For the past few months my cable modem has been going very slow. When I'm downloading something in my browser it will start at a decent speed and get slower until it gets to about 10kb/sec. What is wrong? The speed tests show that my connection is fast. My friend has the same exact thing that I have and his goes at least 10 times faster.
Too many variable in your post with no data to guess with.
You need to try to find a stable test. For instance, it is not your modem if speed is different at different times of day or different speeds from different sites. This assumes good signal levels at your modem.
Get out and ask a neighbor on the same cable string about thier speeds. Same speeds from same test site, problem is up line from you.
Could be malware running on your Win2000 os.
I would download a Knoppix iso and burn/boot from it. That is a live linux cd which only runs from the cd. That would let you run a broadbandreports speed test and rule out anything running under windows but using the same hardware.
Get a speed feel from one or two test nodes at different times of day.
You can run tracert to different nodes to see if there are any common slow nodes in your path to different node.
Now if your friend is on charter.com and you both are using the same speed test node at the same time, and friend is not on the same cable segment, and his speed is still much faster, then you know charter has the problem with your cable segment being overloaded or problem is upline but after wherever your friend is connected on Charter.com.
Are you seeing that everywhere or on just one or two particular sites. Remember that there are variables that go into speed determination. For example, if you're doing activity on a site that has limited bandwidth and a lot of others are trying to FTP a file or do something else bandwidth intensive, your speed will go down -- not because your provider's giving you less, but because the site you're using has less.
If your friend isn't exactly replicating the same download that you are, then that comparison isn't valid. Even then, if you're not on the exact same provider in the same town, it's not really valid either, because your data requests will take different paths.
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