From: rich@example.invalid   
      
   InterLinked  wrote:   
   > On 8/14/2025 8:19 AM, Nyssa wrote:   
   >> Plus my local (rural) phone lines are crap. I get ~43Kbps   
   >> on average. It was better when I lived in the Big City.   
   >   
   >   
   > If I may ask, which ISP are you using?   
   >   
   > I've been doing some testing with several ISPs lately, all of whom   
   > seem to resell GlobalPOPs these days (including AOL it seems).  The   
   > top speed I've gotten is 36000 a handful of times, and usually I get   
   > 31.2 or 33.6 - very difficult to get a V.90 connection anymore.  They   
   > seem to have done some kind of concentration where they've cheaped   
   > out on their phone lines, doesn't seem to be real T1s anymore.   
      
   56k modems running over POTS copper were never "real T1s" -- despite   
   the fact that the best-case top speed was a fractional T1 speed.   
      
   56k POTS copper modems were a bit of a "hack" that just happened to   
   work due to legacy design decisions made years prior for the phone   
   network architecture.  And even with short, clean, copper one almost   
   never saw the advertised "best case top speed".  Change that copper to   
   "longer" and "a bit on the older side" and topping out around 35k was   
   quite normal.   
      
   And most telco's have put zero dollars into any preventive maintence   
   for the analog copper lines, so today in 2025, assuming one still has   
   legacy copper lines [1], they are more dirty and noisy than they were back   
   with 56k modems were the "big new thing".   
      
   [1] in many parts of the USA, one cannot get a new copper hookup at   
   all.  The local 'phone company' obtained permission from the FCC to   
   actually drop copper POTS service, and once they got that permission   
   they wasted no time in migrating everyone off of the copper system.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)