Fastest modem available

[Galraedia]

Does anyone know what the fastest dial up modem is? I know that it's probably a 56k v92, but does anyone know a specific brand?

[TerryP]

Maybe an old external Lucent modem?

I used 56K v92 based winmodems for years under Microsoft Windows, but never actually could get a decent speed out of our ISP from here. Getting anything > 34K was fast under M$N 8 and 9... lol.

[Galraedia]

I thought that external modems were actually slower than internal modems.

[TerryP]

That I am not sure, but let me put it this way.

external modem -- maybe real modem or at least 'stand alone'
internal modem -- probably software (win) modem


With the way dial up works in the USA, it's more economical to implement modems in software rather then hardware. Most winmodems won't work with BSD, so it kind of limits the playing field.

[Ian_Robinson]

I agree with TerryP on the maximum speed of a 56K modem being around 34K. It's not the modem's fault, but the drag in the telephone system. I can remember only a few fabulous days when the meter read 41K.

Do NOT get a WinModem -- which the only thing they ever had going for them was that they were cheap. They usually did not work well or reliably. (Cheap because they had fewer microchips or integrated circuits on the board and depended upon the CPU and software emulation to do its work). A few WinModems are, but most are not compatible with FreeBSD or Linux.

I have had many external and internal modems. External modems are faster than internal modems. I was always amazed that the external modem outperformed the internal ones. Perhaps the external one did not depend on the CPU or slices of processor time to perform its operations.

The absolute best modem, internal or external, is a U.S. Robotics sold by 3Com. There should be a lot of them on Ebay. Make sure that an external modem's connector cables match your computer's connection ports. If you are buying an external modem, make sure it comes with a power supply.

[jetman640]

dialup is about the shittiest way to go about hooking up to the net next to using your original nes lol the first modem runs bout 23k witch is a normal song in about half an hour depending on how gunked up your pc is and wether or not you have any cross trafic and dial up is so limmeted that it has still not gone past about maybe 60 somthing kbs and that is if some how you expanded your bandwith and can keep the pings and stuff from gunking it up and as well mod out your modem and take out the restricters but honestly if you are looking for better praformance go with
HP ProCurve 2910al Switch Series
176 gigs per second ask your service provider to expand your bandwith and you can down load the whole internet in about half a day all of it all the porn and viral infections or even a small wierless router runs faster costs like 60 or 70$ when all is said and done even then you can run at anywhere between 500k-100mb/s witch is more then enough for anything you might run and thousands even millions of times better then the little dial up bs you are talking about

[Galraedia]

Riiiggghhht. Did I mention Jetman that not all of us live in an area where broadband service is available? And let me correct you because the first modem was the Bell 103 by AT&T and ran at 300bit/s. And the highest a modem can go is 56k; however, the government regulates the maximum power output to only 53.3 kbit/s. The 56 kbit/s rate is only possible from the central office to the user site (downlink). The only way to exceed 56k is through compression. This can be done by using V.42, V.42bis, and V.44 standards. For example, a 53.3 kbit/s connection with V.44 can transmit up to 53.3*6 == 320 kbit/s using pure text. Compression can also be provided by the use of a web accelerator that uses compression technology; for example, Propel.
So, why should I take the advice of someone who can't even get their facts straight? And why in the blue hell would I want an HP ProCurve 2910al, or anthing from HP for that matter? I use my service to surf the internet, not download it. I'm not trying to set up a network so I'm not even going to take that into consideration.

[Ian_Robinson]

Please play nice on the forum.

[jetman640]

sorry i am not that old or dont stay interested in outdated tech but if you can get cable you can get brod band even dsl is better then dial up a wifi box dosnt cost cable as far as i know can hadle at least a 1Gb/s though i am not so shure about dsl but i know it should be able to handle 100 mb/s and fiberoptics can handle 10 gigs from what i have seen but sitting around talking about dial up modems witch runn though phone lines are totaly outdated eather net is easy to use that runs at ~100-1000mb/s there is so menny different ways to connect there is no reason any of us have to stay in the dark ages and it dosnt cost that much to do and shoot if you need me to i could install it myself

i wasnt talking about the first ever dial up contection but i supose i should have made it a bit more clear the lowest model runs at 23kb/s