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The latest version 5.7 of Mac ARA Modem Magic is now available. Mac ARA modem Magic is nothing if not a controversial software product. About 70 percent of Internet users still access the Internet via 56k dial-up as opposed to Cable or DSL, This suite of third-party modem scripts for various Mac-compatible modems, now numbering over 300 with the Modem Magic 5.7 release, promises faster and more reliable dial-up Internet connections. Some users and reviewers enthusiastically praised them. However skeptics have also suggested that they are the cyber-equivalent of snake oil remedies.
Personally, I’ve been using Mac ARA Modem Magic modem scripts for about three years, in both the Classic Mac OS and OS X, and have found that the improvement in performance with them compared to the stock modem scripts that come bundled with the Mac OS varies with different modems. The most dramatic improvement was with the Global Village Platinum 33k external modem I use with my Umax S.-900 tower. On that rig, connection speeds and download performance using some of the Modem Magic scripts is noticeably livelier.
On my workhorse 233 MHz and 500 MHz PowerBooks, I’ve noticed less speed improvement, but the Modem Magic scripts do seem to hold onto connections more tenaciously, and dropped connections have been extremely rare since I started using them. I’ve been very pleased, however, with the performance of the Mac ARA Modem Magic scripts in OS X on the software modem in my 700 MHz iBook. Dialups are faster, and connections are very reliable with a number of the scripts, such as the iBook Internal v90, the Apple Laptop Internal Modem, and the Apple Internal 56k Modem (V.92), among others. There are over 300 scripts in the package, and I haven't tried them all by any means,
I should explain here, redundantly for regular readers, that I am on a rural dial-up connection, with some 50 miles of phone lines between me and my ISP, the first 12 miles of which are indifferently maintained ancient copper wire. Given the dodgy infrastructure, I guess I should be thankful that I get reasonably dependable service, but it is slow. The stock modem scripts give a connection speed in the Remote Access Control Panel on most days of 26400, and sometimes 24000. Occasionally, the old 28.8k U.S. Robotics Sportster modem on my wife’s even more ancient 68030 LC 520 will show a 28800 connection, but that’s it. I’ve never seen any of the other modems connect at more than 26400 using stock Apple modem scripts.
However, in the Remote Access dialog in OS 9, the Mac ARA Modem Magic scripts routinely show much higher connection speeds, frequently 49,333 or higher. And therein lies the controversy.
Some critics have suggested that Modem Magic does not do what is claimed, and have come close to accusing the product’s developer of fraud.
Mac ARA Modem Magic author Tracy Turner tells me that the 57600 and 115200 [speeds showing in Remote Access] are both PORT SPEEDs. The actual line connections are of course slower. However, opening a port to these two speeds is much faster than having the port set at 38400 with old V.34+ modem drivers.
“We get people arguing all day about Port Speed, Modem to Modem speed, 7 bits, 8 bits, etc.,” says Tracy. “What I feel is important is that logins are usually fast, downloads are fast, and the connections seem to stay stable. We did thousands of hours of tests before our first sale.”
“For a person with an iMac Modem connecting at 49333 with stability there is no point in using my product. A person with a 56K capable phone line having 26400 connections and dropped connections with a Teleport 56 X2 Flashed to V.90 -- this is where we really excel. Our drivers will connect that person at 50666 bps initial connect rate, keep them online without drops as long as they like.
“Probably the biggest weakness in our product is a weakness in the Mac vendor world in general:
“Due to the many competing ISP’s, modem brands, firmware versions, different flavors of ‘Apple GV Internal’ modems, a person may need to try our drivers one by one until they achieve compatibility between their modem and driver and their ISP. Everyone has sort of set their own personal standards of what they think V.90 code is.
“There are not good standards of V.90 even now. One ISP will allow a “115200” connection with analog, but the next will not. We designed our drivers to connect fast in many different situations, yet also kept them simple.
“This is the default speed in a Global Village Modem, but some ISP’s will have a login error until this is out of a 56K Mac Driver. Another ISP will have 50667 as a V.90 speed, while the modems firmware and driver will have 50666 as the rate. In this instance the connection negotiates to slower speeds like 48000. With our drivers the connection goes through at 50667 or 50666.
“The strength is, once done, the modem is usually much faster and very dependable.
“Our modem drivers do not turn 28800 phone lines into 56k lines. In many cases (about 20% nationwide) the end user needs to be taken off of pair gain and put on regular copper pair. PacBell did this on our lines. It took 6 requests prior to getting one of our lines repaired for 56K....
