I was never able to exceed 24kb/s with my "56k" modem. I came to find out that the phone company (in Austin TX) was using a single pair to service more than one customer in my apartment complex. Naturally, whatever piece of equipment they used to accomplish this stymied faster modem speeds.
I finally installed an ISDN. That was delightful. Not only did it allow me to have two lines - one for voice and one for data - the netgear RT-338 ISDN router automatically dialed my ISP instantaneously. It felt like I was always connected because I didn't have to wait for a modem handshake. Speeds were more than twice as fast as what I could get with my analog modem. However, by far the MOST IMPORTANT thing (and mostly the reason I installed the ISDN in the first place) is that my latency took a nosedive allowing me to become an LPB with a 50ms ping time on QuakeWorld. >:-D
(Shoutout to Charlie S. from OuterNet, Austin's best ISP in the 90's)
I finally installed an ISDN. That was delightful. Not only did it allow me to have two lines - one for voice and one for data - the netgear RT-338 ISDN router automatically dialed my ISP instantaneously. It felt like I was always connected because I didn't have to wait for a modem handshake. Speeds were more than twice as fast as what I could get with my analog modem. However, by far the MOST IMPORTANT thing (and mostly the reason I installed the ISDN in the first place) is that my latency took a nosedive allowing me to become an LPB with a 50ms ping time on QuakeWorld. >:-D
(Shoutout to Charlie S. from OuterNet, Austin's best ISP in the 90's)