Commercial suicide, some might say, but communications specialist Devlonics NV is to distribute a new piece of software claimed to enable networked users to share the same modem. The Instant Com/CS software developed by Tualatin, Oregon-based Instant Information Inc is claimed to enable a theoretical maximum of 254 networked users to use one modem as if it were directly connected to their own personal computer – the danger for Devlonics being that in-stead of buying a few more of its modems, companies will instead opt to pay $500 for Instant Com/CS. In reality, however, many of those feel the need to have more than one modem do so because they simply don’t want to share modems in the first place – whether over a network or not. Nonetheless, Instant Com/CS will appeal to a fair number of networked users that don’t want to buy another modem but are fed with constantly having to requisition and carrying off the office modem. Instant Com/CS includes a Manager module that manages sharing and queueing on the network, different configurations required for various services and offers session log features. The price quoted above is for the one-modem version; multiple modem sets are also available. Devlonics also says its DUO ISDN IBM 3270 emulation card, along with an MS-DOS-based applications programming interface is now ready.
