As Gravis said in his video you will only have a 33.6k connection, and there is no ISP>subscriber compression so it will run slow.

Its great to set up and see it working but if you want a genuinely useful 56k dial up setup at home then you will need a lot more than an ATA.
Sorry, not what you want to hear but I dont think you will get what you want to get on the setup you have.

What are you experiencing sounds right for how it was back in the mid to late 90s. People just didn't have any other option for remote multi player so everyone put up with it. If you had the money you could upgrade to an ISDN line, but that was out of reach for most people.

Having a LAN party or just doing a direct serial null modem connection was always a better experience.

It is interesting to hear you have having these issues with your setup. I guess more blame goes to the game developers not optimizing and less to AT&T's network.

Heh. Doom over modem. Remember that well. We were so excited about online play, the lag meant nothing.

The Duke 3D issue does not sound normal. I used to play Duke 3D against friends over dial-up all the time.

Age of Empires had a ton of R&D spend on it to play well over modem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/150 … ires-and-beyond

Dan9550 wrote on 2024-12-07, 07:54:

The modems are connected to each other through a Cisco ATA (SPA112) with a dial plan setup so the two lines can call each other.
...wondering if there is some tweaking that can be done modem side to improve things or is the ADC - DAC being done by the ATA taking more out of the connection than it seems.

I recently went through a similar exercise and came to the conclusion that the Cisco ATA , while one of the lesser-expensive options, was not a good solution for locally connecting two modems.

I'd started with an older Linksys SPA2102 and, despite using a proper, modem-supporting configuration, was being met with ~100ms decode latency on the ATA device itself. This would consequently result in "poor" connections for anything beyond ~12000bps. Thinking it might just be some limitation of the older SPA2102, I also bought and tried a current-model Cisco ATA192 and was met with the same decode latency. I'm not sure how other ATAs might fare, but I think it can be reasonably stated that you'll never get ideal modem connections or speeds going through a Linksys/Cisco ATA.

Since it sounds like the intent is to use actual modems, there are at least two other options to consider. The first would be to see if you can just directly connect the two modems together. Some external modems, such as those from Supra/Diamond, support this type of use. There's no dial tone, of course, but in your particular scenario, you'd just initiate a blind dial from one side and manually answer at the other. A second, and arguably more-authentic option, would be to use a telephone line simulator device, which is eventually what I'd settled on.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2024-12-07, 18:53:

would be to use a telephone line simulator device, which is eventually what I'd settled on.

What telephone line simulator do you currently use?

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-07, 19:20:

Cloudschatze wrote on 2024-12-07, 18:53:

would be to use a telephone line simulator device, which is eventually what I'd settled on.

What telephone line simulator do you currently use?

The ridiculously overkill Virtual Console PSTN Simulator.

I figured the ATA would be causing some issues since there is still a bit of processing that will be happening under the hood analogue to VoIP and back to analogue. I'll try a blind dial and see how that goes, when using the ATA you can hear at times the negotiation struggling i also have another real modem on the way so i can see if that help versus the USB modem.

Another option that could be a bit of fun to play around with is using a Cisco router with an FXS card from what i've seen elsewhere online they are more suitable for this than ATAs.

Line simulators would be an option except they are just non existent in my part of the world not sure if it's a matter of they were never sold here or they are just rare and hard to come by. Ideally I'd like to have working phones with the modems for the whole package so to speak.

Two 9V batteries in series work fine for connecting modems.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2024-12-07, 18:53:

I'd started with an older Linksys SPA2102 and, despite using a proper, modem-supporting configuration, was being met with ~100ms decode latency on the ATA device itself. This would consequently result in "poor" connections for anything beyond ~12000bps. Thinking it might just be some limitation of the older SPA2102, I also bought and tried a current-model Cisco ATA192 and was met with the same decode latency. I'm not sure how other ATAs might fare, but I think it can be reasonably stated that you'll never get ideal modem connections or speeds going through a Linksys/Cisco ATA.

That kind of sucks, I've also got the hardware waiting be set up and thought it would be a fun and different way for networking so to speak.
But I guess you can say the added latency is emulating the poor quality of phone lines back in the 90's. 😉

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-12-07, 17:54:

Age of Empires had a ton of R&D spend on it to play well over modem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/150 … ires-and-beyond

Perhaps they did spend alot of time. But the techniques they are talking about weren't discovered by them. They were already known.

I've worked on a game, originally released the same month, the same year, by people a whole ocean away, called Seven Kingdoms. I worked on the game more than a decade later, fixing the bugs to smooth out the multiplayer. But at the core of the game of Seven Kingdoms when I got it, had pretty much everything Age of Empires has. Which makes the game very scalable on low modem speeds, and have many units in play at once.

For comparison, the devs list of requirements on Age of Empires, what does Seven Kingdoms have?

Sweeping epic historical battles with a great variety of units
* It has a different kind of flavor, but yes, it has quite a number of possible units.

