whenever i hover over the icon telling me about my internet, it usually says that my speed is 11Mbps. but whenever i download something, my download manager tells me i am only doing about 16Kbps. how do i change the settings so that it downloads at the maximum download speed that it can? i use a firefox download manager if anyone an help me with that, then that would be awesome.

you are using 802.11 b, right? basically that like a little bit faster than a 56k modem in real use. but if you are te only one using it, then it could be faster. try using another download manager like star downloader and see if all its the same, also try, testmy.net, a site to evaluate your speed.

actually i use a 8 megabyte speed broadband. the werid thing is, is takes me soooo long just to download one thing. my friend only has 4 mb, but he can load a 20 minute episode off youtube in less than 30 secs - it takes me over an hour!!!! my dad said it had something to do with the exchange and that too many people are using it. o yeah, and i use a wireless router as well. thanks a lot for the tips docthy!! if anyone can tell me what the bloody hell is going on with my super slow broadband, then tyvm.

i did that testmy thingy and here's the saddenin resut...

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Download Connection is:: 99 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 386 kB)
Download Speed is:: 12 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Server 1)
Test Time:: 2006/12/10 - 9:33am
Bottom Line:: 2X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 85.33 sec
Tested from a 386 kB file and took 31.968 seconds to complete
Download Diagnosis:: May need help : running at only 3.02 % of your hosts average (co.uk)
D-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-J9VAO4G2T
User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8 [!]

Thats too bad, however try this, might be helpful:

''http://dl016.filefactory.com/dl/f/511e1f/b/2/h/ee09b6e59d058022/'' to optimize you pc. if anything fails, your dad is right, cable suffers from congestion extensibly, but at peak times, so I doubt that is like that all the times if it is, then call your ISP an make them fix it, cuz is not excuse, something is wrong, and could be a cable from your home to your company node service, the one outside on street. Make sure those guys you pay money for internet get there and check evething; About two month ago I had a problem with slow connection, turns out that my cable modem had something wrong and an external cable was not responding correctly, the check up and the modem replace cost me nothing because was no my fault, so give it a try!
gook luck!

thanks again docthy. i did some research on it and on the road i live on, the telephone wire thing is too old and cannot support hig speed broadband. so there's nothing i can do about that.

That sucks, I was one who used to have 56k connection longer than anyone I knew, and I had huge success with broadband. Once I got DSL, I started downloading at 70kb/sec. No big deal to me now (actually I would hate for that to be my normal download speed), but when I first got it it was huge. Now my brother and I could use the internet at the same time and download ultra fast like everyone else. Like 4 or 5 months later, my dad told me that they were upgrading our service because it would be cheaper. I was like ok, whatever. That monday it got upgraded I went on, and to my surprise I was downloading at 400kb/sec! And I live int he middle of nowhere with old phone lines too, so thats a shame that you cant get faster downloads.