"But the system has been through much worse than this and performed well."

The system will perform tests and determine whether the user's phone line can support 56-kilobit technology.

During this time, the system was not performing useful work.

"I know the system can perform," he said that day, in January 2000.

"We don't have a lot of data on how those systems are performing in the real world," she said.

Until recently, however, these systems could only perform the specific tasks they were designed to do.

Operation: how well does the system perform for daily use?

"Those scores showed that this system really can perform if it's allowed to."

These systems perform measurement times are usually much less than a second.

In 2008, the system performed its first commercial task successfully.