Just increased DSL speed, now its very weird.

We had 1.5 Mbps, but we just upgraded to 8 Mbps. Right away we noticed that we couldn't connect to the Playstation network on the PS3, and loading Google would take several tries. In some cases you couldn't even refresh the page to load Google, you would have to open a new tab. We would have bursts of good speeds from online speed tests, ranging from 8.6Mbps down to not being able to load the test, and everything in between. I just tested my ping and for the last hour or so its been above 500ms, here are some results:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/71624436.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/71624613.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/71625193.png <--packet loss
http://www.pingtest.net/result/71626693.png <--packet loss

I live in Wisconsin and my ISP is Centurylink (formerly Centurytel), a technician came over yesterday and checked our box outside and inside and said that it was our Margin (db), if I remember correctly. Here is the info from my router:

Transceiver Revision : A2pB030m1.d23a
Vendor ID Code : 4D54
Line Mode : ADSL_2plus
Data Path FAST
Transceiver Information Downstream Path Upstream Path
DSL Speed (Kbits/Sec) 7168 895
Margin (dB) 12.1 17.5
Line Attenuation (dB) 41.5 21.4
Transmit Power (dBm) 0.0 12.6

The technician ended up lowering our speed to 6 Mbps, and said that everything looked good, and left. The Margin (db) was at 7.3 inside and 9.7 outside before he lowered it, and he thought that if we could hit 10, we would be fine. If that's the case then it seems like the margin is not the problem. If we are using too much speed could we set QoS on a router (would need a different router) to limit the bandwidth? Could the router be the problem?


To be honest I've never in all my life seen consistent download speeds over 180Kbps, and that makes me sad.

Please help!