heard of people upgrading their modems from 28.8 or 33.6 to 56k with software updates

[bigslammer]

wondering if I can update my old 14.4 modem. basically my 56k winmodem works fine but sucks for gaming. my friend has an old 28.8 modem that isn't a winmodem and somehow he says he gets better ping than I do. So I pulled took the modem from my 486 pc and took out the 14.4 modem which I'm pretty sure isn't a winmodem and was wondering if I could update this modem. it probably won't be faster than my current winmodem but my sister may want it because her modem really bites. thx

[RobRich]

28.8/33.6 modems do have better ping times than 56k based modems on average, but their throughput is limited. The reason for better pings is that they handle information differently.

Non 56k modems treat a phone line as truely analog, something it can natively work with with little packet loss and better signal gain. This leads to the lower ping times.

v.90 modemd treat the line as digital, which completely changes the conventional way of thinking when standard analog phone lines are used. The v.90 protocol does allow for far greater bandwidth when dealing with large amounts of continous data. Pings are transfer by extremely small packets, so they are not really optimal for v.90 operation.

As for software upgrades, there are two types: software and firmware. Software upgrades come in the form of drivers, and usually do not result in improving the actual hardware, the exception being host signal proccessing winmodems since they are really software (cpu) driven anyway. Firmware updates can be thought of as flashing a bios. You download a new control set fo the modem, then flash it like you would a motherboard. Many recent modems use this method so you can upgrade to future standards, like updating x2 to v.90. Older modems, like your 14.4, can't be upgraded to any higher standard because their onboard DSP is not fast enough t translate the newer protocols.

You can force you modem to connect at 33.6 if you lower it's connection settings under your modem properties to something lower than 115,200 when you are going to game, and raise it back up when you want to surf the net. Another options would be to buy a cheap 28.8 hardware modem and install it along with your current modem. Then create two dialup connections, one for your 56k, and one for the 28.8

[bigslammer]

man how do you know so much? thx for the info. now one last question? under extra settings in my winmodem what AT command should I use for a lucent chip. I use S37=14. not sure what this does but I connect at 52 kbps and sometimes 53.3. should I use -V90=0 which disables the v.90 protocol. or effectively how would I change my 56k/v.90 protocol to the ones that 28.8 modems use to achieve the lower ping. yes I lower my baud rate to 9600 and this seems to help ping but there seems to be packet loss since I see the soldiers in the game and as the run they disappear and reappear etc. my ping is actually around 187 but sometimes takes some really high jumps to around 500 or 600. Well it was too bad the Braves couldn't do any better, and the falcons aren't very good this year. Well at least you can still hope that the Hawks are gonna have an ok season. thx again for enlightening me.

[Comtech]

You don't want to lower the baud rate, what you really need to do is change the protocall to V.34
Check at www.56k.com (http://www.56k.com) for a way to do this.

[bigslammer]

thx comtech. I'll give it a look and hopefully I'll begin my video game binge.