poor throughput question

[Erik]

First off, let me apologize of these are not the right groups to post to, if
they are not, could someone please point me in the direction of a better
group.  Thanks

Okay, here is the problem, my ISP resells Megapop dial up internet service,
which is a nationwide provider.  I am in Colorado Springs, CO, and they are
offering dial-up here, out of a POP located in Denver, via Foreign Exchange.
All of the authentication is done via remote proxy RADIUS of my ISP (not one
owned by Megapop).

Now, when I connect, I connect anywhere between 26 and sometimes as high as
40000 (on a real good day).  I get throughput of anywhere from 1.4 K/Sec to
3.5 K/Sec if I am lucky.  I have confirmed this is not my v.90 modem, or my
phone line, or any of that, because my father just purchased a brand new
Dell, and it has the exact same problems.  We got a test account from
another local ISP, and it screamed, 49+ connection speeds and 5.8 K/Sec
download speeds.

We have been told by Megapop that it is our modem, that we need special Init
strings (but we never needed them with the other ISP), that is was our phone
line, etc. etc. etc.

They have even had us go to a DOS prompt, and do PING and TRACERT's for
them, and said "see there, very fast response, its not our system".

SO, what I am basically looking for, is someone that can shed some light on
this, what are some of the technical aspects of this that I can throw back
at them??  Mind you I am not computer iliterate by any means, but I am no
sys admin either.  I understand the basics of Internet communication, etc.
but I need to figure out at least the partial truth here.

If anyone can shed even some light on the situation, or direct towards a
resource that has more info, or a program that will run further diagnostics
for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

_E

Also, just in case it matters, we are using the Primary and Secondary DNS
server IP addresses of the ISP that authenticates us, not Megapops.