Imaging 12 - Fujifilm Graphic Systems

ometimes it’s best to sit on
the beach and let the tides of
fashion wash in and out.
Telecommunications spent
the 1990s as the darling of investors who
wouldn’t mostly recognise a byte if it bit
them, only to spend the whole of the
twenty-first century so far as its second
greatest villain (right after those dodgy
dotcoms). Meanwhile the graphic arts
industry simply got on with using the
actual connections through thick and thin.
The underlying comms networks keep
on improving, sometimes quickly, more
often glacially, and in the meantime their
interchangeable owners occasionally go
bust or merge, so you get a different
name on the bill. No big deal.
What is a big deal is that online
services are set to move to centre stage in
your portfolio. There’s more to data
comms than sending files and listing your
plant and services on a Web site: repro
houses and printers can use ever-faster
servers and data links to offer their
customers pre-flight file checking, soft
proofing, remote hard proof management,
digital asset management and e-trading.
As well as helping jobs run more smoothly,
8
E-COMMERCE online services
Delivering value digitally
DATA COMMUNICATIONS MEANS A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN JUST SENDING A FILE
FROM A TO B THESE DAYS. SIMON ECCLES PLUGS INTO A WORLD OF ONLINE SERVICES.
S
Imaging 12 autumn 2002
these services can add significant perceived
value, helping to build customer
loyalty. When service is all that differentiates
suppliers, this could be a crucial
competitive edge.
ISDN and ADSL
While newspapers were using data comms
decades before the term was coined, the
general graphic arts industry only really
started to cotton on in the mid-to-late
80s. ISDN really hit its stride from the
early 90s, allowing fast and reliable file
delivery just as it became desirable to whiz
digital images around. ISDN is a direct
dial-up digital connection between sender
and receiver, though most ISPs now offer
ISDN access numbers for general purpose
Internet connection as well. Basic rate
ISDN is 64 Kbits/sec, though it’s most
common to find twin-channel installations
that can be ganged up to provide 128
Kbits/sec (though not all ISPs support this
for Internet connection). ISDN is supported
by well-established file transfer
software, such as 4Sight Transmission
Manager or Hermstedt Grand Central Pro,
which provide sophisticated job queues
and notification of arrival to both ends.
ISDN is now being supplanted by
ADSL, an always-on broadband Internet
connection that uses standard phone wires
and allows you to upload files four times
faster than basic rate ISDN2 at 256
Kbits/sec, with downloads going twice as
fast again at 512 Kbits/sec. Higher speeds
of up to 2 Mbits/sec download are also
available though more expensive. ADSL is
now widely available (though not in all
areas) and the cheapest rate is now
around £25 + VAT per month with no call
changes or megabyte limits, although
contention ratios might become an issue
as uptake increases. As ADSL is an
Internet connection to an ISP rather than
a point-to-point connection, file transfers
are primarily via e-mail, FTP or a managed
service (see below).
ADSL ‘modems’ are available as low
cost USB devices, or for larger installations,
as routers that sit on standard
Ethernet networks, managing Internet
traffic for the whole network.
DIY file transfer
A lot of repro houses and their customers
put in ISDN years ago and are still
perfectly happy with it. It’s reliable and