Technology Forum

Hi to anyone reading this & thanks.Cutting a very very long story short. I have had BT Broadband since beg of March. I have had speed issues for 4 months, made about 100 pohone calls to 'IT' in India, had 4 different hubs/routers, had 3 engineers out. I am only getting speeds of 221kbps!!! Yep 221KPBS. Had trouble even getting on this site. I have threatened, told them they are treating me like this cause I'm a woman etc etc. I have no idea what to do now. I have pulled half my hair out, literally!! I am running windows xp SP3 home edition. I have Advent 2.80ghz, Intel Pentium 4 processor with 1GB of memory. I have zone alarm firewall, which I keep updated. I have spyware terminator & AVG 8 free edition. I am connected via the ethernet cable. The router goes straight into the main telephone box (with a microfilter) & DON'T have any other extensions. I have tried the microfilter straight into the test socket but that doesn't make any difference.I have searched the web for what could be wrong and have tried every suggestion, which hasn't worked. The only thing that hasn't been checked is the wiring outside my home, which I thought BT engineers would do. Please please has anyone got any idea what is wrong, why such low speed. One time BT 'IT' told me that I was too far away from the exchange, which I have checked & I am 893m away. They also told me that I can only get 500KBPS but according to their own broadband checker I should be able to get download speed of 4.5MBPS.Please help me!!!!!!!! Thanks in advance.Libby