Why is my Internet connection so slow? (on Mac & PC)

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The story: We just switched our service over to Time Warner's RoadRunner cable Internet from AT&T's U-Verse DSL (was supposedly 6 MB/s). We signed up for and will be paying for Time Warner's fastest service, which is supposedly 15 MB/s.

I tested it with speedtest.net the first day, running no applications or anything, and the thing topped out at 6 MB/s. After hours of technical support, they came out and replaced their Motorola Surfboard modem with a Scientific Atlanta modem using our own brand new Belkin N router. The connection still only gets 5 MB/s.

The technician himself tried it and only got 7 MB/s, explaining that since we live in an apartment building with "kids downloading MP3s and movies" this is to be expected.

Still, why advertise 15 MB/s if you can't deliver? Additionally, should we downgrade our service and then get less MB/s than that connection's advertised speed?
 
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The tech is probably right about the apartment house connection. But still, they shouldn't be charging you for the faster connection when you can't get it.
 
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The tech is probably right about the apartment house connection. But still, they shouldn't be charging you for the faster connection when you can't get it.

Is it safe to assume if we lower our service to, say, 10MB/s, we'll probably only get 2 MB/s?
 
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You never get what you pay for. Usually you'll get around 75%. On another note, if you downgrade you will probably still get the 5Mb/s. I was paying for 6Mb/s while I only got 2.5Mb/s, so I downgraded to 3Mb/s and still get 2.5-2.8Mb/s.
 
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Well, I have worse news now. A problem I've experienced before with a different router, I am getting the dreaded "Red X" problem whenever I do a google image search or look at YouTube thumbnails of videos -- generally, whenever images are supposed to load on a page, at least half of them will not load. It used to drive me crazy, thinking it was my MacBook so I updated/reverted back to multiple versions of Safari and other browsers. It happened once before on a Netgear router I used to have. Now it's happening with a brand new Belkin.

Any test I could run? Not that there's a fix or anything. I guess I'm going to have to get a Linksys, which usually doesn't give me this problem.
 
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Check out internetfrog.com for a good speed tester. How big is your apartment complex? Also, The SA modem is not going to get 15MB, You need a motorola to get that I believe. If I were you I would downgrade to 2.0 or 7.0 so you are not paying for megs that you don't even get. I am in an apartment with a ton of college students and I have 7, and I receive 10 megs, so...... It's kind of hit and miss, but then again I am not too far from the head end I guess :)
 
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Well, I've accepted I might not be getting the fastest download speeds, but recently I've been noticing YouTube videos not loading. It'll load, but the red progress bar doesn't zip to the finish when first opened. It plays, and then a few seconds later it'll freeze to continue loading and so on.

I'm not downloading anything when this happens. It's not in HD. Why on earth is this a problem?
 
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Bump (please)
 
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Torrents and file downloads go fine, but YouTube constantly freezes to load. Why is this?
 

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