Support for 8 players in multiplayer
* Limited to 7 player for aesthetic reasons

Insure a smooth simulation over LAN, modem-to-modem, and the Internet
* In the open source life, yes, now does, after fixing bugs

Support a target platform of: 16MB Pentium 90 with a 28.8 modem
* Identical to Seven Kingdoms

The communications system had to work with existing (Genie) engine
* I guess this is the game engine? Seven Kingdoms was grafted on a game engine too, from the game Capitalism. I guess they are saying they didn't want to write a total game engine from scratch, but making it multiplayer ready was the challenge.

Target consistent frame rate of 15fps on the minimum machine config
* Oh now they are just making it easy. Certainly possible. Though in Seven Kingdoms we support higher framerates. 15fps in Seven Kingdoms is speed '5' which is medium speed.

So going back about the "bugs". These weren't design flaws. Nor were they multiplayer coding flaws. The multiplayer code that I worked on is fine, and essentially the same as it was in '97 (swapped out DPlay for Enet, but the UDP/IP and packet writing is identical). The bugs were just plain everyday bugs, that manifested themselves in multiplayer in a more obvious way. Sure software testing would have caught them, and given time to cook, they could have addressed these problems.

Trevor told me the most difficult part of development was in getting the multiplayer code done. But not bad of a programming team of Trevor, two others, Alex and Gilbert, and now me fixed the remaining bugs. So do you need a large team? No... but lots of testing, yes. They had the complete infrastructure as well to debug issues just like the article said. I just leveraged it and finished the job. And unfortunately, post-release support wasn't great in a small company. But the design is solid. Good job Trevor, you pulled off what the big teams did.

Funny, I know someone as well from Ensemble, who worked on Age of Empires too...

If you don't need VoIP and are just looking for reliable local connections, an old PBX can do a good job and can be found for much cheaper than a telephone line simulator. Just need one that supports regular analog phones without any extra hardware. I use a Panasonic KX-TD1232 but there are certainly smaller options out there.

Sorry for the OT...

This reminds me of playing Half-Life Deathmatch (HLDM) for hours over 56k and been called a cheater because I was relatively good with my 200-300 ping...or downloading 700 MiB AVI ripped movies in one week while being online half the time blocking the telephone line (and nothing but the download did actually work, no website loading or chatting)...or being at a friend 100 meters up the street on a four man LAN additionally sharing one 56k line for internet connection...great days back then in 2000/2001 with that AOL modem/ISDN flatrate.

kind regards
soggi

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-09, 02:18:

Cloudschatze wrote on 2024-12-07, 18:53:

I'd started with an older Linksys SPA2102 and, despite using a proper, modem-supporting configuration, was being met with ~100ms decode latency on the ATA device itself. This would consequently result in "poor" connections for anything beyond ~12000bps. Thinking it might just be some limitation of the older SPA2102, I also bought and tried a current-model Cisco ATA192 and was met with the same decode latency. I'm not sure how other ATAs might fare, but I think it can be reasonably stated that you'll never get ideal modem connections or speeds going through a Linksys/Cisco ATA.

That kind of sucks, I've also got the hardware waiting be set up and thought it would be a fun and different way for networking so to speak.
But I guess you can say the added latency is emulating the poor quality of phone lines back in the 90's. 😉

It works well enough to give people an idea of what it was like.
I remember when I set mine up many years ago, it was a blast from the past to see a Windows 98 PC dial up again.

You have to remember a lot of the people who use this site didnt experience it first time around.

It's been about 30 years since I thought about this, but can't the modems connect directly to each other?

nfraser01 wrote on 2024-12-09, 12:55:

It's been about 30 years since I thought about this, but can't the modems connect directly to each other?

Some can but not all, and just because it says it can on the documentation it doesnt mean it will.

Why not just use a null modem cable?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-12-09, 13:06:

nfraser01 wrote on 2024-12-09, 12:55:

It's been about 30 years since I thought about this, but can't the modems connect directly to each other?

Some can but not all, and just because it says it can on the documentation it doesnt mean it will.

It's mostly just a matter of whether either of the modems-in-question require line voltage to power any part of their circuitry. For those that do, the 9V battery method that rasz_pl mentioned can be used.

ElectroSoldier wrote:

Why not just use a null modem cable?

Personally speaking, it's all about the feels. I use any and all of the following in various situations:

Null-modem cables, Bluetooth RS-232 adapters, WiModem232 devices, and, perhaps best of all, the "PiModem."

But none really hits the same as just a cool analog modem...

(Prior, direct-connect setup)

(Target side of the current, line-simulator setup)

Had a look online an PBXes and wow does that make your head want to explode, a bit of specific knowledge required to wrap your head around those. Plus if i dive into a PBX i don't really know if inside its working just like the ATA or not I'd be assuming otherwise.

I will try a little more playing around with the ATA and blind dialling since there is a dialling prefix (*99) that should tell the ATA you want modem pass through, it's worth a shot. Looking at my ATA configuration i also had G711.u set instead of G711.a which may make a difference.

Speaking of telephone networks this video dropped today and is relevant to this discussion to a degree even if the recommendation for messing around at home is a line simulator. Which is non-existent where i am.

Cathode Ray Dude - Here's All My Phone Stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEEddujTlog