, but required expensive modulators, demodulators and filters for every voice channel. For connections within metropolitan areas, Bell Labs in the late 1950s sought cheaper terminal equipment. Pulse-code modulation allowed sharing a coder and decoder among several voice trunks, so this method was chosen for the T1 system introduced into local use in 1961. In later decades, the cost of digital electronics declined to the point that an individual codec per voice channel became commonplace, but by then the other advantages of digital transmission had become entrenched.

The most common legacy of this system is the line rate speeds. "T1" now means any data circuit that runs at the original 1.544 Mbit/s line rate. Originally the T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kbit/s streams, leaving 8 kbit/s of framing information which facilitates the synchronization and demultiplexing at the receiver. The T2 and T3 circuit channels carry multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of 6.312 and 44.736 Mbit/s, respectively. A T3 line comprises 28 T1 lines, each operating at total signaling rate of 1.544 Mbps. It is possible to get a fractional T3 line, meaning a T3 line with some of the 28 lines turned off, resulting in a slower transfer rate but typically at reduced cost.The decision to use a 193-bit frame was made in 1958. To allow for the identification of information bits within a frame, two alternatives were considered. Assign (a) just one extra bit, or (b) additional 8 bits per frame. The 8-bit choice is cleaner, resulting in a 200-bit frame, 25 8-bit channels, of which 24 are traffic and 1 8-bit channel available for operations, administration, and maintenance (OA&M). AT&T chose the single bit per frame not to reduce the required bit rate (1.544 vs 1.6 Mbit/s), but because AT&T Marketing worried that "if 8 bits were chosen for OA&M function, someone would then try to sell this as a voice channel and you wind up with nothing."

Soon after commercial success of T1 in 1962, the T1 engineering team realized the mistake of having only one bit to serve the increasing demand for housekeeping functions. They petitioned AT&T management to change to 8-bit framing. This was flatly turned down because it would make installed systems obsolete.

Having this hindsight, some ten years later, CEPT chose 8 bits for framing the European E1.

DSL

Alias: The Sopranos
DOB: 1989
Occupation: Providers
Favorite fashion accessory: Cement Shoes

Digital subscriber line (DSL) is a family of technologies that provides digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), the most commonly installed DSL technology. DSL service is delivered simultaneously with wired telephone service on the same telephone line. This is possible because DSL uses higher frequency bands for data separated by filtering. On the customer premises, a DSL filter on each outlet removes the high frequency interference, to enable simultaneous use of the telephone and data.

The data bit rate of consumer DSL services typically ranges from 256 kbit/s to 40 Mbit/s in the direction to the customer (downstream), depending on DSL technology, line conditions, and service-level implementation. In ADSL, the data throughput in the upstream direction, (the direction to the service provider) is lower, hence the designation of asymmetric service. In Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) services, the downstream and upstream data rates are equal.Theory behind DSL, like many other forms of communication, can be traced back to Claude Shannon's seminal 1948 paper: A Mathematical Theory of Communication. An early patent was filed in 1987 for the use of wires for both voice phones and as a local area network.[1]

The motivation of digital subscriber line technology was the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) specification proposed in 1984 by the CCITT (now ITU-T) as part of Recommendation I.120, later reused as ISDN Digital Subscriber Line (IDSL). Employees at Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) developed Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and filed a patent in 1988[2] by placing wide-band digital signals above the existing baseband analog voice signal carried between telephone company telephone exchanges and customers on conventional twisted pair cabling facilities.[3] Consumer-oriented ADSL was designed to operate on existing lines already conditioned for BRI ISDN services, which itself is a switched digital service (non-IP), though most incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) provision Rate-Adaptive Digital Subscriber Line (RADSL) to work on virtually any available copper pair facility—whether conditioned for BRI or not. Engineers developed higher-speed DSL facilities such as High bit rate Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL) and Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) to provision traditional Digital Signal 1 (DS1) services over standard copper pair facilities.

A DSL circuit provides digital service. The underlying technology of transport across DSL facilities uses high-frequency sinusoidal carrier wave modulation, which is an analog signal transmission. A DSL circuit terminates at each end in a modem which modulates patterns of bits into certain high-frequency impulses for transmission to the opposing modem. Signals received from the far-end modem are demodulated to yield a corresponding bit pattern that the modem retransmits, in digital form, to its interfaced equipment, such as a computer, router, switch, etc. Unlike traditional dial-up modems, which modulate bits into signals in the 300–3400 Hz baseband (voice service), DSL modems modulate frequencies from 4000 Hz to as high as 4 MHz. This frequency band separation enables DSL service and plain old telephone service (POTS) to coexist on the same copper pair facility. Generally, higher bit rate transmissions require a wider frequency band, though the ratio of bit rate to bandwidth are not linear due to significant innovations in digital signal processing and digital modulation methods.

Console Gaming History

The history of console gaming can be broken down into Eight different generations. Each console falls into one of these generations due to either the timing of it's release, the processing power, or the processing style. Before going into detail about the generations, first you should know exactly what is gaming console.

Gaming Console : Definition

A gaming console is an interactive computer or modified computer system. This computer system produces a video display which when connected to a TV or display device displays a video game. There are similarities between a gaming console, personal computer, and arcade machine; the difference being a a Gaming Console is purchased for personal use in a home, an arcade machine is purchased by a business to charge others to play, and a computer(while still being able to play a video game) has much more capabilities and isn't limited to just gaming.

