Design

The design of the Olitec USB ADSL V92 Ready modem is quite pleasant. The device is relatively compact with a nice black outfit. Pretty round, the device is definitely light so you can carry it wherever you go easily. The upper side of the modem reveals six LEDs that permanently indicate the exact status of the modem.  As stated before the modem features an On/Off switch so you can shut it down whenever there’s a problem with the connection or the computer to immediately stop the connection: this is a good point to master the modem and the connection which competing USB ADSL modems generally don’t offer. When you turn on the modem a green LED is lighted indicating the modem is ready. Once you start your computer a second green LED is lit to indicate the modem has correctly established a connection with the USB controller of your computer. There are two red LEDs: when you’re connected to your ADSL ISP: the ‘ADSL’ LED becomes red. If you use the analogue modem the ‘Modem’ LED lights up in red. Finally when using the analog V90/V92 modem two ‘TD’ & ‘RD’ LEDs will blink so you can monitor the activity status of the modem (TD stands for Transmitting Data and RD for Receiving Data).

ADSL

    ADSL has quickly emerged as a de facto standard for households and small business high speed Internet connections. Why? Because it doesn’t require any particular installation and offers a bandwidth that is up to 30 times faster than what you can achieve with a conventional analogue modem (or even ISDN modem). The main advantage of the ADSL is the fact it uses existing copper lines eliminating the need to lay costly cables. So if you have a phone line you can subscribe to ADSL! ADSL is in fact the most common declension of DSL and can offer speeds up to 8MB downstream and 1MB upstream. To reach such high speeds DSL employs digital coding techniques to squeeze up to 99% more capacity out of a phone line without interfering with regular phone services. The result is quite obvious: you can send and receive faxes, chat on the phone while surfing the web simultaneously on the same line and stay connected to the Net all day long (if you wish). The DSL also offers a major technical advance over cable modems: with a cable line the bandwidth is shared between the neighborhood resulting in dramatic speed variations while more users get online but with ADSL you get a constant bandwidth that doesn’t vary (whether in upload or download). However there are actually a few requirements to be allowed to subscribe to ADSL services: your phone company should be ADSL ready (which isn’t the case in small towns or countries) and you shouldn’t be located too far from the company you depend on.  

V92 

V90 should have been the ultimate evolution of analogue modems’ protocol. Well, manufacturers have changed their mind and designed V92 as a new evolution of the V90 protocol. However you won’t get any speed increase using a V92 modem with a V92 ISP. The advantages of V92 are somewhere else, located on the convenience side. With V92 you get faster connecting times to your ISP: connecting to your ISP was usually long and quite tiresome now QuickConnect will reduce your dial-up connection time up to 50%! It does so by remembering the conditions of the line in previous sessions so it skips some training tests. With V90 once you’re connected on the Internet your phone line is busy and nobody can contact you which is quite boring especially in case of emergency.  

Now with V92 if you receive a phone call your online session will be suspended so you can answer your correspondent and when you’re done chatting, online activities can be resumed without redialing (this service requires subscription to the Call Waiting service of your phone company). Finally the latest improvement of V92 is called V.PCM: V90 lets you download at 56Kbps but upload is limited to 36Kbps only. With V.PCM the upload speed can reach 48Kbps which is an appreciable speed increase especially for gamers. This gain of upload speed is done by balancing the download and upload rates of your current connection using V.PCM. To enjoy the benefits of V92 connections your ISP should support the V92 norm. Actually Olitec USB ADSL V92 Ready modem isn’t compatible with V92. When the standard will be finalized and ready a free update will be available on Olitec’s website so you can upgrade your modem for free.