[plug] PCI modems - as a cheap option for CA users?

[Anthony J. Breeds-Taurima]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Daniel wrote:

> I see pci modems advertised at from $25 to $45.  I guess they may be lucient 
> chip set that can be made to work with linux. The negative of this would be 
> the load on the cpu.  While it is easy to hypothesize 'imagine how slow it 
> would be running x and in a browser on the net using a modem that puts a load 
> on the cpu'.  Indeed this is what was said by a few knowledgeable pluggers 
> the other day, but I forgot to put it in perspective - the proposed users 
> will have a slow dialup connection and have to compare that with not having a 
> net connection at all [unless of course it runs so slow you might as well not 
> be connected ....].

It's not a question of speed.  Consider:

User boots machine
User connects to net
User starts X

It is possible that starting X will  (on slower mahines with limited RAM)
cause lots of disk IO.  It is also possible that said IO will disbale
interupts.  While interupts are disabled, the modem can't operate,
Data will be comming in and will eventually fall off the end of the buffer.
This may be ignorable, ppp is _fairly_ robust.  It may be cause disconnects.

It may never be a problem
 
> I would like to test the machines CA uses with one of these pci modems just 
> so we can compare it directly with an external modem.

testing would be good.


Yours Tony

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