NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/dcom/modems-part2/11757

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.3 KB

Path: FreeNet.Carleton.CA!an171
From: [e-mail] (Anthony Hill)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: My experience with 'The Sportster' (just my 2 cents)
Date: 21 Apr 1996 03:21:54 GMT
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet
Sender: [e-mail] (Anthony Hill)
Message-ID: <4lc9ki$[e-mail]>
References: <4lbtei$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Anthony Hill)
NNTP-Posting-Host: freenet2.carleton.ca


Eric Hansen ([e-mail]) writes:
> I've spent the better part of a day reading hundreds of the posts in this
> group (as well as several of your superb web pages).  I'm trying to find an
> alternative to my Hayes Accura 28.8 (v.34).  I guess I have a noisy line when
> dialling into Worldnet; the Hayes will only give me 14.4.  No amount of
> fiddling (with setup strings or cables) will help.

    Well, first I'd check to be absolutely certain that you've got a
v.34 modem and not a vFC one.  If you had a vFC only modem and tried to
connect to a modem that supports v.34 but not vFC (and many of the modems
that ISPs use fall into this catagory), then you'd only get 14.4
connections.  Otherwise it's possible that htere's just an incompatability
between your modem and your ISPs.  If the Hayes Accura is anything like
there more expansive Hayes Optima model than this is quite possible, since
in my experience the Hayes Optima is absolutely terrible at
interoperability.

> I decided to try the USR Sportster (28.8/33.6) based on its close relation to
> the Courier (which seems to be highly regarded in combating line noise).  And

    Well, unfortunatly the USR Sportster and USR Courier aren't as
closely related as they used to be.  They're still pretty similar, but
they Sportster is based on totally different hardware.

> it was on sale.  I know a lot of you don't like it, but I was willing to give
> it a hands-on test.
>
> Alas! I connected at 24,000!  Ok, it wasn't 28.8 but a definite improvement.
>
> BUT (and this is a big but), some odd things started happening.  Web browsing
> became erratic, newsgroup reading became erratic and I got DISCONNECTED!
> AAARRRGGGHHH!!!  I reconnected and this cycle repeated several times.
>
> Many of you suggested using the M2 command to keep the speaker on, which I
> did.  I discovered the modems were 'retraining' as many as 2 or 3 times a
> minute.  Each time it did, everything came to a standstill.  After several
> minutes of this, either my modem or AT&T's modem just gave up and disconnected
> me.

    Well, it's understandable that it'll disconnect with that many
retrains, although no matter how bad the lines are you should NEVER have
to retrain that much.

> For now, it's back to the Hayes.  It will give me only 14.4, but it's a very
> stable 14.4.  Never a disconnect or a hiccup.
>
> It's obvious I have a bad line to the Worldnet number so I can't really blame
> the Sportster for the retraining attempts.  After all, isn't that what v.34 is
> supposed to do?  (To ease my mind, I took my modem to a friends house and
> tried the Worldnet number from there: 26.4 every time.)
>
> My question is (for those of you still with me) am I wasting my time trying
> various modems when I clearly have a bad line?  If I spring for a Courier

    I wouldn't say that you're wasting your time.  A good v.34 modem
will handle just about any line fairly well.

> v.everything will I still get this retraining thing?  At this point, I'd

    You might and you might not..  Personnaly I'd recommend that you
try a Motorola Power or LifeStyle first, as they're considerably cheaper
then the Courier but seem to be very good when it comes to stability.
If you do try this though, make sure you send the modem the correct AT
commands to turn on rate renegotiate and lower rate selection threshold
(lower connect rate but more stability).

> rather have a slower, stable connection than a fast, erratic one but if the
> right modem will help me, I'll give it a try.
>
> Is the Hayes Accura not a very good modem?  I don't see much mention of Hayes
> in this newsgroup.

    Well, as I said above, I've found Hayes Optima's to be absolutly
terrible at interoperability.  Maybe everyone's just given up on Hayes and
moved on to something more reliable.  That's certainly what's happend in
this area.  of the four boards that I knew of that ran Hayes v.34s, 3 have
sold their Optima's in favor of other v.34 modems (two bought USR Couriers
and one bought a Motorola Power).  The guy who switched to the Motorola
bought his Power from me and said that he was switching because of all the
inerop problems he was having with his Hayes..

> One final question, has bitching to the phone company ever produced results in
> cases like this?  (I tried calling once...the response?  "What's a modem?")

    It rarely works, but you never know.  Saying you have problems
receiving faxes might be more successfull then talking about modems.  But
whatever you do, don't buy believe their stuff about how you need a "data
grade" phoen line if you want to run a modem.  This is just an attempt to
charge you twice to three times as much for a line that still probably
won't give you good data connections (if you really want good data
connections and don't mind spending the extra money, ISDN is the way to go).

Anthony

--
Anthony Hill | [e-mail]