Amazing Dialer 1.80

Amazing Dialer 1.80

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This program manages your dial-up Internet connection. Amazing Dialer can deal with sudden hang-ups, and connect at a specific time or when an application requests a connection.

Download Information
Version:	1.80
License:	Shareware
Requirements:	Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2k, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 95
Limitations:	75 Uses
Date Added:	January 26, 2005
Downloads:	301
File Size:	1580 KB
Download Link:	Download Now

Digital Trends does not sell, resell or license any of the software listed on Digitaltrends.com and its pages. We are not liable for any issues or problems that may arise due to downloading or using these products.

http://downloads.digitaltrends.com

Internet Access Manager 1.2

Internet Access Manager 1.2

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This connection manager includes a scheduler, online statistics monitor, passive connection holder, free-line selector and event responder. Multiple connections can be managed and an FTP server is built in.

Download Information
Version:	1.2
License:	Shareware
Requirements:	Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2k, Windows Me, Windows XP
Limitations:	30 days
Date Added:	September 30, 2004
Downloads:	181
File Size:	705 KB
Download Link:	Download Now

Digital Trends does not sell, resell or license any of the software listed on Digitaltrends.com and its pages. We are not liable for any issues or problems that may arise due to downloading or using these products.

http://downloads.digitaltrends.com/

Testing Clear's WiMax Internet Service

by Nick Mokey

We’ve huddled under awnings on the sidewalk in the rain to tap weak Wi-Fi signals, slipped into hotels as “guests,” and paid big bucks from cell carriers for a wireless modem, all to get our mobile Internet fix. And every option seems to suck in its own way. Whether you’re being hounded by an impatient barista and force fed soft jazz, or waiting 20 seconds for every page to load from a 3G modem, neither comes close to matching the silky-smooth connection and freedom you have at home. Why can’t you just get broadband speeds everywhere?

If you believe the marketing of Clear Wireless, you can. So when the WiMax pioneer rolled into Digital Trends’ home town of Portland, Oregon, plastering up ads on benches, knocking on doors and preaching the greatness of WiMax in radio commercials, we had to put it to the test.

Bar graphs, coverage maps and hypothetical maximum download speeds are great, but we decided to run Clear through the ringer the same way most consumers will: By using it around town. After picking up a new USB WiMax modem from Clear, we tossed a trusty ThinkPad in a backpack and hit the streets… with an AT&T 3G card along for a little competition. Here’s what we found out.

Setup

Before we ventured out on a sunny summer afternoon to hit the streets, grab some grub, and get our wireless surf on, we had to get the Clear modem up and running back at Digital Trends HQ. Fortunately, it’s a simple affair. Pop the CD in, install the drivers, click in the modem and hit “Connect” from the software menu. But you read ¬¬correctly, there’s a CD involved. Unlike our AT&T USBConnect Mercury, which acts as a thumb drive storing its own drivers, the Clear modem needed a physical disc. No big deal the first time around – before it’s lost in a drawer somewhere – but for future installs on new PCs and letting friends borrow it, built-in drivers would have been a major plus to make the modem a truly self-sufficient device.

Size-wise, the Motorola WiMax modem looks about like what you would expect from pictures. It’s basically an oversized thumb drive about as long as your ring finger. Clear includes a Belkin flex USB adapter with it, which makes it easier to fit in cluttered USB ports and adjust for signal. As an added plus, it also alleviates fears of snapping the modem off in your USB drive with one misplaced blow, a cringe-worthy event we always pictured with such a long stick hanging out.

By the Numbers

We’ve pledged to keep the stats to a minimum here, but before seeing what the modem can do, it’s worth investigating what the tech can do on paper. Like all “maximum speed” claims, these are all purely hypothetical, and you could rarely or never expect to actually reach them in real life. But they should reflect on more typical scenarios, in proportion.

A typical broadband cable connection, like one from Comcast here in Portland, might claim to offer download speeds of 15 Mbps and uploads up to 3 Mbps. Clear’s WiMax network is capable of 6 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. The AT&T card, by contrast, can pull 1.7 Mbps down and 1.2 Mbps up.