“The one thing that always escapes people is this: you can only do one (1) analog/digital conversion between your modem and the phone company ‘slick’ or end office and keep 56K speeds. Two or more, and the ‘corners’ of the square ‘waves’ slow down to 33600.
56K Modems take digital data in your Mac and turn it into analog carrier waves travelling at (realistically) a 53333 bps or 54666 bps speed. Some people get these speeds regularly, but by no means a majority. Apple’s modems are more likely to do 49333 bps with a good phone line. Zoom and USR V.90, and a few brands (Zoom, Hayes, Supra) 56K Modems can go 50666-52000 bps or faster regularly on good copper pair phone lines.
“Getting back to a/d conversion... Between your modem and the phone company end office, you can get away with one a/d converter and maintain the 48000-54666 speed with a 56k modem. At about 10,000-12,000 feet maximum, a second a/d converter or ‘repeater’ type device will be encountered. This device is necessary to ‘strengthen’ and ‘clean-up’ weakened, deteriorated signals. The copper itself absorbs the signal over distance; also the leading edge of the waves tends to be overtaken by the trailing edge. Signal boosters and filters are used, but too many of them creates overhead and slows things down (like the 30-mile rural connection you described). Once the signal goes through a second device, the speed at the corner of the “square” signal slows to 33600 bps. From that point on there is a bottleneck.
“According to Fitzgerald and Dennis, page 95, edition 7 of Business Data Communications and Networking, about 80% (mostly urban, newer phone lines) of North America can achieve 56K speed, 20% (mostly rural, older phone lines) cannot achieve true 56k. Last but not least is pair-gain. Even the phone company repairman who got rid of pair-gain on my line 2 said he barely understood how it worked after reading up on it. It tends to slow 56K modems into reported speeds of 24000-26400 bps, but in real-world practice it slows actual usage to a crawl. I cannot accuse the phone companies of using pair-gain to encourage people to move from 56K to DSL, but it is a fact that if you call to get pair-gain switched to copper-pair (an easy and relatively cheap task) they will offer DSL (relatively expensive, involves about 5-6 times as many “trouble-tickets” or calls to tech support as dial-up or cable modem. Of course, DSL is not available everywhere either.
“Before we put each driver in our product, we logged in repeatedly with each given modem (48000 or above) and downloaded Mac OS 8.6 update, a 36mb file. The driver had to download the file to completion at a fast rate or we did not put it in our product. For every driver in our product, there are a dozen that failed to meet our standards....
“In plain English, consider the names assigned to our modem drivers a guide rather than a static certainty. Some of the drivers report a connect rate of 57600 or 115200 with some brands of modems. The acid test of connection rates is timing downloads of large files, graphics, software downloads, etc. Average throughput on http://mac56ktest.com should be 40-50k, if not you may have pair-gain.
“If you have a long history of connections under 33600, including with our product, you probably have pair-gain, or multiple analog-digital converters. These issues can only be remedied by telephone company linemen (or line-women). Although telephone companies sometimes show reluctance to deal with this, our personal experience was that when we offered to pay for a line-man’s (or line-woman’s) time to move a phone line to copper-pair configuration, the phone company responded by doing the work at no charge. For us, this made for 53333 bps maximum, compared to pair-gains 28800 maximum in our case....
“Mac aRa Modem Magic 5.7 cannot make overloaded Servers, PoPs, Ports nor your ISP’s Modems go faster. Some Internet Service Providers suffer Net Congestion* or have too many unresolved Technical Issues. Before you decide your ISP is at fault, see if they have other Points of Presence (PoPs) in your Local Calling Area. PoPs change performance frequently due to customer migration, hardware, software and network practices.”
These seem to me to be reasonable and not extravagant claims, and the description is consistent with what I have experienced with this product.
Another point addressed:
“... regardless of the connect rate in remote access, our drivers will download files or bring up bandwidth test pages faster than other modem drivers. In several independent tests, there were up to 3 times as fast of downloads with our drivers.”
I can’t say that I’ve gotten anything close to 3x faster downloads, but using Modem Magic scripts in place of the stock ones does appear to speed things up a bit.
