Baud rate dropped .....

Have you checked the telephone connections in your building, has something different been plugged in? Have you disconnected all telephones, answering machines, etc from the line? Have you tried moving the computer and modem to another building/location in order to use a different telephone line? You stated that you have contacted the phone company I would expect they had suggested all of the above and no improvement.

Have you checked with your ISP? Have they changed modems?

Be warned: Phone companies and ISPs will LIE to you ('uhh...no;no problem here...').Have a friend with a different ISP come over and try his from your location.If still NG go over to his place with your system and try your ISP,etc.By the time you're done you'll have the problem localized to system,phone line,or ISP.Post your results and we'll pursue it from there.

Adjusted points to 150

I did actually contact my ISP and have done as you suggested with phone line situation.  The oddity is for the first month with this phone line I did connect at 33.6 or above and then mysteriously it suddenly lowered and won't connect any higher than 14.4
I don't know if I mentioned it earlier but when I use hyperterminal I connect just fine - even at 57600.  So I am a bit confused as you can see.
Thanx

When HyperTerminal reports '57600',
it is reporting the speed of the COM port,
namely between the motherboard and the modem,
rather than the speed between your modem and your ISP's modem.
This latter speed is shown in the message your modem issues:
  CONNECT xxxxx/yyy/zzz/...
in the 'xxxxx' field.

So in other words, when I click on the status on the modem lights and it tells me 14.4 that is the baud rate.
Now how do I get the ISP to help me correct the baud rate?

Have you definately narrowed it down to your ISP?

Take a look at http://WWW.IBM.NET
One hyperlink on that site is their list
of dial-up telephone-numbers, world-wide.
Find a number in your geographic vicinity,
and dial that number.  IBM will have high-quality modems,
so you should get a "fast" connect-rate.
What "modem-initialization-string"
are you using for your viva 33.6LC-V modem?

In HyperTerminal, try 'AT&F' and 'AT&F1' and 'ATZ',
and then try 'ATI0', 'ATI1', 'ATI2', ..., 'ATI11', 'ATI12',
and look at the output from each command,
before (and after) issuing the 'ATDTxxx-yyyy' command.

thank you otto i will try right now.  be back at you.

Hmmm, I bet your ISP upgraded to V90.  If you do not have v90 it is reported to LOWER your connection speed especially if you have software compression or error control on.  Check if this is the case by calling your ISP and saying in a happy voice "I just heard you all upgradedto the new V90!"  They might be more apt to be honest if they think it will be good PR!

Hi ljd1965,

I'm not surprise with your problem. We experienced sudden drop in speed/baud rate so often we do not bother at it anymore.

[1] Your ISP - to get good demand/market, they'll never admit even if they change their modem pool. Customers' demand/subscription will always faster than the number if modems available. When these smart modems detected higher traffice it will reduce the speed to adapt to it. Just like when you experience sudden drop of transfer rate of a site due to heavy traffice to that particular popular site.

Try to connect using your friends/neighbour's line.

Go to your dial-up networking and check the properties of your connection icon.  Make sure that under the General tab that your Connect Using... is correct for your modem, then select configure to see what your maximum speed is.