To put that in perspective, those figures are all in megabits per second, which need to be divided by eights to get the more typical megabytes per second you might be more familiar with. You can also shove the decimal point over three spaces if you want kilobytes per second, which you’re probably used to seeing when you download things.

U.S. Bancorp Tower
Glass and Altitude

Naturally, we began our adventure on Digital Trends’ perch on the 10th floor of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in downtown Portland. Depending how close we got to the window, we pulled a respectable seven to nine out of 10 bars. With this signal, we hit 2.0 Mbps down and 0.6 Mbps up from the Seattle server in SpeakEasy’s Speed Test, which we used as a constant benchmark in this test. That kind of speed was more than enough for everything from casual surfing to streaming 720p video from YouTube. First impression: This thing is fast. Even South Park episodes, which typically tax our connection to the max, streaming fluidly with zero interruption. Though not quite as robust as the 10 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up we got from our landline office connection, the difference between the two was hardly noticeable in most real-life use applications. Unless you’re yanking down movies on BitTorrent, you won’t notice the difference.

But of course, we had to try. And the results blew us away. Though Clear was slow to gather steam on a torrent file, we checked back in about 20 minutes and found it pulling up to 350 kbps on an extremely popular (but legal) file. Downloading high-quality movies from thin air? Believe it. The best we were able to manage with the AT&T modem was about 26 Kbps, and even with full signal, certain stream media formats like South Park’s were unwatchable.

Move away from the window, though, and things change. We started an episode of The Simpsons on a netbook through Hulu, then strolled into the hallway and around the perimeter of the floor with the video still streaming. Adding two walls between us and the outside put a major damper on signal, which dropped as low as zero bars in some spots, also causing the video to sputter when we stayed too long.

At this point, we also noticed that adjusting the antenna could make an enormous difference in signal. In some situations, turning it from vertical to horizontal literally cut the signal in half, from eight bars to four. While it was nice to think we could improve signal with some fiddling when it really got bad, having to think about antenna position also throws a potential kink into ease of use, if you have to do it much.

Parking Garage
Going Underground

Things got interesting when we took the elevator down to the bowels of the building for any wireless ISP’s nightmare test: an underground parking garage. With 42 floors of concrete above and thick slabs on all sides, we were entering a tomb where signals feared to tread. And it showed when we fire up the Clear modem.

Nada. The client searched in vain for minutes and turned up not a thread of signal from above.

But we couldn’t help but notice suit-clad BlackBerry addicts chatting it up on the way to their Benzes. As it turns out, cell phones do work here, and so do 3G modems. We clicked in the AT&T stick for what we expected to be shameful failure, only to turn up one bar that eventually grew to three. It delivered a 0.5 Mbps from SpeakEasy. This isn’t the kind of signal you use you watch movies or stream music, but then again, we’re not the kind of creeps that sit around in parking garages watching YouTube. Gmail opened in a very reasonable amount of time, and the connection provided us just enough bandwidth to do some patient surfing, too.

Where Clear fails, older tech sometimes triumphs.

Car Wash Fountain
Free and Clear

Following the dismal results down below, we headed back up to the surface for some fresh air and pizza beside the so-called Car Wash fountain outside. After degreasing our pepperoni fingers and giving the spray from the fountain a wider berth, we fired up Clear for some post-lunch TV watching.

The signal was, in the words of Clear’s own software, “perfect.” Ten bars. And it screamed. A test on SpeakEasy showed impressive 3.0 Mbps download speeds, and a much more modest 0.5Mbps upload. At this point, it pretty much felt exactly like a hard line, pulling down South Park episodes, Hulu videos, HD content from YouTube and streaming music from Last.fm without breaking a sweat. We would have been content at the fountain side, finishing an episode of The Simpsons in the shade, but in the name of science, we endeavored on.

The MAX
On the Move

…And boarded the MAX. Portland’s light rail system snakes its way through the city and east across the Willamette River, running above ground on the same surface streets as cars. The car and tracks present no challenge for wireless signals, but movement does, so we cracked open the ThinkPad on a train headed north to Portland’s Northeast side, by way of the Steel Bridge. By all indications, Clear has this area saturated in green on its coverage map, but our experience didn’t quite reflect that.

