Date: Thu, 24 Dec 92 16:29:22 EST
From: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org (Ken Levitt)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: ZyXEL Modem Review
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 915, Message 2 of 5

Since the ZyXEL modem has many features of special interest to Telecom
readers, I thought you might be interested in this review that I wrote
for the New England Fidonet Sysops.

Items of Telecom note are:  Caller ID, Distinctive Ring, Voice
record/playback, DTMF detection.

                               BASIC INFORMATION

Make:     ZyXEL
Model:    U-1496E (External)
ROM:      V 5.03c M
Speed:    14,400 in V.32bis, 16,800 with other ZyXEL modems
FAX:      Group III FAX with FAX software included.  Does Class II modem
          FAX commands and is compatible with many FAX software packages
Chip Set: ZyXEL (Not Rockwell)

                               SPECIAL FEATURES

This is the only modem that comes with software that will allow
Binkley or FrontDoor to answer a BBS call, find out that it is a FAX
call and chain off to the FAX software to receive a FAX.

Will decode and report Caller ID (caller number delivery) information
if this information is available on your phone line.  It will also
deliver caller's name, if this information is provided by your phone
company.

Remote configuration.

Two types of security features.  One does dial back, the other works
only with another XyXEL modem.

You can tell the modem to only answer on one of more distinctive ring
patterns.  The type of phone service is called RingMate by New England
Telephone, but has different names in every part of the country.

Has its own built in dialing directory.

Adaptive block size for bad lines.

Maintains statistical performance information that can be read back in
human readable form.

Special Voice/Tone Information.

   1.  Can read incoming touch tones (DTMF) and pass information on to
       your computer.

   2.  Has facilities to play a digitized voice recording out over the
       phone line or through the modem's speaker.

   3.  Has facilities to digitize and record voice messages coming in
       over the phone line.

   If you combine items 1, 2, and 3.  You see that you can build a
   voicemail system, or a front end that will answer your phone with a
   message and ask callers to select from Voice, Data, or FAX.  However,
   I have not found any existing software that will do this.  They do
   give you a program that has some of these features, but mostly for
   demonstration purposes.

   There are other modem models that have a better voice digitizing method
   that compress speech into smaller disk files.

They have a public access BBS that has information on using their
modems with many different FAX and communications packages.

When they issue a ROM update, if you have access to a PROM burner, you
can download the code from their BBS.  Otherwise, you can get an
upgraded ROM from them.

There is a light on the front panel indicating signal quality.

                               THE GOOD NEWS

My BBS is the Fidonet<->Internet Gateway for nets 101 and 322.  As
such I have many incoming and outgoing mail connections with other
Fidonet systems. This is the third 14,400 FAX modem I have tested.
The Supra and Zoom modems were both returned as being unacceptable for
a variety of different reasons. The ZyXEL seems to do the job quite
well.

The unit comes with a heavy duty power transformer (unlike the Zoom or
Supra), and seems well built.

With the exception of one system (see below), I can connect with all
other modems without any special setup strings.

                               THE BAD NEWS

The FAX software that comes free with the modem is not very
sophisticated.  If you only use FAX infrequently, you will be able to
use it, but if you are a frequent FAX user, you will likely want
something better.

The manual has most of the information you might want, but is not well
organized.  The Zoom manual was much better and had more information.

I had no reason to remove the case, but I wanted to take a peek
inside.  It was difficult getting the case open.  The instructions in
the manual on this topic were not all that clear.

The lights inside the modem are set back from the front panel far
enough so that it is difficult to see what is going on when you look
at them from an angle.  The more expensive model has a digital
display.

There are too many lights lit when the modem is not connected so that
it is difficult to tell from a distance if the modem is on-line.

The lights are arranged in such a way that you need to look very
carefully to know if you have an error correction connection.

You can tell from the lights if you have a v.32 connection, but you
can not tell the speed of the connection.

I have a problem which may be unique to my local phone exchange.  I
have had this problem with some brands/models of modems in the past,
but not all.  On an outgoing call, when the number called is busy,
about 10%-15% of the time, the ZyXEL modem will report RINGING rather
than BUSY.  This just means that the call attempt will take a little
longer to abort.  To deal with this, I have set Binkley to "RingTries 7".

I had one other problem which seems to have gone away since ZyXEL sent
me a replacement modem.  About every three or four days the modem
ended up in a state where the touch tones (DTMF) being generated by
the modem were not recognized by the phone company.  Dial tone would
come up, the tones would go out, and dial tone would still be there.
The only way to clear this was to power off the modem and power it
back up.  I have been using the replacement modem for about three
weeks now and the problem has not come back.  The second modem had a
later ROM revision, so I'm not sure if it was a ROM problem or a modem
problem.


Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390     UUCP: zorro9!levitt
INTERNET: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org or levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edu