Your telephone company or a private consultant may be able to help. Information on how to troubleshoot a line for specific problems is provided at the end of this document. In addition to line impairments, modem configuration and software setup can affect connection rates and throughput. The Courier's default configuration allows 28,800 connections with other V.34 and V.FC modems. The upgrade is free and the latest code revision can improve performance.
Dropped connections can occur when there is a sharp decrease in line quality during a call.
V.34 modems will switch to rates as low as 4800 bps to compensate for these changes. If the loss of quality is extremely severe, they will drop the connection. V.FC connections can only switch rates down to 14.400 bps. If you connect using V.FC and line quality drops below that allowable for a 14,400 connection, the modems will disconnect. If this occurs frequently for a particular call, you will want to disable V.FC before calling that modem again.