On the way out of downtown, signal seemed to drop from excellent strength outside, to at times as low as one bar when the train began to move. A South Park episode continued to stream without issues for a while, but after a few minutes of flaky signal, the buffer ran out and it began to choke and sputter at times. Not unwatchable, but not perfect, either. The movement itself seemed to be interfering with the signal, since it jumped back up to acceptable levels whenever the train stopped. However, when we got off at a stop only about 10 minutes from where we hopped on, things took a turn for the worse.

North Portland
On the Fringe

The Mississippi/Albina MAX station can’t be called remote by any means – we can practically see it from the office window, and it’s definitely well within Clear’s coverage map. But here, our otherwise stellar Clear signal faded to just one to three bars. A quick SpeakEasy speed test turned up only 0.3 Mbps download speeds and 0.5 Mbps upload speeds, and performance across the Web seemed to reaffirm this. YouTube at standard definition and Last.fm both streamed without stuttering, but higher quality video like 720p content from YouTube and South Park Studios would no longer cut it on our connection. Surfing was also doable, but it lost much of the snappiness we had gotten used to, returning us to speeds that seemed more like a conventional 3G modem. Still it’s worth noting that even with a minimal signal, Clear returned results close to a 3G modem with good signal.

Captain Ankeny’s Bar
Wrapping Up

After wallowing in the crummy coverage out in North Portland for long enough, we hopped a train back to the nexus of Clear connectivity and grabbed a beer at Captain Ankeny’s in downtown Portland. About ten feet away from the window, the modem managed to snag seven bars – enough to comfortably finish the episode of South Park we started on the MAX, without any buffering issues. SpeakEasy delivered about the results we expected from the signal: 1.2 Mbps down and 0.5 Mbps up. One libation later, we hiked back to work to parse some results.

Results and Conclusion

When it comes to maximum download speeds, Clear blows conventional 3G Internet service out of the water. The 3.0 Mbps benchmark speeds and 350 Kbps we managed to pull with torrent files in areas of excellent signal trump anything you can do with a piddly 3G card.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story, either. WiMax signals also fade much more quickly with walls, concrete and other obstructions. The extra speed helps compensate for this, as we noticed when even poor signal delivered 3G-like speed, but in the worst of circumstances, old-school 3G modems will carry a signal when WiMax will not.

Want to connect anywhere and crawl? A 3G modem is still your best bet.

Want to connect most places and fly? Clear makes a lot of sense.

Given that Clear offers both mobile and home Internet service, the real value in the service might be getting both and converging two bills into one. A well-placed Clear router in the home will provide speeds most casual Web surfers would be thrilled with, and the USB modem will do the same (less reliably) on the go – without paying two bills. At the moment, you can get home and mobile service for one $45 a month bill. By contrast, AT&T charges $60 a month for a limited 5GB DataConnect plan – and you’re still going to have to get home Internet somewhere else. We’re obviously neglecting the very limited size of the Clear network right now, but for folks who want to connect around their own towns, and not in the middle of Iowa, Clear makes a very economical solution, and we can only expect service and coverage to get better as the company grows.

http://news.digitaltrends.com

Option Launches USB Modem on Cincinnati Bell

We're seeing more and more USB data modems available for wireless carriers in smaller markets. Now business users on Cincinnati Bell have a new option for mobile broadband with Option's new iCON 452 HSPA+ USB modem.

The iCON 452 features a retractable USB connector, as well as a nifty built-in microSD card slot to let the unit double up as a USB storage device--and also enable easy file transfers between a cell phone and a laptop PC. The unit uses Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) Spectrum and hooks into Cincinnati Bell's 3G data network. It works with both PC and Mac operating systems.

