Transfer rate degradation

Such is dialup.

That's it? So, if I ever can afford broadband, this wouldn't happen?

Sumac- Even if you have a 56k modem, you sometimes get a download speed of around 28k, or worse, according to the traffic. I have had both dialup and broadband. IMO if you use the internet a lot to surf the web and to download a lot, broadband is a must. If I could not afford it, I would stint on something else, and keep my Road Runner!

There are several things that can cause the transfer rate to drop and you only have limited control over a few of them.

Obvioulsy, having a broadband connection would create a higher bit rate path between you and your ISP so that will help by reducing one bottle neck in the path.

The Download accelerators try to speed things up by second guessing what you might do and trying to get the data before you ask for it. If you open a WWW page that has 4 links on it the D/L accelerator might read those 4 URLs and download them while you are reading the page. If you happen to select one of those links the page would be sitting in your cache so it appears to come up faster to the user.

When transferring a file though the d/l accelerator doesn't help much - it can actually hurt performance. The d/l accelerator can't download the file in advance for you and may be trying to d/l something else that you have no interest in so it can be competing with you for what bandwidth you do have.

Well you can try a few things, sometimes POP traffic (i.e. checking email on Outlook) seems to freshen up a connection.

Another thing is that dialup ISPs vary greatly in quality. I have not used dialup ISPs in the US enough to recommend but I'm sure some are far far better than others.

Transfer rate degradation
This can also occur from a virus. It happened to me. My son in law is a whiz so I took it to him and he beat it up. He explained it was a nasty and what kind it was. It immediately returned to expected form.