In language that I hope you can understand...My Plight...I am on AOL and for the last week it has been slow to download any thing. I have no choice but dial up or pay big time! Is what you are talking about like what has happened to me. I am low and slow with the terms you used. I have been on AOL since 98 and never this slow downloading.
Thank you for posting.
May you have a long path of life.
pinecone

First you need to determine what is "slow", assuming you haven't already. First you would like to have a V.90 or V.92, I'm not sure what the difference is, but they are the last versions of dial standards produced and operate up to a maximum of 56,000 bits per second (56KBps). Given what you said, you haven't changed anything, you just note a slow down, let's assume your computer modem and AOL are up to the V.9x standards. If the twisted pair of wires running around your house and down the road to the telephone office are in great shape (short is good, that is if the telephone office is along way off, several miles say, that will degrade the speed). I normally get 52.0 KBps from my computer in the basement, near where the telephone wire enters the house, my wifes computer upstairs gets a few KBps less, maybe 48 KBps. I associate the loss in speed is due to the "poor" quality of the wiring in the house, running from the basement up to her computer. What I noted in my post is my best rate of 52 Kbps went down to about 40 and 36, respectively, basement and upstairs. After contacting Worldnet and learning they had not degraded the service, I decided to start taking loads off the telephone lines in the house (I have two dial up lines) and started by unplugging my fax: bingo, speed came up to 52 Kbps. So, that's what I shared. If you've got a good speed in he idle state (you can see the speed by simply placing the mouse arrow over the tool bar's data set logo), then something else is slowing you down. The next thing I look at is: is the ISP (service) giving me any data. It is also easy to start a big download from a web site, say, and click on the symbol for the active dial up connection. Watch the received count, it should steadily increase, if it has period of no movement, then the ISP isn't giving you service. Software accelerators can also help, Worldnet offers one free, and I bet AOL does as well.

I get on at 26.4 bps :O(

They tell me by law, they only "need" to supply 14 bps on a telephone line

I'm so far out in the boonies that they have to clean mice nests out of the phone connection boxes

Maybee, I assume you communicate on the web from work. I don't think there are any datasets that will accept a line capability below several thousand bits per second. Or did you mean 26.4Kpbs?

I have TV antena for phone wire, I swear I do.
It is 1/8 mile from my house to the county rd.
Then 8 miles to the main telephone connector.
From what you say us country foulks are just stuck with the problem. Sometimes I get fast download then sometimes it is slow. A neighbor about 1/2 mile from me had to file suit to get lines to his home to run a home business a few years ago. He won and the Telephone Co had to run 15 lines.
Then he went to a Dish.
pinecone