Novice question re speed

[#1]

I am on PN Premier Option 1 - it shows I can get up to 1.5M.  BT shows my exchange will handle up to 2M.  I have achieved 1 to 1.2 in past.
But recently I have got only 0.4 to 0.5
Is there something I am doing wrong?  I have a Netgear DG834GT wireless router

[#2]

To eliminate the wireless side of things, what ping times do you get if you ping your router?
Are you using the b, g or b&g setting on your router?

[#3]

assuming you are on MaxDSL then you may have had a low resynch recently.
To give us a better idea what is happening can you post the stats from your router
This shows you how to get them http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm#anchor26b

[#4]

Quote from: axisofevil

To eliminate the wireless side of things, what ping times do you get if you ping your router? Are you using the b, g or b&g setting on your router?

Errrr. sorry but how do I ping my router? 
I am using b&g
(a real noviceI'm afriad - but thanks for you help)

[#5]

Quote from: Oldjim

assuming you are on MaxDSL then you may have had a low resynch recently. To give us a better idea what is happening can you post the stats from your router This shows you how to get them http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm#anchor26b

Here are the stats (JPEG attached )
System Up Time 45:10:42
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 290705 441005 0 242 3111 45:10:07
LAN 10M/100M 669133 593170 0 3215 641 45:10:40
WLAN 11M/54M 70602 168412 0 308 85 45:10:38
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2112 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 60.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 7.3 db 13.0 db

[#6]

If you maintain those stats you should get speeds up to 1500kbps so lets check the stable rate.
Can you go to here https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed and see what that says. Also try the BTSpeedtest  http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ and see what that says. You may need to have several goes to get it to respond as it is a bit flaky in the evening.
The IP Rate on this test should match the one from PlusNet.
However looking at your figures I would think that you are pushing things to maintain that connection speed with a 60dB attenuation.
After doing the above tests is it possible to connect your router to the master socket behind the main socket and report back the results. This is a small picture of it.