The Mac ARA Modem Magic 5.7 package includes installers for both the Classic OS and OS X. Use the OS X installer for 10.0.4 or higher (up to Jaguar and Panther, 10.2.x, 10.3, etc.). All the modem drivers are OS X compatible. Early versions of OS X required you to login as root, run the installer, then log out of root. Versions from 10.1.5 or later should work fine with you logged in as admin. I just double-clicked the OS X installer in OS 10.2.6, and it did its stuff slickly and quickly.
OS 9.2.2 or older looks for the Modem Scripts in the Modem Scripts Folder in Extensions. OS X looks for the Modem Scripts in the Modem Scripts Folder in Library, on the Hard Drive. You can also physically copy or drag the drivers from the 9.1 System Folder more information, visit: Extensions/Modem Scripts Folder into Hard Drive/Library/Modem Scripts.
After installation finishes, go to the Apple Menu, Control Panels, Modem Control Panel after installation. Select a new modem definition or modem script in the Modem Control Panel.
In the Classic Mac OS the Mac Modem Magic installer replaces the Modem Scripts Folder in your System Extensions Folder with a new one containing over 300 different high-speed modem scripts. The old Modem Scripts Folder is saved as Modem Scripts Disabled.
In OS X, go to the Modem pane of the Network Preferences panel and use the pull-down menu to select from the list of modem scripts.
Existing Modem Scripts are not thrown away, you will find them in “Extensions Disabled” in the Classic OS, in Folders renamed “Modem Scripts (old).1” etc.
Since some of the Mac aRa Modem Magic 5.5 scripts are available as a free demo, and they are a relatively small download, if you think they may offer some improvement in your dial-up performance, there is no reason not to give them a try.
Mac aRa Modem Magic offers a free demo and a free Modem Speed Test, so there is little reason not to experiment. The test page to test download speed is at http://mac56ktest.com
Mac aRa Modem Magic was first conceived of and development started in 1997, due to the Tracy Turner tearing his hair out over dropped connections and stalled, broken downloads. Not all people have connection troubles. Then again, many Mac 56k or ISDN users do get dropped connections or slow, stalled downloads.
Initially, modem init strings and modem drivers were experimented with for 2-3 Modems. After success with both increasing download speeds and stability, numerous Mac friends and acquaintances asked for help with their Modems. The demand for help via the Internet led to both a Tech Support help site and Mac aRa Modem Magic 1.x through 5.x.
“We are a big fans of the Mac,” says Tracy There are currently about 15 New and Older Macs that we use for testing purposes here..... We have done our personal best to address the dropped connections/slow downloads issues with the Mac OS.”
Features and claims:
� Optimizes any type of Apple Macintosh dial-up Modems of any speed.
� Users Typically Realize an Extraordinary Improvement in Internet Connection Speed
� Virtually Eliminates Dropped Connections (Involuntary Modem Hang-Up
� Keeps on Working even if you Upgrade your Operating System or Change Modems.
� Backwards Compatible from 68K System 7.5.3 to current Panther 10.3 (Mac OS X)
� For users of the poorest 20% of rural telephone lines, generally provides a tremendous improvement in stability and a modest speed improvement.
� For users of the 80% of telephone lines in urban/metropolitan areas, generally provides a vast speed improvement and rock-solid stability.
� Download more web pages, software, MP3’s in less time. Avoid wasting time waiting for stalled web pages and downloads.
System requirements:
Mac aRa Modem Magic 5.5TM easily supports these common V.90 or V.92 Modems:
All “Apple GV Internal 56k” Modems (Beige G3 Internal Modems, Blue and White Tower Modems, G3 Modems, G4 Modems, Apple Cube Modems, iMac Modems, iMac DVD Limited Edition Modems, iBook Modems, iMac Flatscreen Modems), 3com Modems, Atech Modems, Aztec Modems, Best Data Modems, Boca Modems, Diamond Modems, Eiger lab Modems, Global Village Modems, Hayes Modems, Lucent Modems, Motorola Modems, Olitech Modems, Rockwell Modems, Supra Modems, TDK Modems, US Robotics Modems, Viking Modems, Zoltrix Modems, Zoom Modems. Modem Magic 5.5 also supports less common brands of modems (with extensive selections of drivers. Modem Magic 5.1.2 Modem Drivers download faster, stay connected longer than “stock” Modem Scripts.
MacaRa Modem Magic 5.7 is free to try, and currently sale priced at $39.95 (Regular Price $99.95) plus $5.25 shipping and handling for a CD in the US, $6.50 for CDs sent outside US.
For more information, downloads, and orders, visit:
http://www.mactechnicalservices.com/macara50.html
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