COM Ports & Modems

Just sticking the cables from my External Modem to my PC was easy. Even had no problems using it to get online.

However, looking at the COM ports property one day, I happened to notice that the default settings were less than desirable. Look at the snapshot of the COM port properties below...

You can quickly get to this screen by going to your Desktop, on the 'My Computer' icon, right-click and choose Properties.

On the System Properties dialog box, choose the Device Manager tab (make sure that the view is set to View devices by type) and search for Ports (COM & LPT).

Extending the category lets you view each COM port's properties. Click on the COM port that you use to connect the external modem to and click on the Properties button (below in the dialog box) to view the snapshot above.

What you are doing now is setting the speed data is transferred from your COM port to the PC's processor - 115200 is best for anything as fast as a 56Kbps modem.

You DON'T want it set to 9600, that's for sure! That's like having a 6 lane highway and setting a 10 mph speed limit...