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Byte Magazine, V20, N11, pg 40 has an article titled "Telecommunications:
Phone Lines Stymie V.34 Modems.  That spiffy new V.34 modem may feel like
a station wagon instead of a turbocharged racer.  Here's why."  It mentions
that V.34 modems are supposed to communicate at 28.8 kbits/s, however most
people will not get more than 26.4 kbits/s except under prime conditions.
Apparently, equipment used to reduce static, interoffice phone systems,
digital speech compression, etc. reduces the top speed of V.34 modems.

The article makes a couple of negative remarks about early USR Sportsters,
and Rockwell chipset modems.  It also mentions that consistent fast data
connections are achieved via ISDN.  

Overall, this article is quite informative about the barriers to 28.8 kbits/s
data transmission.


Robert Wong (rwong@direct.ca) writes:
"There was some debate in the comp.dcom.modems newgroup about the connection
speed of the ZyXEL Elite modems.  The consensus seemed to be that the ZyXEL
had slower initial connection speeds when compared with the USR modems.  Some
posters vehemently stated that the ZyXEL was substandard.

Personally, I have had my ZyXEL Elite for about 1.5 weeks.  I have had a grand
total of 64 connections.
   3 (4.7%)  of the connections were at 28.8
  46 (72%)   of the connections were at 26.4
  15 (23.4%) of the connections were at 23.4

From my very limited experience, I don't often get 28.8 connections.  About
70-75% of the time, I get 26.4 connections and about 25-30% of the time, I
get 23.4 connections.  Note these are merely *initial* connection speeds.
I have not looked at connection speeds over time.  They may have gone up,
stayed the same, or gone down during my connect sessions.  I haven't checked,
thus I don't know the answer.

The current v1.04 ROMs are pretty stable.  Hopefully in future ROM releases,
ZyXEL can work on increasing and maintaining the initial connect speeds.  
ZyXEL has has a pretty good track record for improving their modems.  They be
able to address this and other concerns with succeeding ROM releases."