The iCON 452 3G USB modem is currently available in Cincinnati Bell's 3G wireless market, which covers the Cincinnati and Dayton metropolitan areas, the company said in a statement. Option has been around since 1986, and already has a lineup of USB modems and data cards for other carriers as well, including several branded for AT&T.

http://blogs.pcmag.com

How-To Roundup: Modem Tethering

Wireless carriers are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they want to sell you shiny new broadband PC card and ExpressCard upgrades for your laptop, and charge you $59 per month or more for the privilege of using them. On the other hand, they also want to sell you smartphones with expensive data plans—which in turn negate the need for the broadband cards.

Surely they don't expect you to pay twice for two different data pipes when you only need one? Fortunately, they don't. In most cases, you can use your current smartphone as a broadband modem for your laptop. It will likely cost more than you're currently paying, but still less than the exorbitant cost of broadband access plans.

There are many benefits to tethering your modem to your laptop. You no longer have to hunt around for free WiFi hotspots (which may or may not work) or paid hotspots (which cost too much and require separate accounts with multiple providers). You also don't have to worry about WiFi security. Since your line is private and tied to your carrier, no one can sniff your data or read your passwords. In fact, while tethering your smartphone, you can turn your laptop's hardware WiFi radio switch off.

"Sounds great," you say. "But isn't it tough to set up?" Granted, it's not a cakewalk. But the process is something anyone with a spare hour and the right instructions can accomplish. That's where we come in. Here at Smart Device Central, we've produced five how-to articles, broken down by carrier and laptop OS, to show exactly what you need to know.

Back when we first conceived of this series of articles, I wrote two columns offering my own thoughts and opinions on the process (see "Modem Madness" and "Modem Tethering Wrap-Up: Clumsy but Workable"), plus another in late 2008. Since that time several months ago, a few new handsets have been released, but the general principals remain intact. With that, here's what you need to get started:

Use your AT&T Phone as a Modem: If you find yourself caught between hotspots, or don't feel like paying for access, here's how to tether your AT&T smartphone to your laptop PC as a modem. (Updated w/late 2008 edition)

Use Your Verizon Phone As a Modem: Fly solo at EV-DO speeds with your laptop, without having to locate or pay for a WiFi hotspot. (Updated w/late 2008 edition)

Use Your T-Mobile Phone as a Modem: Connect your laptop to your smartphone to get the most out of your unlimited data plan. (Updated w/late 2008 edition)

Use Your Sprint Phone as a Modem: Here's how to take advantage of Sprint's ultra-fast data network when using your laptop PC on the go. (Updated w/late 2008 edition)

Tether Your Smartphone To Your Mac: Got an Apple MacBook, MacBook Pro, or older Macintosh laptop? Here's how to surf the Internet using your smartphone as a modem.

http://www.smartdevicecentral.com

Login / Register How to Design a Soft Modem Using a Digital Signal Controller from Freescale

This article presents the hardware and software design of a low-cost V.21/V.22/V.22bis soft modem. The article doesn't include a traditional telecommunications Pulse Code Modulation Coder/Decoder (PCM codec). An optional serial port with AT command set is included as a test fixture. Modem performance figures measured on the implementation are included for reference.

A soft modem is one that can be used to modulate/demodulate data to be sent serially over an analog channel directly, without the need for a serial data path to another entity to supply data or control signals. It includes a simple way to dial phone numbers, detect ringing signals, control the hook relay of the DAA, input and output analog data, connect with remote modems and communicate with them.

Low-Cost Soft Modem System

This project shows the simplicity of such a design, how few resources of the processor it takes, and how well it performs on USA average lines. This design omits the standard telecommunications codec, instead using a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for output and Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) for input. Since both of these peripherals are readily available from the many peripherals on one 56F8300 series device, along with more processing power than required from the single core, the design is a true one-chip, one-core system that includes telecommunications ability with room for even more system functionality.

Modem Analog Block Design

Online commands supported are:

•ato, which returns to online data state

•ath, which hangs up the phone

•atz, which hangs up the phone and performs a soft reset of the modem

•+++ escape sequence, with three second pre- and post-guard times

Offline commands supported are:

•ata causes the modem to go offhook and answer
It is not necessary to use this command, since the test fixture will automatically answer two seconds after the first ring•atd sets the number to dial string
When this string is set to the nonempty condition, the soft modem dials that number in the string and attempts a connection. (A production program interfacing to the soft modem would simply set this string to effect a dialed connection from the soft modem.)

