Unfortunately since I live out of town/city in the United States, I'm stuck with DSL. Not the absolute worst (a famous satellite internet provider I was with shut down internet for as long as three-four weeks at a time) but it borders on mediocrity, meaning the more usage hogging options such as uploading videos to Youtube or watching streams on Twitch is out of my reach. Therefore I can't access those options without the internet being bogged down. But in spite of these troubles it has never experienced serious downtime, until maybe recently.

So in the past day I bought a game here on GOG which I played during my days in highschool. Not the most enjoyable game I've played but one I've enjoyed nonetheless. Anyway, as I was downloading off Google Chrome, I noticed that it started off okay, meaning they were the speeds I was told when I signed up for DSL. Unfortunately after 20-30 seconds the download speeds plummet, eventually hitting 0 kb/s. I woke up this morning to find that it was *STILL* at 0 kb/s and the setup file I was downloading wasn't even close to finishing. So I'm thinking, something is wrong.

I thought that it had been issues with Google Chrome, as one often hears, but Internet Explorer and Firefox did the exact same thing, stop at 0 kb/s when trying to download the setup file for the game I just bought. Okay, so then I thought, there is a problem with the server I am downloading from. Other games I bought in the past here on GOG came with the same results. Finally I thought "Well I'll just try to download a random file from another website", so I went ahead to Mozilla and tried to download Firefox, even though I already have it on my computer. Same results once again.

Since I was wireless (and usually am) I connected the ethernet cable directly to the computer. Can I download properly this time? Nope. So I'm left thinking, "I'm connected to a bad server". Ran a speedtest and found out that the test result wasn't as bad as I thought, there is just an issue with downloading anything. Upload speeds for the most part are slow, but stable.

So I don't know. Is it the browsers? Is it the link I am downloading from? Is it my ISP? Is there an issue with my system? World of Warcraft loads up fine and so does watching videos off Youtube, yet I can't download anything above 5 MBs, which is quite sad in this day and age since today's society highly depends on the internet. Should I call my ISP and tell them what the issue is?

I know I downloaded a 750 MB file here a month ago and it only took 80-90 minutes to complete. I just don't know, I'm no computer geek.

That sounds like ISP problems.

But none-the-less use the GOG downloader:

http://www.gog.com/downloader

It sounds like you may be throttled by your ISP.

One thing to do for testing, is to unplug your modem from the wall for the 10 minutes, then plug it back in. See if your download results change. Also, check if this is happens during all items of the day.

I remember a shitty ISP I used to have used to throttle from I believe 12 noon to 12 midnight, on the dot.

You downloaded a 750 MB file in "only" 80-90 minutes?

You really need some serious competion on the internet providing market.

Getting throttled would be quite annoying... Try going through a proxy if the GoG downloader doesn't work. Or if it's scanning content, sometimes encrypting the content helps, but that depends on where/how you're getting it from GoG... My quick math (which could be wrong) says that's 142k-170k a second. Sounds about my speed, although mine tops at 210k/s, but usually it downloads between 50k-100k a second.

Unfortunately that came up problematic as well, although the download speeds were better than when I tried downloading straight off the browsers. Also came up with an error message saying "please contact support" although I don't know how much good that will do since I know it's the ISP. GOG downloader then locks up and I have to use task manager to close the program.

I know it's not Windows 7 because I went over to my Macbook to try the download and it comes up with the same results. And by looking at Speedtest.net you may think that you're okay, but I've noticed that the actual speeds vary greatly from time to time, so your actual speeds may be far different from what Speedtest is telling you.

So for right now I'm simply confused. The only thing I haven't done yet is unplug the modem, I'll have to see if that works. If not then I will contact my ISP. It was going faster than usual. But like all internet connections you may be watching a Youtube video (all loaded) in a short timeframe or it may take you ages to watch a 30 min video clip. Having a stable, consistent connection is something a very select few have in the States. That's pretty much where I'm at, although there were days where my speeds would be slower than dial-up. Since I signed up for DSL four years ago I never had any serious downtime. The satellite provider I was with five-six years ago had a bandwidth cap, if you exceeded that amount you were out of internet for three-four weeks. I'm not kidding. I had to go to the college library to finish up my homework because even looking at e-mail simply wasn't an option.

You are years behind the "developed" countries, like Romania :) (joking aside, this is probably the only domain where US is worse).
I'm affraid to ask how much you pay for such great dowload speed.

Sadly this is true, America is behind in a lot of categories actually. But I won't delve into that here.

I'm going to try once more downloading, because I'm definitely certain the ISP is shot at the moment. I'll just have to try again another time.

Yeap. America really screwed the pooch on Net Neutrality when your corporate whores, the SCrOTUmS said Comcast could charge for multi-level internet access.

This means they can charge YOU for accessing sites, and charge sites to deliver that content YOU ALREADY PAID FOR ACCESS TO at reasonable-high speeds.

This is an added "bonus" to your ISPs charging for several different packages of content instead of one bill pays for all.

That's why I said you need some competition. It seems to me US have only 2-3 net providers OR the providers made a deal to simulate competion and nobody bothers to improve the existing infrastructure.

I recall having an interesting conversation about this many years back in a college classroom. Many of us who were there feared that this crap would happen and we turned out to be right.

It all comes down to the corporate leaders gaining power. If your internet provider has a monopoly, say goodbye to reliable service. I've read thousands of complaints over the years regarding Comcast, and the only thing they've done in the past few years is gain a bigger threshold in how much they can charge you on their bill. Cable TV gone down? Internet connection shot? It's all the same. They can charge you for hooking up a line in someone else's property across the street. That's how bad they are.

In the United Kingdom you have internet cafes and other services that ensure you a stable connection. It's actually quite easy to get a fast and powerful internet connection going, based on what my friends from the UK have told me. In the United States you hardly have any internet cafes, and if you're lucky enough you may get a stable, yet very slow connection because everybody else is hogging up the Wi-Fi.

We're behind alright, and it looks to be staying that way until the people actually get up and do something. More money and power for the top 1 percent, while everybody else below them pays the price, regardless if they're innocent. Forbes will show you how much more money the top 1 percent has gotten over the last 20-30 years. It's astronomical.

Combine all this with the political situation we got going and you end up with what we have today. Companies like Walmart doing whatever they want while the workers get the worst service possible.

Speaking as a Brit here, I gotta say that I get the same speed as the OP. I don't know if he lives in a city or something, but I live in the middle of nowhere. So I actually appreciate my internet speed. Even if it did take me two days to get a 7GB games off steam. Also, we have a fair amount of ISPs that we can use. I look forward to the day BT finally lays down some fibre optic cables damn it.