On Sat, 21 Mar 1998, Michael P. Plezbert wrote:
> I don't really know if a 386 can keep up with a 28.8 modem or not, but I
It can, barely. I use a 386DX/25 to (among other things) connect to
another system via a null modem cable. It occasionally loses characters
at 57.6Kbps, this is with a 16550A UART (one of the decent ones). If you
are planning to use the modem for internet traffic, you will rarely see
speeds above about 32000 bits per second even with the compression. The
bulk of data on the internet is in the form of .GIF and .JPG files which
do not compress any further. If you plan on sending a lot of text files,
then the 386 will mangle some packets from time to time, since those can
often reach or exceed 56Kbps of effective throughput.
The load of routing the packets between the modem and the local network
can be effectively ignored, unless you have a packet storm on your
ethernet. Routing does not use very much CPU.
Note that modems that support hardware flow control (which my null modem
does not) will not ever 'lose data' but they may show a reduced
performance. In fact no TCP/IP connection will ever really 'lose data'
but hardware flow control will make life easier on you with a slow CPU.
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