First Generation Console Gaming

Computer Games based off of vector displays had been around since the 1950's. It wasn't until 1972 that the First Generation of Console Gaming was introduced with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey. Instead of vector displays this introduced analog displays through a TV. The Magnavox Odyssey wasn't widely accepted. It wasn't until Atari's Pong hit the market that Console Gaming hit its first stride. Due to the popularity of Pong, Magnavox released the Odyssey 100. The Odyssey 100 was a less powerful version of its original that only played Pong and hockey. The First Generation ended in 1976. The First Generation didn't utilize cartridges the way they are used now. Either the console didn't utilize cartridges and relied on a switch to sample through the games or it did utilize a cartridge but the cartridge was a blank and merely acted as the switch. Instead all of the games were hardwired into the console themselves and a switch was used to swap between games.

Second Generation Console Gaming

The Second Generation, also referred to as the pre-8 bit era) began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Video Entertainment System(VES). The VES was the first console that was CPU based. It also introduced the cartridge-based game code storage format. What this meant is that the console could house a microprocessor and the cartridge would contain a chip to store instructors for the microprocessor to execute. The Second Generation of console gaming also saw two separate crashes of the video game market. The first occurred in 1977. Many consoles companies fell out of the market at this time, only Atari and Magnavox remained in the market. It wasn't until 1980 when Atari released a commercial version of Space Invaders that the market was revived. The second console crash was in 1983. Low budget games, a flood of competing consoles, and an ever growing number of home PC users caused the crash. Many companies went bankrupt at this time and left the console market. By 1984 all American console gaming companies were gone.

Third Generation Console Gaming

The advent of the Third Generation of console gaming also brought an end to the second crash of the console gaming market. The Third Generation came about in 1983 by the release of the Famicom. The Famicon was re released in America in 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). The NES featured greater graphics, scrolling backgrounds instead of fixed positions, and longer games. Similar to Atari's Space Invader ending the first console market crash, Nintendo's Mario Bros. popularity ended the second console market crash. Several other consoles were released around this time, Sega's Master System for instance, but none other could stand up to the popularity of the NES.

Fourth Generation Console Gaming

The release of the Sega Genesis/Master Drive on October 29,1988 in Japan(1989 in America) ushered in the Fouth generation of console gaming. This generation is commonly refered to as the 16 bit era. Sega beat the release of Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System(SNES) by two years, but Nintendo quickly rose to the top of the ranks to be a solid competitor of Sega throughout this generation. Many peripherals were added to both consoles along the way, and their two trademark icons(Nintendo's Mario, and Sega's Sonic) continued to push their popularity. Other companies jumped into the console market at this time, but none reached the popularity and size of Sega and Nintendo.

Fifth Generation Console Gaming

The three main players that dominated the Fifth Generation market weren't the ones who started it. The fifth was started with the release of the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO in 1993. Both consoles were remarkably more powerful than the Genesis or SNES, but came at a price. Not only were they vastly more expensive, but were also harder to program for. It wasn't until the release of Nintendo's N64, Sony's PlayStation, and Sega's Sega Saturn that the Fifth Generation gained its popularity. These new system contained all the processing power(and more) of the previous consoles of the generation, but also retained their trademark icons and ease of use the previous generations consoles provided. This generation was referred to as the 32 bit era. With the release of the N64 it was also called the 64 bit era, and the 3D era.

Sixth Generation Console Gaming

The release of Sega's Dreamcast in 1998 brought about the Sixth generation in Console gaming. The generation is noted with incorporating PC like infrastructures as well as DVD mediums for games. DVD mediums were cheaper to produce and more powerful. This led to longer and better looking games at a cheaper way to supply them. Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's Gamecube, and Microsoft's Xbox were also released during this generation. During this time, online play and hard drive storage system were introduced and experimented with. While this generation is technically outdated and games are no longer produced for these systems, many of these consoles are still owned and used today. As such this generation is still alive and continuing.

Seventh Generation Console Gaming

Microsoft's Xbox 360 jump started the beginning of the Seventh Generation of Console gaming on November 22, 2005. Its processing power greatly surpassed the previous generation and wasn't met until Sony's PlayStation 3 was released in November 11, 2006. Nintendo Wii almost made considerable headway into console gaming when it was release November 19, 2006. Motion sensor technology was first utilized(and later adopted by other systems) by the Wii using the controller as an extension of your own arms. Instead of pressing a button to perform an action, you would move your hand in a suggestive way(often simulating that motion) to perform that action. Microsoft's Kinect is similar, if not improved, and simulates the entire player, not just a hand motion. Unlike the Wii, which requires one or two small peripherals(Wiimote and Nunchuk), the Kinect requires only the motion sensor.

Eighth Generation Console Gaming

While handhelds have been announced to be in the Eighth Generation of Gaming(most notably Nintendo's Wii U), currently no consoles have been announced. Rumors have been heard of Eighth Generation follow ups of Microsoft's XBox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3, but as of right now they are just that, rumors.

References

What to add

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbuckl3/sandbox
Brief bios on all 3 modern online consoles and dreamcast.
some type of features tables/list on each console
Growth and users of online subscribers throughout its history
If we have time explain exactly how it works. From your console to the internet, to the xboxlive/ps network/etc/. , to other consoles.
link your page on other pages, as well as linking other pages on your page.

This user is a participant in the U.S. Public Policy WikiProject at Louisiana State University.

This user is a participant in
WikiProject United States Public Policy.