Foolindream, that conversion only works some of the time. A few years back there was an "official" change of 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes to 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes. However, this is only used in some cases. So it may even be true that two 56k modems are actually have different maximum speeds. This is one of those stupid things that could have been left alone. Unfortunantly, you can never really tell which method is being used. Iv'e seen this used to make hard drives seem larger that they really are (and they are usually rounded anyway). Combined with the fact that modem speeds are sometimes given in bytes/second and sometimes bits/second it is really hard to tell exactly what speed your modem is. Although bytes are pretty much standard now, they weren't always 8 bits consistantly, it varied from machine to machine.

The great thing about computers is that there are so many standards to choose from.