is controlled by the cable pair and distance to the central office. From the central office to the ISP, fiber optics are used with a minimum speed of 45 Mb/s. Since you are connected to "The Net" by your cable pair, any ISP will have the same speed. It's just the physics of an analog cable pair.
Wayne
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My two ISPs have similar "machine names" ("reverse DNS"); does that have to do with why the dial-up connect speeds are so close or even identically slow?
Since my dial-up connect speeds have continued to get slower, I signed up for an additional ISP, thinking that if it had better speeds on the average I would drop my old ISP. To my surprise the connect speeds are often identical and, when not identical, are very close. They are both very slow.
The ShieldsUP! web page (https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2) shows a "machine name" (also called "reverse DNS") and the IP. The page says:
"The end of the string is probably a domain name related to your ISP. This will be common to all customers of this ISP"
My two ISPs have very similar machine names.
For example, here is the result of dialing up one ISP then disconnecting and connecting to the other ISP:
(Dialing from home in San Antonio, Texas; local phone service provider is ATT.) (the Xs are for the parts that are different)
ISP ATT/YAHOO - 19,200 bps -
xxx.dallas-xxxxxxxxxxxx.tx.dial-access.att.net
ISP STIC - 19,200 bps - (STIC is owned by Ikano in Utah)
xxx.dallas-xxxxxxxxxx.tx.dial-access.att.net
Questions:
1) Is this similarity because I have ATT phone service?
2) Is the STIC ISP server at the same physical location as the ATT ISP?
3) Does the machine name similarity relate to the often identically slow connect speeds? And if so, how?
Important question
4) While searching for a faster ISP, what question do I ask to avoid getting another ISP that will use the same resources (assuming these two do use the same resources)?
Thanks

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