ric@netcom.COM (Richard Bretscheider) (04/23/91)
I'm considering upping my telecommunications speed and wanted to get some recommendations from informed people who aren't looking to get paid for it (ie sales reps, sales people, etc.) :-) My current configuration is a Macintosh Plus (4 meg) a Practical Peripherals 2400 modem, and White Knight (whatever the current version is this week.) I believe a 9600 Baud v.32 modem would speed up my dial-in access to my UNIX host. In particular, I want to speed up paging through news. The questions: What are my bottlenecks (Mac Plus, Software, Modem) and how do I break them. Will I really see a difference in paging speed? What 9600 baud modems do _you_ recommend? Will White Knight cut it? Is v.42 necessary/helpful/worth it to cover future needs? What else haven't I covered? As always I will be a greatful and indebted spud, and will toss electronic garlands in your general direction. -- "If you're not going to kill me, I've got things to do." Ric Bretschneider apple!netcom!ric BWAH-Ha-ha!
rock@warp.Eng.Sun.COM (Bill Petro) (04/24/91)
ric@netcom.COM (Richard Bretscheider) writes: >I'm considering upping my telecommunications speed and wanted to get >some recommendations from informed people who aren't looking to get >paid for it (ie sales reps, sales people, etc.) :-) >My current configuration is a Macintosh Plus (4 meg) a Practical >Peripherals 2400 modem, and White Knight (whatever the current version >is this week.) I have a 4 MB MacPlus with WK 11.12 and a 9600/19200 v.32 dual standard US Robotics modem. >Will I really see a difference in paging speed? Yes >What 9600 baud modems do _you_ recommend? The two popular ones are Telebit and US Robotics. See below >Will White Knight cut it? You bet. >Is v.42 necessary/helpful/worth it to cover future needs? It depends on who you plan to talk to. Your work may have no plans in the next 18 months to support v.42 so you'll be hanging out there by yourself. You might also want to consider who else besides your work you will be talking to. Many Mac BBSs do not support Telebit protocol, and you might want to consider the modem protocols they support. In general, I have found that UNIX is Telebit and Mac is US Robotics (Courier family). However, our facility also supports some US Robotics dialin ports. Check with your sysadmin. -- Bill Petro {decwrl,hplabs,ucbvax}!sun!Eng!rock "UNIX for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" Matthew 19:12
kohler@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (kurt kohler) (04/24/91)
ric@netcom.COM (Richard Bretscheider) writes: >I'm considering upping my telecommunications speed and wanted to get >some recommendations from informed people who aren't looking to get >paid for it (ie sales reps, sales people, etc.) :-) >My current configuration is a Macintosh Plus (4 meg) a Practical >Peripherals 2400 modem, and White Knight (whatever the current version >is this week.) >I believe a 9600 Baud v.32 modem would speed up my dial-in access to >my UNIX host. In particular, I want to speed up paging through news. >The questions: What are my bottlenecks (Mac Plus, Software, Modem) and >how do I break them. >Will I really see a difference in paging speed? >What 9600 baud modems do _you_ recommend? >Will White Knight cut it? Well right at this very moment I'm typing on a 4 Meg Mac Plus with White Knight 11.12 running to a Microcom QX/4232hs V.32/V.42 modem and it is definitely a LOT faster than 2400. The biggest improvement is in download times, but there is a difference in reading news as well. At least this is true when the news machine is lightly loaded. When things get really busy it's the response time of the system that appears to limit things, not the comm speed. As far as a recommendation... the Microcom is pretty nice (although the manual is horrible) but it's pretty spendy. On the other hand the prices of all V.32 modems seems to be coming down rapidly. Any information you find that's more than a few months old is probably totally out of date. By the way, the modem is on loan from work and I'll be kicking and screaming when they want it back. It's *very* easy to get spoiled. I've noticed that I've been doing a lot more ftp'ing than I used to. Kurt Kohler kohler@jacobs.cs.orst.edu