Well, your example of that supposedly wonderful, fast 56K modem that only
gave you a 28.8 connection just proves what I've been telling people for a
year, the dirty little secret that 3Com (US Robotics) doesn't want you to
remember.  US Robotics tried one more time to get everybody to adopt a
proprietary protocol, this time, their own X2 protocol as the standard.
Motorola, Rockwell, and Lucent Technologies were backing the K56-Flex
standard instead.  Eighty-plus percent of the Internet ISP's also went with
the more stable, more reliable, less flaky K56-Flex implementation.  Since
the 33.6K V.34-Plus was only semi-official as a standard, it was implemented
slightly differently by different manufacturers.  Therefore, you probably
connected a V.90 modem to an ISP's modem that does not yet support V.90.
Some ISP's are deliberately slow to upgrade, you know, waiting for them to
get the bugs out.  YOur Note, all this is assuming you have a good phone
connection on this hypothetical call, which you may not have had.  Since
both modems did not do V.90, your US Robotics speed demon tried its next
protocol down the list, X2.  The other guy, maybe was a K56-Flex modem, so
they still couldn't talk.  US Robotics' V.34-Plus 33.6K implementation was a
little different, so the highest thing everybody understood was the official
V.34 28.8K standard and that's exactly what you got!  There was probably
nothing at all wrong with that first US Robotics modem you had.  It did
everything it was designed to do, exactly as it was designed to do it.  The
best modem for the price is not a 3Comm US Robotics product, but the Diamond
Supra Express v.90 series, either external, or internal.  It has a larger
internal send and receive buffer, wider bandwidth capability, and better
stability under less than optimal phone line conditions.  It steps through
V.90, K56-Flex, V.34-Plus, and V.34, and can go lower if it's needed.

The US Robotics products are good, and all of them made since the end of
February, 1997 have an unconditional five-year warranty, like the Courrier
series has always had. This also applies to the Sportsters, and MegaHertz
models made by 3Comm.

Incidentally, the 28.8K internal sportster modems and the 33.6K ones justly
earned a reputation for being garbage because of buggy software in the ROM
and flash ROM chips, which went through many "updates" without being
resolved.

Remember guys!  The ads you see on television are what the company payed
somebody else to say, not necessarily so in real life.

Reply to: [log in to unmask]
Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA  USA

"Modem," said the gardener when he'd finished the lawn.

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