Why is it that I only ever want to do stupendous bandwidth-hogging shit when I have basically no bandwidth?

The short of it is that this household currently has ADSL of 7 - 137 Kbps downstream and 700-768 Kbps upstream. The faulty component in the grand scheme of my home network? Apparently the 5 year old ADSL modem. If the world were an ordered one and my modem not on the fritz, that downstream number should be more like 3,000 Kbps.

I hope you will not accuse me of being a tinfoil hat person if I suspect tin whiskers. (Warning:Extreme geekiness and potential reason for obnoxious anti-treehuggers to start saying “I told ya so!”)