On Sat 18 Jan at 22:45 Alex Mcconnell (3:632/552) wrote to Russell Brooks:

 AM> What's a quality modem? They all use the same chipset, bar 
 AM> the Courier and he said he wanted something cheaper 
 AM> anyway. That's not true, even the best of modems drop out. 

True, but having set the modem to enable retrains, a good modem should hold
the connection well to another good modem.

Not good modems include 04BC chips Rockwell V.34's and generally anything
on an early firmware revisions.

If set up correctly, a pair of Motorola Lifestyles (Motorola DSP) or
Multi-Tech MT2834ZDX's (AT&T/Lucent chipset) will perform well, but
they have trouble with the early Rockwells. The USR Couriers with later
than 1994 firmware perform well generally. Others have reported that the
Hayes Optima Business modems (with 33.6 kbps capable firmware available for
the Australian model) are good also. Anyone have reports on the Netcomm
Smartmodem 336D?

At the higher end, the Penril Datalink V34M, Telebit Fastblazer, Motorola
Codex 326X with 7.7 or later firmware and General Datacom modems are
suitable for mission critical applications.

Some supposed "quality" modems like the Dataplex DPX-225-01
V.32bis modems suffered their tuning coefficients going out of alignment,
making them unsuitable for long-hold operation.

--- msgedsq 2.1