Edwin Pawlowski wrote:

"Marc Wolfe" wrote in message
...
My father has a sloow dialup connection, about 33K. His modem is connect
to the phone line via an RJ11 line about 17 ft long.

The RJ11 connection is through a circa 1950 plug type jack in the next
bedroom over.

Two questions:

1: Is the length of the RJ11 line impacting connection speed?

2: Would taking a real line cord from the old block into the other
bedroom speed up his connection?

Doubt that the length is a problem, based on my experience. The quality of
the connection may be. If the wires are not tightly connected at a terminal
block, it will induce static, slow a connection, or just die all together.
It can also be the quality of the lines along the way from your house to the
phone company switching station.

Or how many other things are hanging off the same line...fax, etc.

Or the quality of the connections at the external junction box...those
can oxidize very badly and cleaning them up can help.

Negotiated connection speed probably won't go up much, but you may
reduce error rate enough to see noticeable improvement in throughput.

If your ISP will allow it (and you can find one, I'm pretty sure the
3COM one I have is no longer in production) and you have two phone
lines, a dual-line sharing modem can virtually double throughput. It
can be set up to only use the second (voice) line when it is not in use
and to transparently drop back to single line if the voice line rings...