bps means bits per second and cps means characters per second. The latter is a good measure of what you actually receive. The relationship between the two is complex but, as a rough guide, divide by 9 (or a little less) to convert bps to cps. Text can download much faster than binary data because it can be compressed.

Note that:

1. If the phone line is not good, or you have lots of extensions plugged into it, your modem may not be able to connect at its maximum rated speed (in the first column above) or the speed may fall-back during the course of the call.
    
2. Windows 95/98 users can check the initial connection speed by hovering the mouse over the flashing DUN icon (bottom right of the screen). If this shows a figure such as 57600 or 115200 bps, it probably means that your modem has not been installed with its correct modem ".inf" file. If Windows does not recognise your connection speed from this file, it displays the speed of your com port instead. This is the maximum rate at which data can flow between your modem and your computer, and should be set to at least twice the modem's maximum speed to avoid a bottleneck. This is because compressed data sent over the telephone line is decompressed by your modem, effectively increasing the rate at which data needs to flow into your computer via its com port.
    
3. 56K modems rarely connect much faster than 48K. Best results are usually achieved with V.90 rather than K56Flex or X2, and the modem should be flashed with the latest firmware. See also Section 1.9 of this FAQ.
    
4. A good way to test your transfer rate is to download files from ftp.demon.co.uk - try the test documents in /pub/test: ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/test/. Testing speeds by downloading news or using the WWW is not recommended, since many factors out of your control may slow transfer rates.

If you find you always get much slower speeds than those above, you may be getting overruns. There is a good explanation of what these are and possible cures in the Turnpike Connect helpfile under Errors) and also in the Navas Modem FAQ: http://modemfaq.home.att.net/index.htm

Phone calls to different PoPs (Points of Presence - i.e. the various Demon phone numbers you can ring) may be routed through the telephone system in different ways, some of which may give better line quality (and hence connection speeds) than others. If low speeds persist on all numbers you can ring your telephone company's customer support number and ask for your line to be checked [see also section 6.1].