#Netscape
Note also that you can get more than 1440 char/s over a 14.4 kbit/s modem, even
without V.42bis compression. In the good old days, "bits per second" meant the
same thing for the serial port as it did for the modem's connection over the
phone line, but that's no longer true.
What matters, of course, is how many characters you can transfer each second.
To get a character across the serial port, you must send ten bits, but the
modem needs only eight bits to get that character across the phone line, if
it's using the V.42 protocol; so you get a 25% increase in speed just by using
modems with V.42, even without V.42bis compression–providing, of course, that
both ends' serial ports are running faster than the modem-to-modem bit rate.
Of course, there's some protocol overhead, so the improvement isn't quite that
large.