"So much for 'up to 8 meg'."
The speed you actually get is limited by your distance from the telephone exchange. 8Mb is the theoretical speed you get when the two ends of the link are next to each other on the bench and it drops with increasing distance. At work we are at the limit of broadband about a mile from the exchange and we get 1Mb on an "up to 8Mb" connection. At that distance the received signal is barely above the background noise on the line (a theoretical limit) and it's amazing that we get a reliable connection at all.

Of course it may be also that your broadband ISP is congested; that usually manifests as variations in speed with time of day.