I don't think anyone is capping your bandwidth, Castout. I get the same behaviour from time to time from my internet service here in the US. Sometimes the larger entities (companies, government) need additional bandwidth for something; that's my guess. I've tried to imagine the reasons in my own mind sometimes; e.g. massive data transfer somewhere on the grid, service outage, upgrades, testing, or perhaps someone in the fishbowl went to work drunk and mistook their workstation for a urinal.
The simple truth about the broadband internet provider we have in this region of the US is that they suck. Even their cable TV services are screwy at times.
