Thanks for the help.
First off, the auto tests must have stopped after around 5pm as I see nothing after that. Not sure what happened. It was up to 1.5mbps by then.
OK. I pinged testmy.net and got an average of 82ms. Did it four times all the same. This done at 10:30AM eastern time.
I also did a series of download tests. Results as follows. Again all around 10:30 AM.
256k from Central = 207kbps
512k from West Coast = 132kbps
512k from East Coast = 266kbps
512k from East Coast (#2) = 167kbps
Also tried doing 3meg from West Coast. Got to 82% and never completed after several minutes.
I'll be interested in seeing if the dowload rate goes up again during the afternoon. If it does, what can this mean? I was u nder the impression DSL was not affected by how many users were on the line... unlike cable for instance. Anyway, this would seem to work contrary to that theory since you can assume the kids are all on line in the afternoon and if anything it would run slower... not faster.
Your comment about aging hardware and lines. Do you mean my hardware (modem) or that of ATT? I can tell you my office is less than a mile from the head end building here in town and I'm on a busy commercial street. If anything I should be getting the best possible signal but, obviously, I'm not.