monkey@caen.engin.umich.edu (Xinbing Liu) (12/28/90)
Season's greetings, everybody. I am a new modem user and just found out this newsgroup. I have a few questions about modems, in particular to my situation, I hope I can get some expert help from this group. Answers posted both to this group and through e-mail are greatly appreciated. First of all, I am a unix user. I work with my unix account at the University of Michigan. I just bought a 2400 bps modem (Hayes) and a vt100 terminal (more exactly, a GraphOn go140 terminal, it simulates vt100 and tek4013) so I can work from home. I think this is what people call 'modem connected to a dumb terminal'; however the terminal has some setup capabilities: it can set transmit and receive speed up to 19.2 kbps, among other things. My modem is strictly (at least now) for connecting me to my account from home using this terminal, the connection is local (so my phone bill does not increase), and my need for the modem is simple, nothing fancy. My current 2400 bps works fine on the connection side, but I find it too slow sometimes. I wanted a faster modem, say a 9600 bps one. I got a recent issue of Computer Shopper and looked for modems. I got confused by some of the advertisements about modems in it. For example, it seems to me that some 9600 bps modem claim to have 38400 bps 'v.42 throughput', is it true? what does 'v.42 throughput' mean here? I have the following questions to ask: For my use,, what kind of high speed modem should I get for best economics? How do I interpret the advertizing claims about modem speeds? Should I buy a used one? What's the usual accepted price range for a used 9600 bps modem? -- Xinbing Liu Ultrafast Science Lab University of Michigan