Some wierd connection problems...

[avx]

My friend has an emachine 500ic 128 megs of ram intel celleron processor at 500 mghz, 10 gig HD, anyways he has this problem with his connection, He plays Diablo II Lord of Distruction, Its on online game, with free internet service providd by battle.net, and when he gets on his connection seems very laggy, it just doesnt seem to perform well at all, and he is frequently disconnected and freezing up... hes on 56k, but I have had 56 and it was never as bad as his, and its not his computer just not being able to process the game. Here are some problems I think it might be, he is still has the DSL routers on some of the phones in his house, I dont know if this might cause some problems, but I think it might. Another problem I think it might be is his Answering machine...but I just dont know, anyone got an idea?

[SARGE]

With 56k, anything can be a suspect. You're right in other things being plugged in as possible culprits, not to mention the traffic, etc. Here's a pointer that may/may not apply.

http://modemsite.com/56k/gamerslag.asp

[reboot]

It's the $5 POS winmodem that EMachines puts in their systems.
Most likely a PCTel or Cirrus/Ambient/Intel, depending on age.

[kittyfire]

Emachines have some configuration issues. For some reason they set really low caps on things that can hamper performance. Check out DSL Reports and use their utility/tweak section. (dslreports.com)