compresion on a dial up modem

[justin]

I've new computer but having trouble with the modem. It connects at a different speed everytime i connect, most of the time it is a lot slower than the steady 52kbs i used to get with my old comp. I've noticed the "status" once i'm connected the compression for both sent and recieved is around 40 to 50 percent. I have tried disabling compression but it seems to have no effect, it still shows 40 to 50 percent compression. Is compression a bad thing? Is there any other settings i change that might help?

[Mel]

There are many things that can effect a phone line modem.It is an analoge device that relies on the signal quality it recieves from the phone line. Lower quality means more signal distortion which means more transmission errors which means a lower overall throughput of data. You could try asking your telephone line provider to turn up the gain on your line. I know that you used to bqe able to do this here in the UK. It it will depend on what technology your local telephone exchange uses.
Lower gain used to mean that the signal to noise ratio was worse and you could only achieve certain bandwidths.
Compression in modem technology is a very good thing. It allows you to send more data with less, this means it increases your theoretical bandwidth without having to change the actual bandwidth of the line.Or it could be a crappy modem as previously advised.