Modem speed

What generally affects the speed in internet connections? I have a 56K modem yet when I hooked up to my internet provider, i'm only connected at 31Kbps speed. How is that so?

need some comments please.

thanks.

A lot of factors can and will affect connection speed. the biggest factor is the quality of the phone line that you use to connect.
Noise that is barely or not perceptable to you can have a detremental effect, distance from your house to the CO of your telephone company will do it also.
The way your ISP handles its traffic as it passes it off to upstream providers can affect download speed as well.
My ISP goes thru a "mega-pop" site, where they are grouped in with several other small ISPs that are buying bandwidth from a larger company, and when they had to do a change for a few days because of equipment downtime, I could tell a difference in my d/l speed, because I was going from my home to my ISP, to the backbone provider(UUNET).
The normal way is from my home , to ISP, through the mega-pop site,then out on a backbone, which is slower.
Which ISP are you using? If you are using AOL,MSN etc, you might try a local provider to see if that will help out.
hope this sheds a bit of light.

Count yourself lucky! I have a 56k that used to connect at 28800, then dropped back to 26400, and in the past two months I have only been getting 24000... :mad:

http://www.wayne.hardy.com/

Before I upgraded my mobo and cpu, I used to get 34 bps on my old Diamond SupraMax Modem. When I upgraded to my new DDR mobo and Athlon cpu, I notice I couldn't use my old modem, for it used a ISA slot. I had to buy a new pci modem, that has intel chipset built on modem, for my new Soyo DDR mobo, which has no ISA slots. To my surprise, my new modem now gets 49 or 50 bps whenever I logon the internet. That's cool...

I seem like I have more questions than answers:
1. Does changing mobo or cpu effect the speed of the modem?
2. I have my supramax and intel modem both are 56k rated speed. Does the quality of modem speed depends on the manufactuer? Are all 56k modems created equal...?

BW,

Quick answers,

1/ No

2/ Not always

2.5/ No

Longer answers,

1. Unless your motherboard is ancient, it should have no effect on your modem throughput. The same goes for the processor, it can handle far more than the modem can throw at it.

2. Modems are like any other thing, ther are some bargains out there, some models from some brand names are rubbish, and others are great, there is some thuth in the adage "you get what you pay for", but it aint that simple.

2.5/ As I have said above, you can get cheapies that work brilliantly, and brand name s that dont.


As a rule though, a reputable make, while it may not work any better, may be more reliable, easier to install, and easier repaired in the event of failure.


G