Just a quick question here related to all of this:
I am on virgin 20MB too seeing similar speeds, highest i have seen is just under 10MB but it is because of the copper wire and distances.
However on my systems i never actually get 8-10MB download speeds, all of the 4 systems get max 1.3mb/s. Ofcourse this can be due to the servers we are downloading from but to give you an idea, steam, cnet, avast!, rarlabs...all give 1-1.4mb/s on each system.
When only 1 system is on (most of the time that will be mine which is hard wired to the router) it still only gets 1.4mb/s.
Is this because the servers only allow 1.4mb max for each user or is it being shared amongst the systems on the network even though not all of the systems are on? Or could it be a setting in the router?