I just made a quick call to my ISP, OzEmail, and was quite surprised to see
a large number of Blers in the diagnostics.

Can someone tell me what causes block errors?

Here are the stats for the call.

USRobotics Courier V.Everything Link Diagnostics...

Chars sent                 9203      Chars Received            18265
Chars lost                    0
Octets sent                5259      Octets Received            8817
Blocks sent                 347      Blocks Received             629
Blocks resent                 0

Retrains Requested            0      Retrains Granted              0
Line Reversals                0      Blers                        17
Link Timeouts                 0      Link Naks                     0

Data Compression       V42BIS 2048/32
Equalization           Long
Fallback               Enabled
Protocol               LAPM 244/6
Speed                  26400/26400
Last Call              00:01:05

Disconnect Reason is DTR dropped
USRobotics Courier V.Everything Link Diagnostics...

Modulation               V.34
Carrier Freq    ( Hz )   1959/1959
Symbol Rate              3429/3429
Trellis Code             64S-4D/16S-4D
Nonlinear Encoding       ON/ON
Precoding                ON/ON
Shaping                  OFF/ON
Preemphasis     (-dB )   4/4
Recv/Xmit Level (-dBm)   32.3/13.1
SNR             ( dB )   33.6
Near Echo Loss  ( dB )   7.4
Far Echo Loss   ( dB )   27.0
Roundtrip Delay (msec)   2

OK

I was looking at the modem during the call, and noticed that the ARQ/FAX
led was going on and off after the connect for several seconds. I assume
this is related to the Blers, but how?

Is the modem retraining and/or speed shifting while the led is off? It
never stayed off for more than half a second at a time, so I suppose it
wasn't retraining.

Hmmm .... I've just noticed the speed was only 26400. Win95 logged the
connect at 28800. Must have dropped down just after the connect.

BTW, to get these stats, I had to modify the .inf file used by Win95 in
setting up the modem, as Win95 resets the modem by sending ATZ after every
call, (even though the modem log file Win95 generates doesn't state this).
I'd be happy to detail what I did if anyone wants to know.

Regards,
Frank

... Reality is for those who can't face science fiction.
--- GoldED 2.50+