From: jchin@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca (Joseph Chin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: Modems: Choosing between US Robotics and Intel
Date: 16 Apr 92 19:44:59 GMT
Reply-To: jchin@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca
Organization: The Wordcraft Group - Vancouver, B.C., Canada

I have been using a USR V.32bis external (UUCP) for over a year now and I  
am extremely pleased with it. The other office I work at has six of them  
working quietly in the network room (lease lines and dialups for Mac  
networks) for over two years (they were upgraded from V.32) without any  
problem. Another client site (a local utility company) has a whole bunch  
of rack mounted USR V.32bis (upgraded) that have been operating reliably  
for many years. In fact, USR claims to have the most forgettable modems on  
the market ... and they have certainly live up to that claim.

I have found USR modems to be very compatible with other modems and they  
seem to comply with the standards very closely.  
"dave@blackbox.isca.uiowa.edu (Dave Lacey)" in comp.dcom.modem (or  
something like that) did a performance comparison of several modems for  
SLIP/PPP and the USR V.32bis came out on top:

=====
   Here at the U of Iowa, we've been evaluating a batch of v.32bis  
modems to find a replacement for the current dialin modems we have.  I got  
a chance to play with all of them and test them using SLIP.  This allowed  
me to get some thruput numbers.
   The modems I tested were:
       Codex 3260 series
       USRobotics V.32bis
       NEC N9635E
       MultiTech
       ZyXEL U-1496E  (rom ver 4.05)
       Supra  FAX Modem v.32bis

The first four were sent by vendors who replied to our request for  
test equipment -- they were the only companies who had rack mount modems  
at that time.  I went ahead and ordered a ZyXEL myself based on the  
favorable reviews I found here on usenet. 

All the modems talked to each other except the MultiTech.  We  
ended up giving up on the Multitech after trying one rom upgrade (first  
they would only talk to themselves and no other modems, after the upgrade,  
they'd talk to any of the modems except another Multitech - go figure)

The results are:

           Ping Times (ms)

       |	Local
Remote | NEC	USR	Codex	ZyXEL
-------+-----------------------------
NEC    | 262		230	235
Codex  | 233	171	230	202
USR    |	146	179	168
Supra  | 			266


ASCII FTP transfer rate (Kbytes/sec)

       |	Local
Remote | NEC	USR	Codex	ZyXEL
-------+-----------------------------
NEC    | 3.31		3.32	3.16
Codex  | 2.62	2.70	2.68	2.71
USR    |	3.29	3.32	3.34
Supra  | 			3.30


Binary FTP transfer rate (Kbytes/sec)

       |	Local
Remote | NEC	USR	Codex	ZyXEL
-------+-----------------------------
NEC    | 1.50		1.51	1.50
Codex  | 1.50	1.50	1.50	1.49
USR    |	1.49	1.50	1.53
Supra  | 			1.48


The "local" system was a NeXT 68040/20Meg RAM running NeXTstep 2.1 and  
TranSys Dialup-IP (020792) doing standard SLIP (no compression)
The "remote" system was a Xylogics Annex II terminal server. All the  
modems were run at 38.4K, hardware handshaking, v.32bis,v.42bis
  
Ping times were done between the NeXT and the annex. (ie 1 hop)

The ascii file consisted of a large amount of C source code (~75K)

The binary file was a .tar.Z file. (~150K)


Conclusions:
The ZyXEL and USRobotics modems did the best.  The NEC had  
significantly more latency and the Codex didn't seem to do well on  
compression.  I also liked the ZyXEL and USR AT command set whereas the  
NEC had a very confusing AT command set.

=====

The new Supra V.32bis seems like a good bang for the buck. But I don't  
have first hand experience with regard to its reliability and  
compatibility.

Joe

ps. I am an authorized US Robotics reseller. But I do try to be as  
objective as possible. Blind brand royalty only breeds ignorance.

--
| Joseph Chin ** jchin@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca ** NeXTmail welcome |
|         +1-604-879-6830 phone ** +1-604-879-9687 fax         |
|    Frame-authorized consultant**NeRD**The Wordcraft Group    |
|Vancouver NeXT Users Society director***Olympic Tornado sailor|
Organization: Junior, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA