Phone line quality can absolutely affect the performance of your connection. Most modems do error correction automatically, and that *should* correct the packet loss - but not always. If your packet loss and latency is showing up at hop 1, then your phone line (or modem configuration) could very much be contributing to your problem. If hop 1 doesn't have a latency/packet loss problem, but hop 2 does (and hop 1 is on the ISP side of your connection), then you can start pointing figures in the direction of your ISP (although this is *very* general).<br><br>There's some pretty good information about optimizing your modem at <A HREF="http://808hi.com/56k/index.htm" target="_new">http://808hi.com/56k/index.htm</A>.<br><br>