Wireless Internet forum: Speedtest & Suddenlink

One issue after another with Suddenlink since they bought out our cable co. At one point during an issue, I can't recall what it was as there have been so many I was asked by a rep. to run speedtest ( speedtest.net )
At that time and in every test since other than when I tried a 15 meg 30 day free trial in place of the 10 meg I'd had, my speed has always been in the high 9's to low 10's range on all 3 of my laptops which sit on the same desk using the cable co. supplied modem and a Linksys Wireless G Router which has always served me well.

About 1 1/2 weeks ago give or take, suddenlink asked me to fill out a survey, I of course let them know what I thought of the company. I'd run a speedtest at or about that time with the same results as always. 2-3 days after the survey, I received a call from Suddenlink with a guy asking me if I wanted a tech to come out and look at a recent issue I'd related to in the survey where my service was constantly dropping. I explained to him the issue had ceased after I'd called Suddenlink tech support a week or so prior, no use in having someone come out if there wasn't an issue to be found.

A few days ago I noticed a little bit of a lag or something not normal on the main unit I use which is a ZD8000 HP w/Win XP so I ran a speedtest and could only get just over 4.0 as the speed. I then tried my other ZD8000 w/XP getting a similar speed and then tried my Toshiba w/Win7 and got the normal just over 10.0.

I called Suddenlink and after an hour or so of the rep. trying things from there, she sent a tech out. The tech replaced every connector inside & out of the house, no result-change and he then explained to me that I may have 10 meg service but that 10 megs is split between all 3 PC's which may be true, I simply don't know but in my mind this doesn't explain one PC reaching the 10.0, the other two reaching on 4.0 and especially so since all 3 used to test in the 9.0-10.0 or slightly above range.

One last thing.....I ran these tests on Internet Explorer, the two XP machines have 8.0, the Win7 has 9.0. Tonight I ran the tests using my AOL browser getting speeds of over 6.0 on the two XP machines and the normal 10.0 or slightly above using the AOL browser on the Win7 Machine.

I have also run a speed test offered by Cnet, I'm at about 3279 Kbps on both XP machines, 8070 on the Win7.

I am not up to speed with technology, I go by what makes sense so I'm asking if anyone has a logical explanation for any of this without too much tech talk I may get lost in.

Thanks in advance