Why the speed drop?

I've noticed that I'm not getting the speed that I got around 6 months ago, I have been downloading anything betwen 40GB -100GB the last 3 months, is this what has affected my speed?

Can I do anything to increase my speed?
Here's my speedtests

July 2010 - http://www.speedtest.net/result/887126816.png

Today (25/4/2011) http://speedtest.net/result/1267948774.png

Also, I live ten minutes away from the Morecambe Exchange, those two tests are on the Morecambe Exchange.

Here's one I took one from a server that is much lot further away, and I don't understand why the ping is lower to that server, I know morecambe's ping can go lower than the one in my result because the ping on my colleges results are much lower (Fibre Optic), but I am nearer to the exchange! http://speedtest.net/result/1267946288.png

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Apr-11 17:44:46)

Post your router stats so we may be bale to see the reasons. How to get your router line stats

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 18527 kbps 990 kbps
Line Attenuation 18.0 db 9.4 db
Noise Margin 6.6 db 7.6 db

I eventually got put on a "gaming profile" because I wanted lower pings, could this of affected the speed?

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Apr-11 18:12:56)

There is no way you got 21mb download speeds via sky with that line and the fact they cap at 20mb

It seems to be a false result... you should be getting around 15-16mb

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

the fact they cap at 20mb

Do you actually know that they physically cap at 20 Meg?

ADSL2+ can go up to 24 Meg but many ISPs just market it as only up to 20 Meg to be on the safe side, but they don't put an actual cap on it.

The OP's line is capable of 21-22 Meg Sync and may have been that way last year.

However, I tend to agree that old speedtest result is probably false as even at 24 Meg sync you won't get more than 20 Meg throughput and that site can be unreliable at times.

Also, do you know anything about gaming?... when I am host the connections of the other players move from 4 to 3 for randomly like the line is unstable... I notice with other people when i'm not host my connection just stays at 4 bar. 4 bar being under 100ms for call of duty :/

Is that my upload causing my pings to randomly spike? Somethings is wrong there.. Not many other people who host have connections like mine that do that, theirs stay stable at either 3 or 4 bar. I swear there's some kind of line fault