Premium cable Internet is supposed to provide multi-megabyte per second downloads, right? Meaning, I should be able to download a 20MB file in a second? When I download large video files, say from YouTube or some HD video sites, and I watch the download speeds on my Google Chrome download page, it always ranges between 200kbps and 900kbps. Usually, a download will start at 700kbps, but after a few seconds it slowly drops and drops then stabilizes between 200 and 400kbps on average.

Why don't I ever download anything even close to the speed I am supposedly paying for?

Is it perhaps that I am using a 4 year old Motorola Surfboard cable modem, and a 4 year old Linksys Wireless-G router? Is my hardware holding me back, or is this as good as it gets?