8mb acts like 1mb WHY?

Hi all.
I have just had my line upgraded to 8mb
I know that it will proberbly never reach 8mb but
when i use my bandwidth speedtest oonline with
(bandwidthplace.com)
I get 1.3 or 1.2 mb
When I was on 2mb connection It used to register at 1.9 or even 2.1 sometimes.
Why is this?
I use ZoneAlarm and Symantec Client Antivirus.
Are these hidering my connection speed?

AMD 2600xp
3gb DDR ram


Thanks in advance everyone.

Regards
Xray

 

May be this can Help, Optimizing & Measuring the "Speed" of Internet Connection.

 

Cheers cat5e.

I have tried this and there does seem to be a small improvement.
I will let it go a day or so and see if my overall speed improves,
Many thanks

Xray

 

Looks simple to me. Internet connection is in bits, but you download in bytes. Meaning that your 8Mbit interner is actually 1Mbyte. As 1 Byte = 8 bits.

Or maybe you knew that and I made fool of myself, who knows.

 

I don't suppose you connect through a router? The router could have a top speed of 2ish mb. But I think you'll agree, that is a fairly weak explaination.

This sounds like something on your ISPs end, truthfully. I would contact them.