"When buying a telephone modem for your Linux box, don't just grab whatever is selling for cheap at your corner BEST BUY. Getting the correct type of modem will minimize your headaches and improve your chances of a painfree installation. In Part 3 of our Going Linux series, we give some basic guidelines for choosing a Linux modem intelligently and cover some basic configuration tips."
"The Signal Ground team continues it's Going Linux series with another article aimed squarely at the newbie experience. Choosing a telephone modem for your Linux box isn't the hardest thing you'll ever do, but going into the purchase with the some basic knowledge will certainly help you avoid the most common problems. In this article, we'll discuss the basic type of modems to look for and how to configure them. Finally, we'll describe our own experience with a v.90 modem from AOpen."
"The most basic telephone modem to consider should be capable of running the ITU v.90 protocol. This means that the modem supports 56Kbps downstream speeds and 33.6Kbps upstream speeds. In the USA, while v.90 is capable of achieving 56Kbps, the FCC limits this to 53Kbps because of noise considerations. Preliminary specs like X2 or K56Flex have been superceded by the now-ratified v.90 spec, and that is the spec supported by the vast majority of ISPs now."
