> Just recently there was a posting here that said they got better
    > connection speed in Win95 than in Linux. A couple of days ago I heard
    > another Linux say the same thing. And so far, on a hamm box, I can only
    > get 19200 out of my 28800 pc card modem. Is this typical of Linux, or is
    > it just an improper init string or etc?

     Try "man setserial". It looks like your serial port is not getting
    configured properly. I think serial ports in Linux default to pretty
    conservative values. Try setting the rate to at least 38400. I'll bet that
    this is the main source of the problem.

     After that, start looking at init strings for the modem and such. The
    factory default settings ought to be okay, but there may be some things
    you can play with.

     Finally, there are a few options for pppd that can result in improved
    performance. Make sure that your asynchmap is 0 if at all possible. See if
    Van Jacobsen header compression is allowed. (The man page explains this
    stuff...)