Hi,

You have your modem set to show computer to modem speed, which is always
115200, not the actual modem to modem connection speed. The actual speed
depends highly on the kind of telephone line you are using. I used to
connect with my 56k modem at full speed, and using the other 33.6k modem, I
got 33.6 connection all the time. Then I moved. Now I am lucky if I get 28.8
from my line, and lots of times it's just 26.4 or even slower. This
translates to about 2k/s. The line you have is more then ok for voice, but
for a high speed modem connection it is not. The telephone companies used to
save money by putting several customers on one line. As I said, for voice
that line sharing is ok, but modems do not like that. Check your modem
manual, and change the setting to show you the actual modem to modem
connection speed, and you will see the cause of your problem. The solution:
call phone company and ask them if they have any plans of upgrading the
lines, but unless there is a volcano eruption in the neighborhood... For
now, just suffer. Later you can consider SDL or some cable modem, when they
become more available and priced for normal people. Sorry...

Cheers

--

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Kaplowitz <jim@bway.net>
To: netbsd-help@netbsd.org <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
Date: Thursday, July 29, 1999 5:42 PM
Subject: Horribly Slow Connection


>Hi, I'm running NetBSD 1.4 on a 486DLC/40 machine named panther as the
>gateway to a (currently) two-computer LAN (the other computer is a P200MMX
>named clouseau running Red Hat Linux 6.0). Panther has a 33.6kbps modem
>installed, but -- and I've tried more than one ISP -- I can't usually even
>reach 1.0 kilobytes per second! Certainly almost never 2 KB or greater.
>The ISP does support 56kbps modems, so I should theoretically be getting
>upwards of 4 KB / sec. Since I've tried multiple ISPs, the problem must be
>on my end. The modem is fine - when I connect to the ISP with cu, it
>connects at a full 115200 speed. Of course that's the modem, not pppd.
>Setting the mtu to 512 and the mru to start as the usually negotiated
>value as 1514 doesn't help either.
>
>This is definitely a NetBSD problem, not a Linux problem, because it
>happens on both computers, and the modem is on panther, not clouseau.
>
>Help, please! I need to eke decent performace out of my modem - I doubt
>I'd get much better results with a brand new one, to be quite honest. I
>think I have settings wrong.
>
>Jimmy
>jim@bway.net
>
>