Modems: Serial Hardware vs. WinModems Story of a very happy dial-up user

[QBRADQ 0]

Hello all. I recently bought a serial modem for use with my Linux installation, and thought I would share the experiance. Now, I know that a lot of people have broadband now and don't really care about modems, but I thought someone might get something out of this.

 

I'll preface all of this by telling you that I live only four miles from the largest city in my county (10,000 people). The AT&T Transcontenental Fiber Backbone runs across the property I live on, and I know this for a fact as my Father watched them install it, and the aforementioned city is currently tapped into it offering 2MBS connections to every home in town. However, the telephone system in the area hasn't been updated since I don't know when, there is no cable broadband, no ISDN, no DSL, nothing available. There is a microwave connection option, however it is very expensive and is quite unstable. Dial-Up is, unfortunately, the only viable option I have untill SBC gets DSL in here.

 

Also, if you don't know what a "Winmodem" is, the you need to read this: Winmodems are not Modems! You'll be thanking this guy later.

 

I have been using a US Robotics 56K v.90 v.92 Voice/Fax/Data PCI internal Winmodem for the past year or so (good lord do I ever miss my cable connection). The modem I bought today is a CNet CN5614XR 56K v.92 Fax/Voice/Data modem, connected via RS-232 serial. Cool thing about it is that it comes with drivers for Windows, and Linux doesn't need any Here's a comparison between the two:

 

Connection: The Winmodem usualy took several tries to connect, squelching and screaming, cycling through the PPP handshake, and constantly messing up and trying again. Usualy took around ten minutes to dial in. My new serial modem squelches for about fifteen seconds, and then it's connected, and I have yet to get a failed attempt.

 

Stability: Using the Winmodem, I would get disconnected within a minute of connecting to my ISP about three out of every four attempts. When I would get a "stable" connection, I would still get booted off at random. With my new serial modem, I have not yet once lost connection. In fact, at this point I have been connected for seven and a half hours, and my ISP has a four hour auto-boot script running (I know this for a fact, as I spoke to the man who runs it ).

 

Bandwidth (if you can call it that): Connecting with the Winmodem under Windows 2000, I would get between 26.4 Kbs and 21.0 Kbs. Connecting with Fedora Core 4 with my new serial modem, I have seen 30.6 Kbs through 48.8 Kbs. However, bandwidth tests with the Winmodem and now with my new serial modem have been the same: roughly 3 KB/Sec. Not too bad for living over six miles from the POP I'd say.

 

Coolness and Convineance: This really isn't much of a functional comparison, but I like it. Now that I'm connected to the 'net through /dev/ttyS0 (serial 0, COM 0 under Windows), I have a free PCI slot. Now I can finaly reinstall my TV ripper card! Not that there are Linux drivers for it Not only that, but I'm very happy to be using my serial port. This is the first time it's ever been used on this motherboard. Glad it's finaly doing me some good. Finaly, since KDE and GNOME don't have network indicator lights (that I can find) it's nice to have hardware upstream / downstream and connection indicators sitting on my desk.

 

In closing, if you're one of the misfortunates of the 'net like me, and have to settle for Dial-Up for what ever reason, do yourself a favor and get a hardware controlled modem! My only regret is that I didn't get one sooner. Chances are that I'll have DSL within a year. Not that I'm complaining, but had I gotten one of these babies sooner the past year would have been a lot more bareable.

 

Untill I start to rant again,

QBRADQ

[KnightEagle 0]

Dud I feel for you atlest you live so close to town. We lived in a very small town and all internet connections would be long distance for us. Then about six years ago maybe more our phoone company started offering everyone internet but the cost was high. Like 40 dollers for 100 hrs. For us to connect we had a special number to Austin Texas. Was not to bad there were only about fifty people in town that use that number. Each town in the phone company had its own internet line to call to. talk about slow all we had at the time was a old 14.4 motem. I landed a job in town five years ago so we needto move and glad we did. Everything alot better. We now have a cable motem and the speed like from the write brothers plane to a saturn rocket. So hang in there guy.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

wow, actually u could of checked LinModem (SuSE configures WinModems automatically), it could have drivers for your modem.xboxrulz

[optykal 0]

Wow, thats dedication. I kinda went through the same thing, except I didn't go out and buy a serial-modem. I have not checked out LinModem, I dont need to anymore since I'm on ADSL now, but I remember the pain and suffering caused by trying to get my Winmodem in my laptop to work under linux. If I can remember correctly, I ended up finding a driver, that after a lot of tweaking was able to connect to the internet. In the process I'm pretty sure I messed around with some settings that I should not have, and so I decided on a re-install. I didn't bother trying to install the driver again, it was ok, I just went back to surfing the net with Windows until I got the ADSL hooked up. I'm very happy now, broadband is so incredibly fast.

[QBRADQ 0]

Little update, I've got broadband now Well, it's only 512Kbs, but it's a lot better than Dial-Up. Still glad I have the modem though, as there are a lot of cool things you can do with them. Not many of them are legal, but hey, my friends won't press charges

 

Plus I'm getting a free dial-up account with the wireless account as a kind of backup. Seeings hows it's a wireless link, the modem will probly be pulling down weather reports durring bad thunder storms (UPSes are cool).

 

Again, I wish I had known more about modems in the past. Ahh well.

 

QBRADQ