Demetri Kolokotronis wrote:

> My phone company, Bell Atlantic, absolutely refuses to say what >modem
> transfer speed my phone line is capable of, and they refuse to say what
> speed I can expect if I order a new, better line.
>
Yui Shin wrote:
> "The Winmodem like many PCI modems are soft modems and do not have a
> built in controller to handle buffering."
>
> Can you explain how this deficiency will show in performance?
> Demetri Kolokotronis


GTE publishes a handout for So. California residents explaining the 33.6k
limit on voice lines. I'm surprised your phone company feels they need
to hide such information. Perhaps they do not even meet par with this
level of connectivity. And most would happily sell you a more expensive
level of service such as ISDN if they have it.

And to answer your modem  question:
Soft modems use your CPU's resources to handle modem tasking,
which results in increased latency (lag time) in sending data packets
to the destination server.
Hard modems use a built in controller to handle modem chores
allowing the CPU to tend to other priorities.

If your shopping for a hi-end analog modem consider a external USB modem
with the V.90 standard and avoid PCI modems.
If you live in a rural area where your phone lines are rarely replaced
like I do, you may see more consistent performance on a 33.6k
modem over a 56K. And I don't mean your connect speed, but
your browsing and file downloading performance.

If your curious about testing your modem or ISP performance
download NetMedic from www.download.com . You'll have to
do a search, but it's there.
Or if you have Win98 SE you can go to a "windowed" DOS prompt
while connected to the internet and type:

   tracert www.(any server destination to test).com
   example:        tracert www.download.com

this will show all the servers your data packets are routed thru before
reaching the destination. By dynamically showing what's happening
during those lag times when your staring at your browser;  you'll be able
to directly see which "hop" is taking the longest.

you can also try:

   ping www.(enter your ISP here).com

this will show min/max/avg ping times in a simplified format .

-Yui Shin

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