slow,slow -quick(-ish),slow,slow

We've been complaining for a while to Virgin Media. We are not alone, if you look at the VM fora .  Something is clearly amiss with the internet plumbing system.  We've been using speedtest.net regularly to measure our speeds. The good bit about this site is that it keeps  record of all your results and  you can download them. As part of the download speed problems , I've also changed my router. I did have a Linksys WRT54G , that had fallen over and so, instead of just re-installing the firmware , I installed gargoyle-router , which gave me a bit more opportunity to 'fiddle'. This has worked well for over a year. However  in trying to sort out our speeed issues I tried my spare - a Belkin. Under standard conditions and when the connection is was good, the Belkin gave a touch (~.5 MB) faster speed, so Ive stuck with that. So to get the speedtest results over the last 3 months or so , I will need to put the old router in the network.

But here are the randomly timed speedtest results for the last week.

Hopelessly inconsistent and hopelessly slow.


The other frustrating bit of all this is that whenver you ring up , you just get put through to a call centre and the drone on the other end of the line just reads from the script. So you get no information bout what the problem is, what they ar doing about it, or when it will get fixed.