dial up problems

Up until last week, I never had problems besides the occasion problems due to maitenence and upgrades at my ISP (earthlink). Then starting on last week Friday, I've been having connection problems. It never connects any faster than 33.6kbps (while my norm is 49.333kbps). It seems like the faster I connect, the less responsive connection I get. I've been emailing earthlink's support and so far the only thing I diagnosed is that there is no line noise so that can't be a factor in the problem. When I tried to use my voice phone line, it always connects at 48kbps but never seems usable. It only seems usable when its between 14k and 28k range. I tried limiting my connect speed but it has a tough time connecting and when it does, it doesn't respond. Tommorow, I'll be over a friends house so I'll try connecting there to check if its earthlink's end or not and then I'll borrow one of his modem to see if its a hardware problem in my own modem. Is there anything else I can check for problems? Oh, yea, here is my computer specs:
Dell Dimension 500MHz Pentium III
128 MB ram
USR 56k voice winmodem

Another problem I've been seeing is that my computer seems to be much slower than before. It seems that I run out of memory easily now. Could other parts like the memory or the CPU chip have affected the modem since its a winmodem?

Have you looked at the Modems support site for any patches or updates. Could be a driver issue.
I would also try to repair IE as well or get the latest IE version as well as that would elimate problems with it.
And of course the usual defrag helps alot, I defrag daily.
What is your OS incidently?
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

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>>Asendtechnologies.com<<

Well the thing that I hate about Dell now is that 1) they modify the parts to their liking and 2) they never seem to update anything except the bios which were all bug fixes. I tried using USR's update software and it says there are none and mine is up to date even though its never been updated. When I get back, I guess I might as well update IE, mine is still 5.0. I usually defrag once a week because it takes a while for my computer to defrag. My os is win98 but lately ive been considering to upgrade to winme.