tech was out again today.. surprised they came.. however, he proved to me that my speed issues were due to my machine. So, I checked one of the other machines in the house.. sure enough.. speeds were average for Insight.
I started trying to troubleshoot stuff on my machine and remembered I had read at DSLR that someone said that older versions of ZoneAlarm could cause a dramatic speed loss even if you aren't actively running it. Well, apparently, so can the new versions, because after I uninstalled it, my pc's speeds are now average.
:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 3417 Kbps about 3.4 Mbps (tested with 2992 kB)
Download Speed is:: 417 kB/s
Tested From:: https://testmy.net (server2)
Test Time:: Wed Feb 1 15:46:58 EST 2006
Bottom Line:: 61X faster than 56K 1MB download in 2.46 sec
Diagnosis: 90% + Okay : running at 98.96 % of your hosts average (insightBB.com)
Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-LSYCXNTIA
guess I owe them an apology in this case.