any way to speed things up

ok, so i have had DSL for about 4 years now, its a 786 kbps download speed connection with a westell 6100 modem. my issue is that the speed test sites all say i should be capable of 200-300 kbps, however, these tests only last during the surge time of my connection, as it always starts at that speed, and drops off to 60-75 kbps after about 35-45 sec. i asked fairpoint <formerly verizon in my area> and they tell me that they dont know why this is the case, as im only 1.2 miles from the hub. my friend with the exact same service package and modem get upwards of 400 kbps living more than 15 miles from the hub. on my old comp, i had windows xp <my new one has vista 64 bit>, and found what a forum called a dsl speed increase registry "hack" and my download speed were faster, about 150-200 kbps constant. is there anything i can do that may increase my speeds to where they were before?

 

I have very little faith in most speed test sites but there is one you might wanna try. Use this : Broadband Speed Test

Once you get there click on Broadband Tools and then select the TCP Quality Test, run it and post your results here and I'll take a quick look. Make sure you post all the results including your QOS rating.