[wellylug] A real newbie needs help - internet connection

[Jonathan Harker]

Persian wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Can anyone help Kadim with the modem questions please?
> He is talking about the Swann Smart V90 voice fax serial port modem
> I offered forsale.
> 
> On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:50:47 -0700, kadim martana wrote:
>> Hi persian, 
>> It's me again. Suppose I use that modem, should I find other hassless
>> such as downloading the driver for linux, installing. And Does the
>> reliability and the connection really increase? What's your
>> experience?
>> 
>> Kadim

I've found internal PCI winmodems to be mostly rubbish in rural situations. 
The symptoms are less reliable connections, consistently slower connection 
speeds, less able to cope with line noise, and sometimes (usually on wet days) 
complete failure to connect at all. This varies from modem to modem, and from 
house to house, but it speaks volumes about the quality of winmodems when 
external modems consistently do much better out here in the sticks.

The reason is that internal winmodems depend on the CPU to do the signal 
processing. In order to keep the CPU load down, the algorithms used are 
simpler and not as effective as those used in a hardware modem. These 
algorithms make up the software driver you are trying to install in Linux to 
get your winmodem to work.

The main reason hardware modems are more expensive is because they have a 
dedicated chip doing all the work by itself, usually with more sophisticated 
algorithms and error-checking etc. This is why you do not need to install a 
driver for an external hardware modem.

You do not need to install any rpms or compile any modules or anything else to 
use an external modem with Linux, you just plug it into your serial port and 
you can use kppp to find it.

If you need to set up the device, you can tell kppp to use /dev/ttyS0 for the 
COM1 serial port or /dev/ttyS1 for the COM2 port in the setup dialog.

Hope that helps,

Cheers!
Jonathan.