Life at 4800 Baud

I've been dinking around with the computer, installing SuSE 9.2, trying to get it to dual-boot with 9.1, so that I would not risk messing up the installation that already works.  Now both of them work, no problem.

Except, there seems to be a problem with my Internet connection.  Often, it will not connect at all.  When it does, it connects at a very slow speed.  Right now, it is 4800 baud. (Usually, I get over 32000, often over 42000.)  And the connection rarely lasts for more than a few minutes.  Which is why I have not been posting so much lately. 

The problem also afflicts my wife's computer, which is an off-the-shelf Hewlett-Packard box, running Windows XP, using a built-in modem, and a different phone line.  So it has to be a problem somewhere in the phone system, or with the ISP.

This might be what finally gets me to sign up for satellite Internet access.