If you have analog voice lines like most people your phone company
will tell you 33.6k is the maximum consistent level of service. I have
connected at 44k before, but much of the bandwidth showed dirty
data and the performance was sub par.

I'm currently using a V.34 with consistent 33.6k connections and averages
3.8k for downloads.

The Winmodem like many PCI modems are soft modems and do not
have a built in controller to handle buffering.
I read a review about US Robotics having the best analog performance
with their 56k external because it has a much larger buffer.

Last, I haven't noticed a 56k fall back to 33.6k when the line quality is
poor. I've seen them fall back to 31.2k and 28.8 frequently. I would
wonder if a 56k could connect at 33.6k for a fallback speed.

I bet David G. would be able to explain.
-yui


Demetri Kolokotronis <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I have two modems, Winmodem, 56kbs, v90; and another, hardware driven,
> 33kbs, v34. Local ISP has never connected over 31kbs. Which would be
> better to use?
>

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