oscillating download speed.
 

hi,
I have an odd problem, and I'm not even sure where to start looking to try and fix it. Hopefully some of you have more insight than me. My problem is simply that my internet speed is always oscillating as can be seen in either of the screenshots attached. (both show the same symptom), also i can never seem to get a fast connection. usually my speed fluctuates between 0 - 10kbps. It occasionally spikes up to normal speed (70-200kbps) but never lasts there very long if at all (3 or 4 seconds at most.) before plummeting back to its usual stupor.

The problem persists irrelevant to where i am connecting to the internet (home, library, free wifi at mcdonalds etc.) , so anything upstream of my computer can probably be eliminated as the cause.

????????
help? :)

thanks.

Scientific linux 6
Asus u31f laptop. brand new, but there are several issues that make me wonder if i got a refurbished one that was returned, "fixed", and resold... but that is off topic.

$ lspci | grep -i wireless
02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

Does this happen all the time, or only when running certain software? I ask because I once had a problem with the same symptoms; it was caused by a misconfigured BitTorrent client I had running in the background. The program opened a huge number of connections to other BitTorrent peers but used very little actual bandwidth, thus interfering with my network speed while my System Monitor graph showed almost no bandwidth being used.