LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Universal Serial Bus: Computers
built 630 days ago
The Motorola SURFboard family of innovative, high-speed data and digital voice modems include an advanced feature set of Ethernet network connectivity and Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces for easy plug-and-play installation. They are compatible with Windows(R), Macintosh(R) and UNIX(R) computers and support standard Internet software. Trouble-shooting is simplified with front panel status indicator LEDs and an online diagnostics page.
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USB is a tree-structured bus, which in the vocabulary of the USB developers organization is called a Star-Tier topology. The host computer contains the root node of the bus, which is called a hub. Any node within a USB bus that is an intermediary between peripheral devices and the host computer is a hub. A hub has exactly one connection to higher levels in the USB bus than itself (an upstream port, and can have up to 7 ports for connecting peripheral devices and other hubs. Up to 127 devices can be connected in this manner. Peripheral devices are always leaf nodes within a USB bus.
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Most of the computers manufactured after January, 1997 contain the chipset and connectors to allow you to take advantage of the Universal Serial Bus standard. The computer that you buy should have this connectivity available or you're buying old technology.
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"As computer makers eliminate the PCI bus, USB is an untapped resource for modem attachment that offers economy and flexibility to future PC designs," said Mort Herman, modem product line manager for Agere Systems. "This explains why Agere is focusing its new modem offerings around USB. When you can dramatically shrink the size of the computer bus, all sorts of cost and space efficiencies materialize."
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