•ati issues the modem test fixture model and version number

•atq1 puts the AT command set into quiet mode, where it operates without responding

•atq0 undoes the atq1 command

•atz performs a soft reset of the soft modem, which hangs up the phone and frees RAM resources

•at+0 puts the modem into V.21 mode, where it will attempt to force all subsequent connections; a modem soft reset is also performed

•at+2 puts the modem into V.22/V.22bis mode, where the modem will attempt to force all subsequent connections; a modem soft reset is also performed

Modem Test Set-up

A standard off-the-shelf Freescale 56F8357EVM was used for this project. The Low-Cost Freescale Modem Demonstration Kit comes with a 56F8367EVM and a Low-Cost Modem Daughter Card (LCMDC) in one box. The EVM has a connector for this daughter card. The LCMDC was developed to house the Data Access Arrangement (DAA) as well as conditioning circuits for the single PWM signal from the EVM mother board.

To assemble the modem, snap the daughter card into the connector after making the following revisions to the EVM:

•To wire ring signal for detection by the controller, connect these two signals:

• PWMA 1 (Pin 2, J7) source is ring indicator from the daughter card—Quadrature Decoder 0, PHASEA0 (Pin 1, J15) destination

•To wire flow control of data from serial test device to the controller, connect these two signals and a capacitor:

• SCI 1 TXD1 (Pin 1, J14) source
• RTS (Pin 1, J11) destination
• One end of a 39pF cap to RTS, the other end to ground

•Clip pins 3, 4, 5, 6 of J8 to provide clearance for the DAA high voltage section of the daughter card

The first connection connects the ring signal from the DAA to a counter, enabling ring detection functionality. The second connection connects a GPIO for flow control. To avoid noise-induced glitches on the flow control signal, a small capacitor (39pF) should connect the RTS signal to ground.The Low-Cost Freescale Modem Demonstration Kit, available for evaluation upon reservation, contains an EVM factory modified as specified previously. The kit also includes documentation, as well as the LCMDC and required cables.

The modem is fully capable of error-free operation over average telephone lines in the USA. Limitations to performance are inherent in the limited dynamic range of the AGC. If desired, such limitation may be overcome by the addition of a hardware AGC circuit, since the amplitude variation of a land line telephone circuit over time is not dramatic.

Code Example. Routine File Transfer Testing

/ad,s03=1,s07=1,c3/
/exch,bal=1/
/file:cseq=usa1/
/io,i-100,l-230,r-100,t-230/
/ad,i3/
/gd,w17,x00,y16,z00/
/rn,l320,s1/
/nl,q520,c500,m0,x1,y1/
/fs,f+1250,m0,s1/
/pj,l0364,f1200,w0,s1/

Read the Italian version: Come progettare un Soft Modem utilizzando un controller di segnali digitali Freescale

Source: A Low-Cost Soft Modem using the Freescale Digital Signal Controller

CONTACT REQUEST
If you want to know more about this Freescale product, please submit your request to Arrow Italy using this form.

NOTE: this form is valid ONLY for Companies or Customers based in Italy and working in the Italian area.

http://dev.emcelettronica.com

COM MODEM DB-9 RJ-45 RJ-11 R-12 Connector Pin Assignment Diagram and Table for Precidia Product.

The following article contains detail information about COM, MODEM, DB-9, RJ-45, RJ-11, and R-12 Connector Pin Assignment Diagram and Table. Herein you will find detail schematic diagram for the mentioned connector pin, pin assignment table and the applicable ports to find the pin assignments for a particular Precidia product.

Included in this article COM and MODEM Port Pin Assignments (DB-9), 202T Port Pin Assignments (RJ-45), ETHERNET Port Pin Assignments (RJ-45), TEL and DIAL Port Pin Assignments (RJ-11), RS422 Port Pin Assignments (RJ-45, full duplex), RS485 Port Pin Assignments (RJ-12, half duplex).

Find more info about Connector Pin Assignment Diagram and Table here.

http://www.wiringdiagrams21.com