CONNECTING WITH 56K MODEMS

If your 56k dialup is connecting at low speeds (less than 43k) and your system is near a Qwest central office, please be sure that all the devices in your house or office that share the same phone line as your 56k modem are "on hook" i.e. not interfering with your modem. The fewer the devices on the same phone line the better. If your connect speeds are low, experiment by connecting only your modem line to the Qwest jack on the outside of the house and see if the speed improved. (The other wires sharing the connection may be degrading your connection).

The Sequim and Port Townsend sites typically connect to V.90 modems between 42kb and 49kb. Those speeds may be reached if the customer's site is not "too distant" from a Qwest central office. If the Qwest terminal block on your house or building is a 'UDC' you will not get above 26.4kb on any connection. A 'UDC' is used when Qwest is out of phone lines. It allows you to connect two phones each with its own phone number to a single telephone line. The speeds we have seen with V.90 have ranged from 42666 to 49333, with a few users getting speeds in the low 50000 range.

Modems that are distant from the Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles central offices such as Diamond Point near Sequim and parts of the Sunland area will likely connect at speeds less than 33.6kb.

Port Hadlock does not appear to support K56Flex connections, nor does the Sprint 732 exchange ("Center"--Chimacum and the area south of there). However, we do see some connection speeds over 33.6 from those areas, but these connections tend to drop during longish downloads.

Other Notes

If you have trouble getting connected, your modem may need three or four commas after the number you use to dial OlympusNet. (Those commas block the V.8 tone from your modem--the V.8 tone is the short tone you hear just as our equipment answers--it announces the capabilities of the modem which sends it.)

Some analog modems are confused by the digital modem's V.8 tone, and try to negotiate with it rather than waiting for the real negotiation. The three commas after the phone number insert enough delay so that the calling modem doesn't hear the V.8 tone and doesn't become confused by it. A few modems need 4 commas. The software we are presently running uses a softer V.8 tone, which is intended to allow more of the older modems to negotiate correctly without commas after the number.

In Port Ludlow and in other places where 56k seems impossible (e.g. Beckett Point, Cape George and, seemingly, Port Hadlock in Jefferson County; the Diamond Point area in Clallam County), some modems benefit from the three or four commas also. However, a better solution is to disable 56k in these modems using an initialization string. The negotiation will go much faster and often produces higher speeds when a modem doesn't bother to try the 56k (V.90) protocol first.

Please note that the K56Flex, US Robotics X2 and V.90 technologies will not produce connections that transfer data at 56k, since many phone lines cannot handle high speeds. Also, the FCC design constraints on modem manufacturers effectively blocks speeds above 53kb from at least some of the protocols by limiting maximum power levels...the FCC is considering revising the power restrictions.

You may soon be seeing ads for early V.92 protocol modems. Our Portmaster terminal servers do not support V.92, although they will support V.90, which the V.92 modems try in the absence of V.92. Our Cisco AS5300 may in the future receive software which supports V.92; we do not yet know whether or when that may happen. At the moment, we do not have support for V.92.

Visit http://www.56k.com/ for detailed information on 56k modems.

Updated 2004-06-21