-=> Quoting Jonathan de Boyne Pollard to Rich Wonneberger <=-

 JdBP> v32bis is 14400bps.

 JdBP> The arithmetic is correct:  With "8N1" there are 9 bits per character,
 JdBP> yielding 1600 characters per second for v32bis.  1600cps is, of
 JdBP> course, 1.5625 kibibytes per second.   

No, there are *10* bits per character. You forgot the start bit. Asynch
always has a start bit and at least 1 stop bit. 

So 14,400 bits/sec becomes 1440 bytes/sec.

 JdBP> And before anyone mentions compression, it is worth bearing in mind
 JdBP> that I'm talking about Fidonet use here, where the overwhelming
 JdBP> majority of the traffic is ARCmail files.  MNP5 and v42bis generally
 JdBP> don't yield much if any gains when the data being sent are already
 JdBP> compressed, as ARCmail always is. 

Ah! But you seem to be unaware of one of the things that "compression"
does. It effectively makes the modem to modem link *synchronous*. This
means that the modem gets your 10 bits of data, throws away the start &
stop bits, and sends the data along. 

This gives you 14,400 bps at 8 bits per byte (minus a small amount of
overhead), for a bit under 1800 bytes/sec. 

Compression *does* make a difference. 


--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30