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Need help settling a bet about modem connection speeds

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nahmus

Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2002
Location
Sailing the Azure seas
I have a bet with a friend of mine about the information reported by those two little pc's that are in the bottom right and show connection speed.

I was always had the understanding that is the showing the negotiated speed between the your modem and the modem on the other side.

He is telling me that it is the connection speed between the serial port AND the modem itself. This make no sence to me because if that was true then the speed would not change. I then asked him why it would change on internal modems with no serial connection. He informed me it was doing SERIAL EMULATION! ( I honestly tried no to laugh at that because he is just learning )

I'm not above admitting I'm wrong so I'm asking here before I go to him and start repeating "SERIAL EMULATION" in my homer simpson voice over and over.

thanks for any help
 
You'll like the answer. It can be either one. It really depends on your modem and it's settings for what it reports back to the PC. Sometimes it will show actual speed, other times it will show the computer to modem speed. You can tell because it's usually like 57,600, 115,200, etc. when showing the comptuer to modem speed. If it comes up 31,200, 44000, et it's probably actual line speed.
 
The speed reported by that icon is the negotiated speed between your computer and the isp's computer at the time of connection. Actual speed varies constantly. Sometimes Windoze has a glitch on some computers, and always reports the port speed setting instead of the negotiated actual.

The modem is emulating a communications port. The serial ports are communications ports, so I guess he's partly right there.
But com ports on most modern pc's can do up to 921,600...I wish a modem could do this! 56k modems are capable of 115,200 burst speeds (check settings> control panel> modems> diagnostics> more info), but are limited to just over 53k actual speed by the FCC (the 56k designation is wishfull thinking on US Robotics' part).

It's all smoke and mirrors anyway. The true test is downloading. I wouldn't believe much that Windoze reported.
 
thanks for the replys,
I've seen the windows glitch where it reports the port speed but I can't figure out what causes it. I was pretty sure that it was reporting the highest speed that the two modems were able to handshake at.

man i hope he likes the simpsons

HMMMMM SERIAL EMULATION
 
If you check your DUN logs, you'll see that the speed it reports is what the modem is reporting back when it says either CONNECT 44000 (line speed) or CONNECT 115200 (DTE speed). You can set to modem to report either line speed or DTE speed through a setting in the init string.

Those of you around from the pre-internet BBS days probably remember the modem's connect message and how you could adjust it using AT commands (or maybe you don't, but you could).

I DID have a glitch at one point, though, where my modem would report the line speed, the computer would reject it as unknown repsonse and then the modem would then report the DTE speed. But only when connecting at 56k speeds. If I connected below 33.3 it was fine. It did this even after a clean install, so I'm not sure what was going on.
 
Yea I remember AT codes. Actually I still use them at work since I do alot of unix work. I actually have a small UUCP network for moving system logs around
(bonus question... who else used UUCP!)

and from a security standpoint setting your modem to a non-standard setting (7bit,even parity...) will discourage your avg free dialer looking for a login. And usually you need to script this through AT codes.
 
I still use "AT M0" to shut the modem's speaker off. Windoze doesn't seem to get the hint from it's own setting slider bar.

I've been on the net for a while now (yes, before Clinton/Gore).
Ever surf on a 9200 modem, and use Pine on a telnet connection to view your e-mail? Most webpages were text, as was my dial-up and manual login.
Ah my mighty 386 DX25, my first 'net machine.

Have a good'n guys!
 
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