Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!att-ih!ihnp4!ih1ap!phread
From: phread@ih1ap.ATT.COM (J.F. Shumway)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Need 9600 for severe noise environment
Message-ID: <1009@ih1ap.ATT.COM>
Date: 28 Apr 88 18:35:00 GMT
References: <872@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM> <188@octopus.UUCP>
Reply-To: phread@ih1ap.UUCP (J F Shumway)
Organization: Icarus Anonymous
Lines: 45
Keywords: Taiwan wire_plant luck
Summary: Taiwan's noise problems are within local wire plant

Taiwan's noise problems are in their local wire plant, that final
mile from the switch to the wall jack. In general, local loop
maintenance is nowhere near the quality one is used to getting in
the US of A, unless of course you can bring some clout to bear,
you're a high official in the telephony bureaucracy, or, your 2nd
cousin works in the installation and maintenance group at your
local phone office.

On the other hand Taiwan's  toll network is well maintained, and
they've been investing heavily in state of the art local CO
switching equipment. Their noise problems are in the local wire
plant.  If you ever get the chance to visit, which I  heartily
recommend, talk a stroll through the older sections of Taipei and
notice the power and phone  distribution technology (or lack
thereof). It will remind you of a Phyllis Diller hairdo. 

I've heard, that the telephone authorities will sometimes just keep
assigning you a new local loop, from the pole to the CO, until they
find one that works!

I've seen uucp throughput figures ranging from 700 bytes/second
using a TB+ with an EIA speed of 9600 baud (not bad for a satellite
link) to only 30-150 bytes/second using Microcom 9624Cs through a
local circuit that was so noisy that voice com was often
impossible.  Some in the Taiwan telephone authority suggested
increasing Microcom's transmit power from the US default of -12 dBm
to 0 dBm. This, not suprisingly, can't be done with this model
Microcom and most other reasonably priced modems built to FCC (USA)
specs. And in any case this strategy only helps get half of your
data above the noise floor. 

The Taiwan telephone authority (DGT) offers DCE or async PAD access
to their island wide X.25 packet network which can feed to Tymnet
and Telenet here in the US, among others. This service is not cheap
and I can't vouch for its quality. The only available description
of this service is written in Mandarin, which I don't even pretend
to understand. Although I can't tell you more it may be worth
investigating.
 
Good Luck, dcom in Taiwan is a matter of luck.

-- 

Jesse Fred Shumway	
ihnp4!ih1ap!phread