OT (Maybe) Checking out modem connection to ISP

Sorry if this post is Off topic but....

Intermittently my connection to my ISP is extremely slow while checking
email etc. By slow I mean the lights on my modem (the send and recieve
lights) may be inactive for 30 seconds to a minute and a check of email can
take 5 - 10 minutes or even more. to show a web site in full can take 3-4
minutes (and not one heavy in graphics). The connection will go along fine
for weeks with what I consider acceptable speed and then have a few days
where this slowness occurs. A call to my ISP resulted in "it must be
something on your end" which I find hard to believe as nothing has changed
on my end. Pinging the server gives me response times of on average 50-60 ms
but has been as great as 600ms (but not often). As you can understand this
is extremely frustrating.

I am using Win95 with a normal dialup connection and my modem is a 56Kb
using it's latest driver (AcerModem)

My question....

Can anyone recommend any software that would identify where this problem is
occurring? or have any idea what it could be.

TIA

Tom Keatley

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