Re: Modem issues

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lately I have been getting kicked off fairly regularly, and many times I
can't dial in again until I remove the device and then reboot my PC and
let it discover the modem again. Even then it is not a predictable
result. I have swapped out 4 different modems, and the client has
changed their modem once.

What kind of modem are you talking about?

Most of the modern PC-Modems are complete and utter crap. They do not
have any logic on their own, and instead rely on a driver to do all
work for them (sometimes called "Winmodems"). Kinda like the Fakeraid
controllers.

I'd recommend you to buy a good pair of "real" modems - preferrably
ISDN, as that would be a bit faster and there's more hardware to
choose from. Good ISDN cards are mostly designed for the server
market, for example the Dialogic/Eicon Diva cards.

Old-Style modems with serial ports (usually) aren't winmodems either.
There are few new models of them being sold, and they're also quite
expensive.

Another thing worth thinking about might be to switch from POTS/ISDN
to VPN over a standard DSL connection - they've become ubiquitous and
inexpensive, and are much faster and more reliable than modem
connections.