28.8 modem acting very slow

by ben » Sun, 13 Sep 1998 04:00:00

I have RH5.1 running on a Satellite 200CDS with a pcmcia modem. My 'net
connection was great (as much as 5kbps throughput) but it suddenally
became slow, never getting throughput over a kbyte/sec I'm dialing with
minicom to make a ppp connection. any ideas? (I've tried setserial
/dev/modem spd_hi and allong with vhi, normal...)

thanks,
Ben

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1. Slow 28.8 modem under linux

I've got two nearly identical machines using linux (Slackware) and
DOS/Windows.
The old machine has a Boca 14.4 internal modem that goes like a bat
out of hell under linux or under Windows. The new machine (differs
from the old one in that it has 32 MB RAM [vs. 8MB for the old one])
has a 28.8 internal USR Sportster modem that goes even faster under
Windows. However, under Linux it's a dog. I've checked by mailing
myself a large file and seeing how long it takes to retrieve it under
linux. With the old machine it takes about 30 seconds. With the new
machine it takes 148 - 150 seconds. I've run 11 tests of this modem
now and only one result fell slightly outside that range (130
seconds). I've tried various strings. All gave the same result.
I've tried specifying 115,200 and 57,600 in the ppp-on script. Same
results. (The old machine's script uses 38,400, but I haven't tried
that on the new machine). Other than that, both machines are set up
identically, as far as I can tell. Also, both were talking to the
same modem at the same ISP during my tests.