Andrew,

I'm no broadband expert and don't have a clue as to what your problem is.  However, when I signed on with Adelphia more than a year ago, I had huge speed problems.  I still don't know what caused the problems completely, but some of the problems were apparently caused by my system and/or contamination of it.  The remaining problems were apparently caused by Adelphia's network.  Initially, I contacted serveral Tier 1 and 2 people at Adelphia by phone and online.  Essentially, they told me the problems were all caused by my system, probably by spyware and/or a bad splitter.  Two technians were dispatched to my residence at different times, and they were dumb as posts.

Finally, I figured there was a good chance my system was at fault in some way or other.  So, I completely reinstalled all my software, which reduced the speed problems about 50%.  Then, I complained some more to Adelphia with no results.  Finally, I sent an e-mail to management via the online service, describing my problems and threatening to file a complaint with the FCC.  I actually don't know if the e-mail was ever received by management.  However, two days later, my speeds increased to about the advertised values where they remain today.  Actually, my speeds have been slightly better than advertised for several months.

For eight months or so after first signing on, I used Norton's SystemWorks for virus control and SpyBot for spyware control.  For the last several months, I've been using Adelphia's Freedom Security and Privacy software, which seems to work fine.  I haven't noticed much difference between Norton's and Adelphia's antivirus software, but Adelphia's antispyware is definitely better than SpyBot and Microsoft's antispyware, which I also tried briefly.  Pop-up control using Adelphia's software also seems to be adequate.