Windows® 98 Unleashed

Modem-to-Modem Communications

Modem communications is one of those ideas that, after you learn a bit of background, you wonder how on earth your system actually pulls it off. I mean, you're talking about tens of thousands of bits per second busily bustling between two computers, all the while negotiating compression routines, FIFO buffers, parallel-to-serial UART conversions, modulations, and who knows what else. To combine all of these complex technologies and achieve a remarkably high level of accuracy is an amazing achievement. To help you appreciate some of the hoops your computer, serial port, and modem have to jump through to accomplish this wizardry, this section takes a closer look at just how two modems communicate with each other.