Lucent Modems?

Forum: Networking
Topic: Lucent Modems?
started by: Sir Lunch-a-lot

Posted by Sir Lunch-a-lot on Nov. 24 2005,23:47

Okay, I have been seeing a lot of mention of lucent modems on the DSL forums as of late. I am under the impression that it is a winmodem of some sort. My question is, are Lucent Modems a particular brand of win modem? What exactly makes one modem a Lucent modem and another one not? Or are all winmodems Lucent Modems. Thanks.

Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 25 2005,01:46

I can't give any definite answers, but the LT modem is a type of winmodem. I guess it is the particular chipset. Lucent is a fairly common type of winmodem, and has possibly the largest support of any winmodem in Linux. I have an LT winmodem that works without trouble in Suse, Slackware, and DSL2, and I'm thankful that of all the winmodems I could have had, LT is the one. That's all I know, so it's all I can say.

Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 25 2005,06:27

If you look at the label on the main chip on the card and it says "Lucent" or the Windows device manager says "Lucent", then it is a Lucent winmodem.

Otherwise, it is something else.

Posted by polo_step on Nov. 26 2005,21:32

I'm not sure it still says "Lucent" on newer devices since they were acquired by another company, Agere.

Also, not all Lucent-based modems will work as Linmodems, though the most common ones will.

It was an interesting device, as the basic chip remained unchanged and was in any number of different manufacturers' modems, but worked off of a standard (Windows) driver that was constantly being upgraded by Lucent for many years, even after the companies that manufactured the modems often vanished. While even with extensive tweaking I never got the performance out of a Lucent modem that I did out of an external USR/3Com, I found the basic idea an attractive one, an avoidance of obsolescence.

Sadly, I gave my old Lucent modem away to some Russian refugee family last week so they could rig up an XP box. Sure enough, they downloaded a new driver from the Agere site and they were up & running!