https://www.10stripe.com/articles/why-is-56k-the-fastest-dialup-modem-speed.php
If you've ever had dialup internet service, or still do, or just know someone that does, you have probably heard terms like "56k modem". "56k" has become almost synonymous with dialup Internet access. But it's such an arbitrary number. It's not divisible by ten, it's not a power of two... so why was it chosen as the fastest dialup speed? For the answer, we will have to travel back in time quite a while.
Our visitors from Google should be warned that this is not a "stripped down" explanation; it is intended for relatively technical readers. But if you really want to know where this magic number comes from, you need to understand some of the technical background. As we shall see, "56k" was not just pulled out of a hat.
[...] Anyone that has ever used a dialup modem knows full well that they don't actually get to connect at that speed, though. And that their connection speed varies each time they dial in. There are two factors at work here.
The first is the FCC. If you are in the United States, the FCC places a restriction on the power output of devices connected to the phone network. The result is that you will never be able to connect at a speed faster than 53.3 kbit/s.
The second is the overall complexity of the phone network. 56 kbit/s (or 53.3 kbit/s) requires very good operating conditions, as it is really operating beyond the paramaters of what the phone network is required to be capable of. Operating at these speeds requires that there only be one ADC between the user and their ISP (which is not guaranteed to be true, but typically is), and that the copper wiring in the user's "local loop" have very good electrical properties. Part of the dialup process that is used to initiate a connection is an evaluation of the overall quality of the connection; if it is determined to be lacking, the modem will automatically drop down to a lower data rate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday November 21 2023, @04:11AM (1 child)
Your family member is mostly correct. The government wasn't regulating the modems at the customer end, rather the FCC restricted the outputs on the line from the CO equipment (radiated power limitations or somesuch for some reason) so that the modems, as designed, could never reach the theoretical maximum speed of the communication standard.
The limits imposed by the FCC did indeed mean that you could never actually get more than 53333 in the field.
Not true. I could routinely get 50666, 52000 and 53333 downstream, 31200 up. Reliably. Canadian phone systems perhaps tended to be better on average than most in the US, though.
Most of my digital stuff was V.90 maximum, I don't think they even ever had any V.92 firmware for the TCs, so I never really attempted to play with V.PCM-Upstream much...
Everything was going DSL, dry copper leased lines were available cheap (like $9/mo with the right contracts) and by that point and I had bought a whole room full of used Paradyne 7mbps/1mbps DSL gear so dial-up was pretty much moot very quickly.
Yes. It is true. It was the FCC, but it wasn't some sort of grand conspiracy. The tech from the modem people was simply theoretically more potent than the FCC regs currently allow.
Your family member probably still wears a tinfoil hat, but likely without cause on this one, I suppose.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday November 21 2023, @11:11AM
I believe it was to minimize/mitigate crosstalk. There are some standards for the number of twists per foot for unshielded twisted pair [wikipedia.org] telephone cable which set a limit for the allowable power levels. To complicate matters, in a properly built bundle, different pairs will have different numbers of twists per foot (on purpose), so it comes down to averaging a lot of unknowable but guessable parameters, Putting too much signal power down one pair will affect others and vice-versa.
Other countries had different standards for the cabling, or different tolerances for crosstalk, so allowed higher power levels. which would have allowed for theoretically higher data rates.